Dan,

Perhaps someone else has already given you this advice, but this is what works for me. I use 2" thick pink Dow extruded polystyrene for the foam around the coaming riser. I rip .75" strips from it to give me a 2" wide by .75" thick strip. I then cover the deck and coaming riser with masking tape, and fit the strips of foam around the coaming. I shape it to fit pretty tight with a sureform tool, and then I hot glue the foam to the protected deck. I then use a sanding block to shape the foam to what I want, with a slight downward tilt to the foam to give my cockpit lip a nice edge to grab. After the foam is glued on I cover everything with clear packing tape as a mold release, and then lay fiber glass and CF. I cover my table with shelfliner and lay bias cut strips of 4" wide glass first, wet it out good, and start laying them around the cockpit lip and rolling over onto the inside of the vertical riser. After 2 layers of glass, I then do the same thing with a 4" wide layer of bias cut CF, 2 more layers of glass, and then another layer of CF. I then let it cure for 12 hours, and pop the assembly off the coaming riser. I then trim the lip to about 1.25", and trim the riser to about the same, and them glue it onto the riser (after removing all of the foam, but leaving the masking tape) I then fill the last layer of CF with about 3 fill coats, let it sure for 24 hours, and then sand until its very smooth and fair. I do NOT worry about sanding through the last layer CF at this point, I want this baby VERY smooth and fair. when this is to my satisfaction, I take another layer of 4" wide CF, wet it out, and carefully lay this over the coaming lip. I then cover this last layer of CF with a 4" layer of 3.2 ounce glass, and add 3 fill coats. Sand it smooth, and you're done. I think you can see that this method gives my cockpits a factory look. people think that I buy them this way :-)

Bryan K