Overview
This project sort of started as a mole hill and turned into a mountain. Initially, I just wanted to repaint the underside of my front hatch. Then I decided to try to sand off the existing paint and fair the exterior surface. That’s when I discovered the hatch had badly deliminated and concluded it was beyond repair. With encouragement from Sonny and following a tutorial from Boatworks Today I decided to make a replacement fiberglass hatch from a mold. NB: unlike Andy I used epoxy instead of polyester resin and gelcoat, and thus painted it as a final step.
This was the first project of this kind for me, and despite the encouragement and tutorials I wasn’t very sure of myself. So before starting on the final project I built a half-size “mini” hatch composed of just two layers of cloth. This practice project really helped me work out how to build the mold and give me confidence that the hatch actually would “pop” out of the mold when finished.
