Re: 1978 MFG Gypsy Rebuild
So I spent the morning constructing my transom clamps. It only took me about 3 hours to put them together and about 6 weeks to figure out how they actually work. It seems that I over thought the process. They are very cool tools for sure. I get everything set up and in place. The resin, silica, hardener. I had to cut my own fiberglass strands, I couldn't buy them anywhere. As Wood suggested I set up a sample of resin and silica and found a nice thickness. So I went for gold. I did one quart at a time, mixing resin, silica to a nice thickness, then adding some fiberglass strands. Once it was all nice and mixed, I added the hardener. Mixed it all in and while I poured this mixture out my mixing partner started the next batch. My only worry was the amount of hardener. I lost many nights sleep over this. I'm so use to using epoxy that now I fear I've been ruined for poly. Anyway I got it troweled on both the new transom ply and the skin of the transom. The fiberglass strands were a bit clumpy at first but as I troweled away they seem to let go and spread out. So I have the wood in place and all clamped up nice. But now I wait and worry. It's been some time and although the fiberglass feels to be thicker, it's not hardening like I expected. My worst fear is that I did not use enough hardener. I put a couple of extra logs in the wood furnace right behind the boat. lol. Waiting...............
Setting and adjust the new clamps
Waiting, tick tock, tick tock.
