WHAT WENT WELL AND HOW DID I ACHIEVE THIS?

• The clay wall was very neat and even. I achieved this by measuring even section of cleay which I carefully applied in small section across the cowl. I then filled in the small gap with wedges of clay and made dove tail points which were evenly spaced across the wall. The circles were also well rounded and neat which I achieved using the rounded end of a sculpting tool.

• The right side of the wall was applied well and smoothly to the cowl and the matting adhered well to the gel coat as I waited for it to go tacky and pressed into all gaps to smooth out any air bubbles in the matting.

WHAT DIDN'T GO WELL AND HOW DID I OVERCOME THIS/WHAT DO I NEED TO CONSIDER FOR NEXT TIME?

• The left side of the mould was more messy than the right hand side because I rushed it. As a result, the fibreglass matting did not properly adgere to the edges and I should have applied more mould release to the clay to ensure it moved away from the mould easier and prevented cracking the gel coat. 

• I was difficult to remove the mould because it was hard to see the dividing line in the wall. I should have learnt from my earlier mistakes and make the walls different colours on either side so I could distinguish the gap more clearly.

• Once cleaning up the mould I noticed that there were a couple of areas acorss the face cast and flashing that had cracked gel coat. This may have been caused as I applied the second layer of gel coat which may have stick to the first layer of gel coat and lifted to create air bubbles. To overcome this, I mixed up some expoxy putting and smoothed it into the airbubbles to create a flat surface.