Alright, found my camera.
This work was done periodically between June 6th and roughly middle of July 2018. I was super busy with trying to find and buy a house, and packing up all my stuff.
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Dealing with the gap between the transom skin and the new transom, I ended up using a prybar to gently widen the gap a few millimeters to allow resin to get down a bit deeper, and then clamped the hell out of it.
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Now onto the (not so) fun stuff. Balsa core.
I should note that for this stage of my work, I'm using general purpose ortho polyester resin. I heard Vinylester doesn't play well with CoreBond under vacuum, so I went with poly.
Unfortunately with the house bullsh*t, my new glass had long since cured. So I knew id have to re-grind. Just a light job to create a mechanical bond. I started in the pad, scuffing the main surface while straightening the edges to fit the core.
Next I laid down a layer of CSM, and let that tack up while I prepped the bagging stuff, CoreBond and primed my balsa.
Due to the nature of the work as some of you know, I didn't have time to photograph each step in the process. It was warm this day and my resin was starting to gel around 20 minutes.
After I laid down the CSM, I encompassed the area with sealant tape. I went back to my work table and mixed up my resin for balsa priming, and smothered the balsa. Then prepped the CoreBond and troweled that into the pad. On went the balsa. Then went on the peel-ply. Then 2 layers of paper towel, then the bag. I'm actually using run-of-the-mill plastic vapor barrier you can buy at Home Depot, etc. Much much cheaper than bagging film, and works just the same, if not better. I found that bagging film was much stiffer - similar to cellophane than flexible plastic.
Not a perfect vacuum, but this still created several hundred pounds of "weight".
Let's see the result.
Shiny!
Continued working up the pad...
Second piece of core was a bit higher - I'll sand this down later...
Then started on the port side. Light grind, sweep&vacuum, followed by layer of wetted-out CSM.
Unfortunately, this is all I got done before moving. Everything got packed up, and is still packed up. With having a new house, I never had time the rest of the summer and fall to work on her.
So she's sleeping in the backyard under her boat cover and heavy-duty tarp.
Hopefully winter will be short.
Until then.....