That looks fantastic. Congrats and keep it up.......John

Hey man thats looking good Were gonna glass mine tomorrow.

I just spent another three hours sanding/grinding carpet glue to get it prepped, so yes i agree it doe's SUCK


2sav

Thanks, I'm cutting the deck braces off now, along with a part of my finger   Wrap it up and get the other side off and I'll be ready to go purchase some wood and glass

WOW!! When i went there it was the exact oppisite. There was a guy working , and once I explained what I was doing and that it was my first crack at it ,  he wouldent shut up.

Lookin good Chaz. Keep up the good work. After all is said and done you'll be a pro and giving all of us advice.

Sorry I did not see this thread sooner...
First, great progress !    looking good.

now a question you asked a while back about removing the glue, I have sold a 3M product that works well
and comes in many different mounts/arbors for a veriety of tools. Works well, like sandpaper, but runs cool
will not make much heat so less chance for the glue to get sticky, works on paint removal and rust very well too.
the product is called 'clean and strip' 



I know it's a bit late, but might help someone else...

Rebel

I seen that and i almost picked up a couple when i was stripping the glue off of my boat.

Now i am going to strip the old paint and rust  off my trailer so i think i will pick some up and give it a try

Im always looking for the easy way out

2sav

looks pretty good but if you don't mind, I'd like to make a suggestion.
In your pictures, you can see where there are air bubbles between the brackets and the tanks-


It would be a good idea to cut those bubbles out and add another layer of the cloth in this manner-


Air bubbles are a weak link that can and will allow movement which in turn can be a place of failure.  After cutting the bubbles out, try to get the next layer of cloth to make a tighter fit/bond.  Be sure to clean it all real well with acetone a couple of inches in all directions.
If you ever happen to do it again, instead of using metal brackets, you can use dense cardboard.  You can put the resin on the tank and hull, saturate the cardboard and stick it in place.  Once all that is almost set up, go over it with the cloth and it's a super solid bond.

So just grind out all areas that show air underneath and cover it with another layer of cloth?  I had problems getting the cloth to stay down in those areas.  I would get all the air out on one side and the other side would pull up a little, back and forth until I gave up as "the best I was going to get"  Maybe it will work better this time since the metal bracket wont keep wanting to slide downhill.

Yes sir, just grind away or anything to be able to get a tighter bond.  It probably would have been a good idea to put resin between the bracket and tank, let it kick so they would have been held in place for you better.  Gas tanks can be a pain!  They're also a place where you want/need the repair to be as solid as possible.

DMC told me that mat was just for fill, to thicken it up.  That it added no real strength.  I did also put resin then cloth under the metal, let that set up a bit then added the cloth to the top.  Hopefully I'll get a chance to get back to it soon.  The fires kinda put a damper on my progress.

Well I'm back at it...finally  I have made the stern piece, cut the center board, and 2 of the cross braces. I will try and get all the wood cut tomorrow.  The boat seems to dip down in the middle...   I am thinking I should have used a 2X6 and cut it to size.  Instead I am going to have to put some filler under the low part.  I really wish I had a band saw right about now.  The jig and skill are making the job much slower

One step closer

I hope you havent glassed in that floor yet....it would be a good idea to leave some openings (gaps or holes) at the bottom of each piece so water can flow. water will find its way in there and get trapped. it would be a good idea to let it escape somehow back to the transom.

A good test of this would be to find an '03 or newer Malibu boat and lean on the free board. Then go lean on a master craft, Nautique, supreme, Moomba, etc.... That's the difference between mat and cloth. Malibu being the sprayed in mat construction and the rest being hand laid glass cloth.

There is no strength in cloth, you're getting bum information from whom ever DMC is. And you can't spray in mat. You can use a chopper gun that shoots in pre-adjusted lengths of fiberglass strands mixed with resin, that in turn is rolled to remove air, but you can't shoot mat.

If you were to lay layer upon layer upon layer of cloth, then yes you'd get a rock solid lay up, like a motorcycle helmet. No one does that in boats, no one. Mat is the strength of the lay up, along with roving and other types of mat, cloth has one purpose in it's life and that's to be applied over the mat so you can work out the air with a squigee or a roller. Cloth won't tear or get tangled like mat will. Other than that it makes for a nice final layer for flo-coating (or if you're building a boat with a wood deck, you'd use deck cloth, a very fine type of cloth that's invisable to the eye once its wetted out) that's what cloth is for.  Some builders would even remove the cloth from the mat once the air was removed in an effort to save weight.

I looked on a few of the ski boat web sites. Ski Supreme claims to be 'hand laminated'. Could be, could be stretching it a little too. Here's a picture they posted on their site of a laminator using a squeggie. Ok, looks like they're hand laminated except for the fact that they have chopper guns hanging over head in the shot and those have to be used for something. So maybe they are a 'little bit' hand laminated. Or maybe the term hand laminated doesn't mean what it use to mean. lol