Glassing before construction?

[oldbuffpilot]

Jack, That's a good point. In both of my one sided glassing warping incidents the other side did not yet have a saturation coat. Never thought about it. Glad I posted...learned something!

 

[Kayak Jack]

Well, it was a question, Andy, not a point. It's inyuitively appealing. But another question is, which side of the wood grew longer? The raw side, or the glassed side? I expect that it was the raw side, but don't know.

 

[beekeeper]

Guess I might as well pass on my experience and give you something to read. Sometime ago I glued a stripped deck and glassed on side to get ahead of the game. A few weeks later pulled it out of the shed to find it had warped so bad it wasn,t useable. About a month ago I had a good start on a pirogue. Glassed the outside, and had to quit because of some medical issues. Pulled it out today to start the inside, the tops of the sides are warped, and it is no longer perfectly square. All recoverable but will be added work. My thoughts are if you glass one side, don't wait too long to do the other side. It's more warped then the picture shows.View attachment 978

Thanks for posting you're experiences.
Have you ever made a glued panel and stored it "a few weeks" before using it? If so, I assume it was not warped?
Was the wood air or kiln dried?
Were the strips bead and cove, or just butted together and glued? How wide are the strips?
Were they stored on a flat surface?
Besides moisture absorption, any idea what may have caused the problem?

beekeeper

 

[Wannabe]

If you glassed one side and put an epoxy seal coat on the other side, would that be enough to stabilize the wood?

 

[oldbuffpilot]

Sorry for the delay. Been real busy with life. Thanks for all the replies, hope I don't leave some answers out. The deck panel glassed on one side ",shrunk" on the unglassed side. It was flat tn a shed loft but no weights. I think the unepoxied wood dried quicker than the glassed side ,It actually curled up!
I think next time I'll at least saturation coat the other side. Bee, as for glued strip panels stored with out any glass, I've not had a problem.However we made our trip to the Great State of Texas in the end of January, and haven't been back to Kansas yet. I left a pi.rogue with panels glued, not cut out. I'm a little anxious about that. no bead and cove,. air dried, side strips are 3/4 and floor 11/2 wide. We hope to go home soon, we live very rural in Kansas and medical access is much easier here in the Austin area.
Good Fish'n
Andy

 

[beekeeper]

Hope you make it back to Kansas soon.
In general terms, seems the problem was the wood continued to dry, but the glass restricted it's even movement. Thanks for the info.

bee

 

[FrankAS]

Matt.....

It surprised me also and I wondered why they said that , especially to a new builder , It had to be someone besides Larry at his place.
I can see someone who has built a few boats trying it or actually doing it ( I think a few folks on here have done that ) but for someone learning the steps it just did not compute. As you said , it is basically doubling up on the work and reducing your pleasure.

Heck , I was going to try it on the Bayou Skiff when I made it and canceled that thought before really getting serious about it. One reason was the lack of room to do it and the other was a stroke of luck. One day I will try it to see how it works but only for the inside of the boat. I want glass wrapped all the way around the outside.

"O" Well , everyone marches to a different drummer and that keeps life interesting....:wink:

Chuck.....

I believe there's a thread on here somewhere about pre-coating the pieces with just resin just to the article was not to do it that way it made them stiffer and harder to work with

 

[oldsparkey]

I believe there's a thread on here somewhere about pre-coating the pieces with just resin just to the article was not to do it that way it made them stiffer and harder to work with

You are correct. If memory serves me the builder mentioned it was a lot harder to bend the boards to the desired shape then if they were left without any epoxy saturation.

Personally , when I built a boat I assembled the pieces and then epoxy saturated the wood before glassing it. The epoxy soaked into the wood providing a 2nd blearier in case of a deep scratch threw the glass when paddling it.
( Then I filleted the seams with a epoxy and wood flour mixture.) That seals the seams and smooths out the seams so the glass will lay flatter over the fillets.
It also provided a epoxy base for the glass and epoxy to bond to during the glassing process.
One important thing and that is to lightly sand the epoxy saturated wood before putting any glass near it. The epoxy soaks into the wood and causes the wood fibers to swell a slight amount which makes ( What I call ) whiskers that need to be sanded.