It's been a while but I finally have updates.
First time glassing, both me and my friend were running around like crazy with hands covered in epoxy resin so unfortunately nowhere near as many pics as I would have liked.
We scheduled to get started in the morning on Saturday, so all of the prep was set up ahead of time. Wood cut (3/4" AB marine fir), surface hand sanded, acetone wiped, and blown out with pressurized air. MarinEpoxy from boatbuildercentral, 3 gallons with Medium hardener. A bunch of measuring cups, mixing sticks, giant box of nitrile gloves, two five quart tubs of System Three silica thickener (Amazon) and a partridge in a pear tree. Temperature - cool, between 60 and 65 degrees with the propane heater going.
Boat all prepped. Unconventional repair - half inside and half outside. If I were to do it again, I think I would have cut the cap behind the livewell and storage tubs and just done the whole thing from the inside. The amount of work it took to get all the wood out, cleaned up, access to everything... ugh. Started with little access holes in the well/storage and ended up cutting half of them out just so I could get access to tab the transom into the sides. Only way I felt good about the strength of it.
Wood shaped and hand sanded with 80 grit. Slightly different design from my earlier foam templates, ended up going with a second piece of marine ply and a lot of extra wood. Workbench covered in painters plastic.
Epoxy and equipment. I wish I had more mixing cups. Trying to stir peanut butter consistency with those little sticks is just a load of hand cramping.
Most of the 'primary' glass pre-cut - 12oz biax, 3 layers. Also cut a bunch of smaller 6" x 6" squares to help with coverage in corners and whatnot that might come up unexpectedly.
Then everything became a blur. The two of us mixing varying batches of epoxy. With the medium hardener and cool temperatures, we had a 1-2 hour gel time but didn't waste any. All wood pre-coated with a foam roller, peanut butter along the bottom, mayo/ketchup consistency spread along each face with a notched trowel before being seated against another surface. 5 pieces total - one larger inner piece, two 'wing' sections, a lower center and an upper 'U' shape. Fitted the old existing skin over it all after sanding the inside of it down and also wetting then notched trowel coating. With epoxy covered hands, no pics... Sorry.
Once they were in we used the upper motor mount bolts with plywood 'washers', a large pre-built frame of 2X4 and excess plywood (1/2 bolts through the deck scupper holes), and a bunch of coated deck screws to tighten everything down as best as we possibly could.
Moved to the inside. Mixed up a bunch of PB and then with some plastic bakery piping bags laid out our fillets on the bottom, sides, and where the wood sections 'stepped'. Also filled any gaps that we could between the boards. Then laid in our fiberglass, overlapping (generally) from largest to smallest, 3 layers on the sides and bottom, 2 layers of coverage in the middle and top (where we could). Access was a M'Fer, so it was a very small cramped space trying to do all of this. Like I said... inside is the way I would go if I had to do this all over again.
It's not perfect. There are some bubbles, and there is excess resin that pooled at the bottom. We did have one cup that got hot and kicked before we used it, but it was near the end. Probably have a little over a half gallon of resin left. It's been over 24 hours, but since the temps are cool I'm going to wait another day or so to remove all the screws and clamping materials. Then it will be grinding, grinding, grinding the outside to get ready for glassing around the skin splice and fairing.
Things I still need:
New garboard drain
New fitting for the bilge drain (it was broken)
Deck scupper drain tubes
Solution for the livewell/washdown pickup. The pump has a plastic tube that was just stuck through the hull. I'd like to add a thru-hull fitting and seacock. It can be added in back later, so it's not an immediate need.
Pick a primer/paint. Currently leaning towards interlux, just putting a bottom-rated hard paint up the whole transom.
Also trying to figure out what to do on the transom top. There was an aluminum trim angle there, I think to just cover the gap between the bottom hull and upper shell. I'm thinking about just wrapping glass up over the edge and finishing it off nicely, any reason why I shouldn't do that? The angle just created a bunch of gaps for water intrusion, and also kept the engine from seating against the transom face at the top.
