steel rollers are less then $30 and a required investment, you only need

one as you keep using it over and over, keep a container with acetone

in it to clean the roller out as you use it and when you are done.



E cloth is JUNK, dont use it anymore unless you want your hoods

coming apart.

ok explian why e cloth is junk over a coremat and do you see anything else wrong with my lay up? other pros tell me im fine but since you are brutaly honest i take your points well, makes me wanna prove myself even more because i like the advice of a rotorhead over any, so be brutal but help and not bring me down, so pm me if you will....peace

you recommend S cloth instead or what?

yeah and even then i dont use the stuff as a main layer just a reinforcement cuz of strength and cost...beats the hell out of mat, soaks up less resin and wieghs less

I work on boats, all day, everyday.



With that said, I also work on anything constructed of fiberglass

as well, from RC cars to kiddie rides to amusment park rides, most

recent odd ball thing was a sign for a airport.



My work ranges from fabrication to repairs.



Its the repair part that allows us to see what works and what doesnt work. Be it a repair on a 20 year old boat, or a repair on a 20 day old boat, the basic principles apply. Stress cracks,blown out stringers/bulkheads.transoms, rotted stringers, transoms and balsa core hulls, I see it all be it a 2 hour repair or a 1000+ hour project.



Now granted a hood is alot different then a boat that might weight anywhere from 3000lbs to 20,000 pounds+ bouncing up

and down in the water going anywhere from 30-125mph, but the

basic principles can still be applied. And basically no one uses e-cloth, or as we call it finishing cloth because it doesnt hold up well at all, I have

fixed a few things made with e-cloth or finishing cloth, and the ****

destructs when it gets damaged, it also doesnt hold itself together

even if it doesnt get damaged. When I have had to fix something that

has had ecloth used in it I have always tried to remove the cloth because it wont allow a proper repair to be made to it, you say it doesnt soak up alot of resin, that would be safe to say because usually you can pull the ecloth right off of whatever its on.



There is no reason why you should not be using 3/4 and 1 1/2 oz chopped strand mat

for your hoods. You want them light and strong then try to STEEL ROLLER out the excess resin, not plastic spreader it out. Follow the proper lay up schedule as well. Excess heat, excess resin, and air pockets makes parts brittle and weak.



I would still like to see the underside of the hood, coremat is also garbage, stuff self destructs as well.



check out what happens to a hull with coremat when it hits something, you can

see that the core mat looks dry and doesnt bond well at all.

http://www.yachtsurvey.com/glassboats-1.jpg

so you are telling me to just use mat with a roller and that will solve my problems?

its only the start, proper procedure needs to be followed from start

to finish to achieve success. Fiberglass is tricky because what looks

good today may look like junk in a year or so and may be falling apart

by then as well.



Its funny because my shop has a reputation as being expensive, but its

only because we do things one way- the right way- which takes time.

But we also have 100% success with zero re-do's

thats good.....i want quality without having to be too expensive and i sure as hell shouldnt have picked a car hood as a first project but it was fun and i have a pretty good handle on what im doing, i respect your input and know u know ur schnitt but i hardly can compare my car hood to a boat hull tho wa are talking stresses and the things of the like......so i have thing that i have learned from experience, but you obviously know a whole hell of alot more so why dont you fill us in on exactly what should be done to get that extra bit of quality most overlook, as far as i am concerned. Im not doing this as a full on business and even if i was i still dont think i would go all out and get a chopper gun and gel coat gun and all the compressors. Just for the average joe with alot of enthusiam and the ability to pull thru with the right information such as myself working in a garage doing this for fun and to provide for others what other advice such as actual layup procedures to get that extra quality, how to maintain stronger with lighter. Basically if your gonna tell me how im wrong and what can go wrong in detail tell me in detail what i can do right and maybe some other peeps on this forum can learn something as well.....

your doing fine, I guess in the age of the internet people

get more and more brave about trying different things.



Yet some more advice- dont bother with a chopper gun, chopper

gun is for high production garbage, all the custom and high end boats

are laid up the old fashioned way- by hand, which is the only way

to insure the utmost quality.