if your wood shop is sponsored by minimaps Empire I would like check out their products that I would like calm okay because of the polyurethane were it takes so long to dry it we might as well move on to getting our blade which is the most delicate part of our paddle fiberglass so we're not going to fiberglass the shaft we're just going to fiberglass pretty much up to here and that will help prevent this from getting dents and dings and also chipping bits of wood off when you whack your rail so because we want to stop the glass we're going to use some masking tape get the good quality stuff you'll be thankful for it when it comes to removing it and just to make sure that your seam is pretty nice so that's a nice tight seam so you shouldn't get too much creep underneath there now the glass er I'm going to be using for this paddle is four ounce cloth and that's what I use on my wooden boards sometimes you can double up the layers but I think for a paddle for a six ounce cloth is probably all you need obviously the heavier cloth gives you the more protection so here I'm just going to cut off a strip and that's going to be enough for our blade so with the cloth I cut to very rough shaped sizes because when it's actually laying on the paddle and we've brushed it out that's when we actually trim it to its final size so with our very roughly shaped cloth we've just got to lay it on the blade like so and we'll be trimming it to size so around the knuckle here because we're not fiberglassing that and we don't really want it to move around too much I'm actually going to add a little bit of tape you don't really need to do this but it does just make life a little bit easier for the next step I've taken my glove off because it's really hard to Pat the glass out with rubber gloves but here we're just padding the glass out really gently trying to get it to see it nicely over this paddle and that's looking pretty good so now I'm just going to come in with some sharp scissors and trim the glass to be nice and close to that lift okay now the resin I'm using is the West systems epoxy so with the West systems it's mixed to a 1 to 5 ratio by volume or weight okay so with that resin we just mix it up making sure to rub down the side to get it really well mixed now I'm using fast because this is such a small item to glass but if it's something larger you obviously want to use the slower hardener and the thing with epoxy is it's a exothermic sort of reaction where it sets so if you keep it in this cup for too long it's gonna start setting up a lot quicker because it's actually retaining the heat so the sooner you pour your epoxy onto the item your glassing the longer working time you're actually going to have so once it's nice and mixed it's a good idea to get it on to your workpiece as fast as possible so I can already feel it in my hands heating up and it's not even been a minute so nice even pour in the middle and you just work from the center out now with a brush on the edges of the rail I'm just going to poke the edges here and get it to stick to the side now once this coats dry we'll actually cut off the excess sand the other side will tape off and then do the exact same process for the reverse side of this paddle so we should have a really nice lamination after this is all said and done so here you can see where I've got a little bit of the glass not wanting to stick and that's just because I trimmed it a little bit too close to the rail and I haven't got enough glass there to actually stick but on this first side of the lamination that's not a big deal because we will be masking off on this edge here and doing the second side shortly I like the first side dry for a few hours and I came back with a really sharp razor blade so I took a brand new one out and I trimmed along the edges so all that overhang is gone and then with the resin that poured over the back side I also sounded that off so I'm left with a nice flat floor so now we can go on through fiberglassing the second side of the blade but we've got an extra precaution here and that is we want to tape off this freshly glass side so what I've got here is some higher-quality blue tape and I'm just going to pretty much mask off everything I don't want to have fiberglass go on too so with the actual edge of the blade I do want there to be a little bit of an overlap so it's pretty much the face of the blade which I'm masking off not the rail or not the edge now the smooth that you can get the actual line with the tape the less work you're going to have with the actual sanding but with such a small paddle sanding this with 600 grit until it's you know the transition is smooth isn't going to take you very long at all so you don't need to be so worried about it that you spend two hours on your tape job the closer you get it the better you're gonna have why the better time you're going to have later now as this side we want to actually overlap and lap onto that tape line we're going to be cutting our cloth here to be a little bit more oversized I guess you would say okay so that's looking good so I just cut this mat a little bit wider than before so now I'll just brush that mat out you can use a really soft bristle brush to do the same thing and it does get a slightly better result but for me my hands are a pretty good tool now on the end here I'm just going to cut a few relief cuts and hopefully that will ensure that we get a nice clean wrap around our rail here now the difference with the peddle facing up here we've obviously got gravity working against us so I'm going to pour my resin up high that should streak down and then I'll spread it out from the top working my way down and then do the sides okay so catch the risen try and spread it out so here I'm just brushing on a bit of resin to the rails working my way out that's just wetting the glass and that will allow me to get a fairly nice lamination and hopefully it will cut back on the amount of air bubbles that may fall okay so just brushing that rail smooth and that's looking good now any of that overrun that we have will just come back with our spreader or our applicator and either even it out or actually squeegee it off okay and that's a really good-looking lamination we've got a nice tight rail or edge I should say and the face of the paddle is really flat there's no cooling and tomorrow once this is all set up we'll be able to actually do a really good top coat which we'll get give it a really nice gloss and also fill out all of those little seams that we have which we have to cut away and then sand back so we're going to let you set up overnight and I'll be back tomorrow to finish this paddle off finish this paddle off we're going to do a full coat of epoxy all over it but before we can do that we just got to clean up this underside of the paddle so with a sharp razor blade I'm just going to trim off anything that is kind of hanging high and then we'll sand it back so what i'm doing here is called a zipper cut and is essentially lifting the tape which has the fiberglass glued onto it and running the blade along the paddle to cut the fiberglass fibers usually got a pretty clean result but we will be sanding this back a little bit so it's not too bad if you don't get it all now then along the neck where we did our tape line we want to cut through all the fiberglass so we're just going to use the length of the blade and rotate the paddle until we're cutting into the wood and that will give us a really nice seam and by using the length of the blade I tend to get a straighter cup instead of the tip that's a really nice clean seam there here I just continue doing my zip cuts so we have a nice plane pedal excess fiberglass and it's not looking too bad the backs really good the necks really good but along our tape line we do have a bit of cleanup to do still so obviously a little bit of resin creep in under at all and that's not a big deal so what I've got is some 80 180 grit wet/dry sandpaper and all we're going to do is sound the edges until we have a nice clean transition and all of these ugly bits of blue tape that are left here gone okay so that seems looking pretty good so now will I've still got the sandpaper out I'm just going to give it all a really quick light sounding just in case there's any high spots or somewhere that dust fell into we're just get rid of those five spots and it should be good the thing with fiberglass like this you're not going to get it smooth because you have the weave of the mat it's just about getting rid of the high spots so you're just kind of going over it really lightly and if you feel anything that's kind of sticking out that's where you want to hear if you try and get it smooth you're not actually going to have any glass left on your piece that's what the next coat of resin is for it's to actually get it still super smooth and feeling good to finish off the fiberglass thing and also the rest of the paddle we've just got to put a couple of coats of just epoxy so no more glass the paddle suspended from the roof here so I can do it all in one go and essentially the only difference between this and the actual fiberglassing is instead of using a spreader we're going to use a good quality brush and apply a fairly generous coat all over the paddle making sure that we don't get any runs so we should be able to get this done in two coats and beyond the water okay so there we have a beautifully handcrafted paddle and I can tell you I'm really happy with the way this one's come out now I still got a little bit of work to do with the resin so once it's cured for a few more days I'll have to come back with a thousand grit sandpaper just give it a quick sanding buff it all out so it's nice and nice and smooth and doesn't have any of these little kind of divots you see in the light but other than that it's ready for the water you