The start to a sticky mess

I started the next big step with my surfboard the other day; I started glassing the bottom. The glass schedule is going to be 1-7.5 Oz bottom, 1-7.5 Oz top with a 7.5 Oz deck patch. I do kinda wish I would have gone a little bit thicker but that will have to be next time. But let's get this thing going!

I first started by laying out the fiber glass on the bottom of the board. I unrolled it till I had a little bit hanging of the nose and a little bit hanging off the tail (a couple inches for both):



From here, it seemed best to go with a free lap (as opposed to a cut lap). A cut lap is putting a layer of tape down on the board, glassing the bottom, and then once it starts to setup but the glass right at the start of the tape. It seems like this can add some extra issues to the board glassing. So I just cut about an inch below the rail line and went with the free lap:



All of this so far was no big deal. I hadn't actually done much. But now it was time for the interesting bit.... The actual glassing. Everything I've read says this is supposed to be the hardest part for your first build. I don't know about hardest, but it definitely is the messiest.

I mixed up about 42 Oz of resin (32 pumps of Resin and 16 pumps of hardener). I poured about half of it on the board and went at it. I had resin dripping off all over the place at first. Like a 'tard, I completely forgot about the rocker on the bottom and took resin all the way to the nose and tail. So it was dripping of here. I ended up pushing it back a good bit and started working on the deck. This was pretty well saturated when it was time to start working on the rails. With the resin dripping all over the place, I figured it might be easier to just use my hands (I had gloves on of course) to work the resin into the rails. This seemed to work pretty good. Next time I think I'm going to use a disposable brush for this part.

Everything seemed to be going pretty good. I just kept working the resin from the stringer to the rails and all the way around to finish them. I wasn't to happy with how the fiberglass was sitting on the nose So I cut off an extra strip from the scraps and put a little patch area here. I don't know if it was necessary but I figured it couldn't hurt anything. Everything else seemed to go pretty good and I got a bottom of a surfboard with some fiberglass curing on it.



I had about 16 oz left over of resin. So it seems like I went with far to much resin for this layer. I guess it was better to have too much then not enough, but I'll know better for next time. Now all it needs is a little bit of time to cure. Lets keep our fingers crossed.