paddle continued

I could not find the origin thread which I did find yesterday ??

In the origin thread I asked how to work the fiber glass cloth on edge of the paddle.  I was told to put some some tape on the bottom of the paddle coming off the edge and put some resin putty  on the tape then fold the tape over the resin onto the top of the paddle and sand to a feather edge when cured.

For those curios how it turns out, and lessons from others mistakes:

I tried it and got alot of air pockets and the resulting edge was fat from the bending ot the tape resulting in lots of sanding.  On the second try I put the tape on the bottom, applied to resin putty and then put a second piece of tape on the top and attach it to the bottom tape forming a feathered edge where the two tapes come together as the glass cloth would, reducing the sanding. Well, the feathering worked and reduced the amount of sanding, but there was still air pockets.

This time they were not as big. So I applied the glass to the back side of the paddle let cure and trimmed.  When the paddle was turned 180 degrees the back glass formed a pocket to hold new resin in so when the glass for the front side was applied with some resin added to fill the pocket.  The only problem was the I add some wood flour to the resin putty creating a nice wood colored edge , but the resin for the glass did not have wood flour so even though the air pocket was filled it looks empty because the lack of color!  Oh well.

That's weird, the original thread was at the top of the list yesterday and is #2 right now.

Yeah, on mine I fill and sand to total smoothness before glassing to avoid that problem. If it really bothers you, there's always graphite/epoxy mix over the glass. It gives you a nice glossy black which stands up to UV without varnish and it helps protect the paddle from damage. If you sand it, it becomes a smooth even flat grey, like pencil lead and turns black when wet.

Laszlo

   Here's Nick's video about reinforcing the edges....
https://guillemot-kayaks.com/reinforcing-edges