Tabbing in the New V-berth Tops

June 9, 2019

With family in town, I made other plans for the morning and through mid-afternoon.  Since there would not be a longer block of work time available to me today, after getting back to the house I got after a smallish project that I had intended for some time - tabbing in the new v-berth tops.  With the v-berth tops tabbed in, and the small amount of overhead fairing and sanding left, I would then be free to paint the forward area of the interior.  

I began with sanding the centerline joint of the two halves.  I created a cavity roughly the thickness of one layer of 1708 biaxial, which when laid down here will further help to tie the two pieces together.    I also sanded the sharp outboard edge of the two v-berth tops to help ease the lazy down of the 1708 biaxial tabbing.  With the sanding finished, I then thoroughly vacuumed and solvent-washed the work area, and finished by marking a 2" inset along the outboard edge of the v-berth and applied tape to protect the surrounding surface from epoxy resin.

I wet out the joint with neat epoxy - no thickening agents added - and the filled the small void between the two halves with thickened epoxy.  The wood now wet with epoxy, I then laid down a strip of 1708 biaxial cloth 2" wide at the aft and narrowing to 1.25" at the forward end.  Over the fiberglass joint, I mixed thickened epoxy and spread it with a wide squeegee to fill the slight concavity along the length of this centerline joint. 

With the centerline finished, I moved to the tabbing of the outboard edges of the v-berth.  I had taken measurements of the length of tabbing to use: 7" in width by 90" in length.  I cut the tabbing from the large roll of 1708 biaxial cloth that I had sourced for the refit project, since the largest of my existing supply of tabbing was 6" in width.  I also cut two lengths of peel ply slightly larger that the tabbing itself.  In the shop, I cut a large piece of plastic sheeting and laid it on the floor, on top of which I laid out the 90"-long pieces of tabbing material, and proceeded to wet these out with epoxy resin.  

With the tabbing material wet out and laying on the plastic sheeting on the floor of my shop, I made my way over to the boat to wet out the area on which I would lay the tabbing - the hull and outboard edge of the v-berth tops.  In the shop, I neatly rolled the tabbing material up, placed them on a scrap piece of cardboard, and headed back to the boat.  

One at a time, I laid out and unrolled the tabbing into position.  I worked along the length of the tabbing pushing out any trapped air bubbles and ensuring that the cloth was uniformly laid down.  I then applied the peel ply over the tabbing, and with a small chip brush in hand, I "painted out" the peel ply over top of the tabbing all the while working the resin into the material.

The pictures above and below show the tabbing in place as well as the peel ply fully saturated (translucent) over top for the tabbing.  The peel ply will pull the amine blush  to the surface through the curing process.  When I pull off the peel ply, the amine blush will come with it.  The peel ply obviates the need for water-washing to the remove the amine blush (a waxy contaminate to further surface prep) and the required sanding to create a surface that has good mechanical bond characteristics.  That would wrap up the day's work.

Total Time Today: 2.75 hrs