Hi guys,
I'm going to document here trials and tribulations of building a Humber sailing trawler. Now these are broadly similar to the Brixham sailing trawler, these of course spread right up and around the east coast of the UK 100 years ago, taking on design modifications as they spread north.
Now I could have bought a ready made grp hull and gone from there. However as this was for a static display the only hull I could find was twice the size I wanted. So armed with a simple plan found in a book I scaled up on the works photocopier. By happy chance A5 to A3 gave me a 1/82nd scale and just over 12 inches of keel, so off I went. Sorry no pics of this bit. I cut all the hull formers from some 2mm card, glued them to the keel also in 2mm card and then filled the spaces with casting plaster. This is easy to sand away and of course later seal.
Many nights of sanding and measuring with a pin gauge and the plaster was the desired shape. I was making a plug to take a grp mould off so that eventually I would end up with 2 or 3 hulls. The plug was painted with dilute pva wood glue and water to seal the pores of the plaster, two coats. Then spray painted (acrylic primer I had lying around) Once it had dried off it was then polished with several coats of beeswax furniture polish, being allowed to stand a few hours between coats. So that was the plug finished. fairly easy and a technique I have used many times years ago.
So the first almost disaster, the wife calls it a trial, possibly because I was working in the conservatory rather than outside or the garage (too cold for grp work) the house now stinks of grp resin
Anyway as my local supplier of grp stuff is closed on a saturday and being to keen to wait until net week, I wnet off to Halfords the car shop. I came home with two tins of resing and hardener and some glass tissue. Having some experience of grp moulding in the past I got everything prepared on a nice piece of hardboard, strips of tissure cut etc etc. Now NEVER take instructions for granted, the tin said 10ml of resin to 3 cm of hardener paste, so that is what I measured into the jar. I began by coating the plug with resin then embedded my first piece of tissue. I started on the second piece of tissue and the resin had already jelllified in the jar
Panic I'm still not sure if I can salvage it or not.
I have mixed up futher resin and used a 1/3rd of the hardener than instructed. The working time on the tin said 20 minutes, even with a 1/3rd of the harderner it was curing in the jar in less than 4! So here is a couple of pics, I'll know later if I have managed to salvage the mould and plug. If not then this topic will start again from scratch
Here's the plug with a 'gel coat' and 1 strip of tissue, before my 2nd lot of resin became unworkable. I now need to go buy some cheap disposable paint brushes from B&Q to finish off this evening.