International Telstar Owners Association

final layers all around the edge... looks much better and much stronger than it was . now i have a pretty straight line and flat surfaces . because of using 150 pcs of stainless steel rivets only on the inner side , being grinded till the original fiber glass , 4 layers in total of fiber , this should be very strong also .

last week progres
the inner side of the ama is almost finished. fiber glass putty and sand it ...

started on the outer side doing the same thing : grinding everything till the original fiber glass , stainless steel rivets , fiber glass putty , fiber glass 3 layers ...

also did some reinforcement to the supports . there were a lot of cracks around them so i decide to remake all the fiber glass ...

going further ...
finally everything is fiber glassed on the exterior and started with fiber glass putty. a lot of sanding , another layer of putty etc... lot of dust on everything

the deck !
i have plywood decks on the amas and they look pretty good condition . started to sand it rough because it has about 4-5 layers of different paints . i have made another hatch in a place where seems that was another one in the past and the plywood was a bit damaged from humidity. round that area i have sand it till the wood and paint it with fiber glass resin. also there were some other places with the same problem ...

on the deck for a non slip surface i was thinking about some sort of sand or grit. after doing a little bit of research i decided to use wall nut shells. here in romania i didn't find any store where i can buy it and tried to make my on grit crushing shells in a corn machine ). and here is the result ...pretty happy with it ! one sample is with 1.5 mm grit and the other one is 2 mm grit. o layer of resin followed by nut shells and after that a layer of clear gelcoat or white gelcoat .

so i have ordered some marine okoume plywood 6 mm as my other deck and made the front and rear semi decks. just to have some more strength when stepping there also ... here they are

big dilemma !!! i am facing a " problem "... after i saw the look of the crude plywood clear coated with resin , i am not very shore about my first design and cover all the deck in wall nut grit. i like it so much the wood texture ... i have decide to stop for a moment and make some tests on the cutout piece from the deck and also with my new plywood decks .
i am really thinking to sand all the paint from the main deck till the wood texture !!!

and i have made up my mind ! with a little fear from what i could find behind the deck paint , i started to sand all down . and i was very pleased ... the plywood is perfect ! just a short line where the two pieces meet near the hatch ! no faults , no cracks ... i am happy
now i have to match the color of my old deck with the okoume plywood from my new front/rear decks . seems that the old plywood is teck ...
and here are the final touches and the old deck sanded !