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Back Cutting ideas - or how to cut glassfiber tapes from cloth. If you build a plywood boat using the stitch and glue or taped seam method, you will cut your tapes from biaxial stitched cloth or woven cloth. Read more about glass cloth in Epoxy notes So how would you go about cutting these tapes from the cloth you just bought? By the way this cloth (if biaxial) should be as long as the longest joint you have on the boat, probably the keel stem joint, so you have one continuous tape for the job. I will explain the methods I developed, which seems to work pretty well. An obvious starting point is to clear a table, put the roll of glass down to your left and unroll a length of cloth. Then you mark off the width, say 95 mm (3 3/4") and using a straight edge and a Stanley knife make the first cut. For the first refinement I tried a sheetmetal backing. I got a piece of 1.2mm / 18 gauge galvanised iron sheet from a sheetmetal shop (You may want to try your local metal merchant). The width should be a little more than the length of the ruler you use for cutting. It is difficult to hold a ruler down hard if it is too long. In practice 0.6-0.8m / 24-32" is a good size. Metal rulers are best, I use a large steel carpenters square. Having the sheetmetal under the glass makes for a very clean cut. I used to use hardboard, but after a few cuts you tend to cross previous cuts that have carved up the board and that is the end of a clean, straight cut. This method works well, but as they say - there are many ways to skin the cat - so, recently I found a variation on this: If you happen to have scrap chipboard with veneer faces and don't mind carving it up a little, it is an excellent backing (I know it seems just about a sacrilege). I got very nice clean cuts, but of course one cannot use the board too many times. Now for the next refinement: Instead of just marking off one width of tape, mark off as many tapes as you expect to need, or just do the whole cloth. Use a finepoint marker pen and make a dot every 0.3m or 12" along the section of unrolled cloth and away from the edge as many tapes as you are going to cut. Note, you cannot use a marker pen if you are aiming for a clear finish. I personally do not recommend clear epoxy finishes. The hurdles to jump are UV protection, excessive care in building and the matching of grain and timber colours. If your aim is to go sailing go for a paint finish. Make all the cuts for the unrolled section you have placed on the sheetmetal (or other firm backing), then move the roll along to the right while unrolling another section of cloth at your left. Repeat the marking and cutting process till the whole length of glass cloth has been processed. Third and probably last refinement: Eventually I came up with the current method which still uses the galvanised sheet and Stanley knife, but instead of marking off the width and using a ruler, I now have a strip of hardboard or mdf of the correct width (95mm). This combines a straight edge with a width gage and saves a lot of time. Hint: If you have bench grinder it is an easy matter to sharpen the tip of the blade of the Stanley (carpet) knife. The blades are tough but the cutting of the glass and working on the sheetmetal take their toll. The tip is the only part that gets blunt. On the fine wheel you can touch it up a few times before turning the blade around. Alternatively you could use one of the knives that allow you to break a segment off at a time.

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