I had some time to do a little bit of fiberglass work, I made the cutouts for the flat chamber access. I wanted to try vacuum bagging (because it's cool) but am generally too cheap to buy all the misc. materials on line, it gets expensive quickly. So I went shopping looking for alternatives to peel ply, breather, release film and butyl tape. For the peel ply I found some tight weave poly fabric from Walmart in the $1 bin. Release film is 2mil poly, breather is poly batting from Walmart. For the butyl tape I used window caulking, that comes in a roll. About $15 invested into this experiment.
This is what I used for a mold, Piece of glass as a base,raised bit in the middle to create an offset for my gasket, 2mil release protecting the mold, caulking around the perimeter.
I wet out and put 5 layers of 8oz cloth on top of the mold.
Next comes the release fabric, this lets excess epoxy ooze through so he finished part has good resin to cloth ratio. I think you could just use more 2 mil if you wanted and weren't too concerned with weight.
Last is the breather cloth this is the air passage that lets all of the air out of the layup.
Last step is to cover with more 2mil and pull a vacuum. You can see the excess epoxy oozing into the release cloth and breather.
Like you said Dave, I epoxied a block in place, and drilled through the hull and then through the block. Here is where I placed mine... I'm following it up with epoxying in a brass insert I found at Lee Valley Tools
