... a boat, a kingdom for a boat.Well not quite a kingdom, more like some resin and some glassfibre matts. Guess there's a first time for everything and this time it was making a mess with glassfibre and polyester-resin. Why polyester and not 2k? My lack of knowledge and I have always been told that these Velorex sidecars are made from polyester, so I was pretty convinced that sticking with the same stuff would be the right choice.
So here's what I learned: Respirators aren't dumb, I worked in my dad's garage with both doors open and a gentle breeze going through and I ended up with a proper headache, so the whole "well ventilated area"-thing is no joke and honestly even two weeks later the resin gave off a very distinct smell. The next thing is: plan ahead. I cut up a fair amount of strips and patches beforehand and but them in the old oven tray for later use. (Also the mat is the cheap part, so saving there will not change much, but make the whole affair a lot easier.) On the subject of mats, there's coarse woven ones, fine woven ones and those "messy" ones. I picked up a pack of each as I saw that the boat was covered on the inside with the erratic stuff and the substructure was made from the coarsely woven stuff.
Another tip on personal protection, remember the pink (or in my case yellow) kitchen gloves your mum or granny used, when doing the washing up? Yep, get a pair of those and then wear a pair of normal nitrile gloves over them. This way you end up with NO glasfibres on or in your skin and you can take off the second pair of gloves, when you have to cut some additional bits of mat and don't have to bother with sticky resin being everywhere.
Whilst I was picking up some supplies, I also got some paper cups for mixing and picked up this little tray, which appears to have been some sort of cheese wrapper or the like. If you can get one of those bigger trays, like the ones in which meat is sold in, you'll probably have an even easier life.
Originally I anticipated the resin to be much thinner than it actually was, yet still it surely didn't do harm to put the boat onto one side to have gravity work in my favour. The work itself is pretty simple: You put the bit of mat you want to use into the tray, pour some resin on top of it, mash it in with a brush until it is a sticky mess and then take it out and place it on the hole you want to patch up. As there will be quite a few air bubbles trapped underneath tap it flat with a brush.
I then waited about a week or so (more like ten days to two weeks), cut up some of that messy mat, soaked it will and dear with resin and filled up the hole from the outside.
As the reinforcing lips on the sidecar body had quite a few cracks, I made some strips and laid them over the cracks inside and out. It looks terrible in the picture, but the excess material can be trimmed back later when the resin has hardened.
And there you have it... that's all I know after working with GRP for a couple of hours. 😁
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