Step 8:  Fiberglassing the Inside

As you can see above, I finally finished all the fillets, so it was time to fiberglass the inside.  The outside of the hull gets fiberglassed with a big sheet of fiberglass cloth which covers it entirely.  The inside, on the other hand, just gets a 3-4 inch wide strip of fiberglass tape down each seam.  In addition, the bottom panels in the area where the cockpit will be gets fiberglassed with section of a sheet that I cut out before filleting.
After laying down the fiberglass and pressing it gently into the fillets (which were still wet), I just painted over it using a disposable brush and unthickened epoxy.  I saturated the fiberglass completely but tried not to use more epoxy than needed.  Also, I coated the exposed wood on the inside because the epoxy acts as a sealant.

As I did this step I discovered the one problem with doing this project in a building without doors or windows: Bugs!  By 10 PM they were all over the place and I rushed to finish so I could get my newly coated surface under whatever protection my tarp system provided.  In the future I will avoid doing any bulk application of epoxy after 4 o'clock.  I think that the tarps did a pretty good job of protecting it but there were still quite a few casualties.  Luckily this was only the inside so a few bugs add a certain character.  Here is a picture of the boat under the tarp system I rigged up:
 

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