This is a step into the unknown for me. I may have read about using fibreglass on model boat hulls but I've never actually tried it for myself. However with the Fantail Launch hull looking so bad I reasoned I had nothing to lose.
The materials used were David's fibreglass resin, Davids Hardener and the finest fibreglass cloth that Halfords (a car parts place for non UK readers) sell. The instructions in the kit, written for modellers in the USA, specify something similar as far as I can tell but some of the products aren't available in the UK so I had to guess.
My real worry about this related to the problems of the cloth wrinkling and folding as it curved around the contours of the hull. However once I started I discovered that splodging the resin on causes the cloth to soften. It looses cohesion and can be dragged around the hull by the brush. That's not a great description but what is happening is that the cloth is becoming part of the resin. I had to snip a couple of creases but was then able to work them with the brush and the overlaps disappeared.
The result looks promising. OK it will need a good sand to get a perfect finish but being a thickish coat of a hard material I can do this rather better than I could on the balsa hull.
One trick to learn was to get enough hardener into the resin. My first attempt took a couple of hours to dry but later goes went off quicker, and were redder in colour, thanks to getting the mix better (1cm hardener to 10ml resin).
So far I'm happy. I'll leave things for a day and then attack it with a sander.
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