Wednesday, August 1, 2018

Filling Holes and Sanding!

I went out of town last week for 4 days, so that limited time to work on the boat. But as I have said before, taking the wife to a Bed and Breakfast makes any mess in the garage I make much easier for her to take. I have fun too.

Filling Holes
After I got the hull turned over, I started to work on sanding the rub rails. When I first installed them, I didn't do any of the tapers or angles. I just glued each piece on and decided to use a belt sander to level out when I flipped it. This was a little bit of work. I had some 80 grit, but it was taking a lot of work, so I went to the store and bought 30 and 60 grit. That did the trick! Be careful!

Below are pictures of port and starboard rails. After flipping, I discovered a couple things that I will need to address.
1) I think I will put a very small fillet between at the edge of the hull where the 1st piece was epoxied on. There are a couple places that I see space where water can get in.
2) I also noticed a couple places between the pieces that didn't get filled with epoxy. I am very surprised with this. I put a lot of epoxy on each piece and it pressed out.

Nothing that can't be fixed.

Rub rail


Next up I decided to fill all the holes and the edge you can see above between the bottom and side panels. I know this is supposed to be a round over, but I have a gap that I think needs to filled. I will also round it over as well.

Below you can see where I have filled all the holes.



Filling the edge between the lower and upper panel. 

Also did a large fillet along the keel.


I did all of these in one session and let them cure for a couple of days. As I was packing up to leave, I was walking around and noticed that some of the epoxy was not curing. It was soft and it had been 4-5 days. I used the pre-mixed epoxy in a tube I got from Jamestown Distributors. The only thing I can think of is that I rushed and didn't properly push out a little epoxy before using it. That allows for it to properly mix. I used a couple of tubes and recall just putting the cap on and applying it. My fault!

Below is a section that was not curing. I sanded and use a scraper to get the old stuff out of there and will refill this weekend.  I also noticed a place on the nose block. When sanding epoxy started coming off on the sand paper. I again scrapped it away and will need to reapply in the area. Everything else feels cured and I will notice anything with the sander if there are issues.



I did a side project one evening. I had yet to cut the grab handle on the companion way slide. I cut it out below and will epoxy it to the slide this weekend. 



Next up will be to finish reapplying some areas of the hull with epoxy and to finish sanding. I already started sanding on one side of the hull. I will try to get all of this completed this weekend, so I can start on the fiberglassing next.

I am also reading up on some of the blogs about extra fiberglass on the bow and keel area. I think I am going to install extra wood on the bottom of the keel like some other builders did. They installed it forward and back of the center board. More to come with this.



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