Settee Lockers, Part 3: Fiberglass Pockets for the Backrest Cutouts

The fiberglass pocket or shelf of sorts at the bottom of one of the backrest cutouts

The storage space I had created behind the settee backrests would be useless without doing some work to seal the large openings at the bottom of this storage space. These cracks or openings led downward toward the existing settee lockers underneath the settee seats. Therefore, without some seal at the bottom of this storage space, any object I placed in this space would slip downward and thus render this storage space useless.

After thinking through the problem, I decided that the best thing to do would be to create a pocket or shelf of sorts out of fiberglass cloth at the bottom of this new storage space. In the pictures that follow, I show how I carried out this work.

I used xylene to remove the waxy film that was still present on the hull from the construction of the boat in 1975.

I removed the old chainplate lightning grounding cables on each side of the boat. I had routed new larger cables through another part of the boat.

I used acetone to clean up the many drips of epoxy that appeared in the settee lockers.

I used the sanding head on my oscillating tool to rough up the surface of the cured epoxy. This would make it easier for the cloth (I would lay) to adhere to fiberglass.