With the deck now planked it was time to release and separate the deck, forms and hull. I removed all the copper wire but had to heat the hot glue joints a little with a heat gun but all the forms release. The picture on the right is the deck upside down in the cradle. I used the cradles from my last project, adding new wood in the curved shape of the current deck then used pipe insulating foam tubes to protect the wood.
If you don’t use the cradles, the deck might expand while glassing, making it hard to line up and fit when it’s time to reattach it to the hull
If you notice in the picture below I still needed to use tape to hold some of the curve. The cedar was stretched and twisted so much along the first few courses, there was still some torsion and spring left in the wood.
The glassing went rather smoothly, no pun intended. There were not as many sharp angles and rough edges as the hull so the 6oz fabric laid down easily and mostly stayed down.
All finished except for the trimming.
By the way the cradle and the tape worked. In the next posts, you’ll see how easy it reattached to the hull.
