The second mistake occurred while joining parts of the top and side panels with fiberglass tape and epoxy.
The first three joins look good, but by the time I reached the fourth, the epoxy was thickening. I didn’t notice the heat until too late. Some of the tape was covered with thickened epoxy, and even after mixing a new batch, I couldn’t saturate it.
I applied too much epoxy and still couldn’t saturate some of the tape. I’m still waiting for the epoxy to cure. After sanding in a few hours, I may remove unsaturated tape with the sander and add a patch, but I’m inclined to live with it. Most of the tape is saturated. Insulation will cover this joint on the interior, and the exterior fiberglass will hold the parts together eventually, so some weakness in the bond seems tolerable.
I wasted quite a bit of epoxy and a length of fiberglass tape on this exercise but learned to be more attentive to the consistency of the epoxy. The temperature in my garage is already in the high eighties in the afternoon and will reach the nineties soon, so I’ve moved the unmixed resin and hardner inside. It will be around 70 degs before mixing, and I’ll confine my epoxy work to the early morning and late evening.
