Starting to paint!

There's something about applying fresh paint that is very satisfying.  I've been doing my best to work clean, avoiding any epoxy drips and being careful to sand evenly, and now it's nice to see all that attention to detail pay off with a nice paint job.

With the hull upside down it's easy to paint the underside of the cabin top and other areas.  Here's a shot of the painting I've been doing under there at the same time I've been working on skegs and other things.  This is Rustoleum 'Canvas White'.  Against the gloss white in the interior spaces it looks fairly yellowish to me.  But it's lit by fluorescent lighting, so not sure what it will look like in daylight.  I'm going with it for now, and can always repaint later if I want to.

I have the boat sitting on blocks under the mast trunk, and on one sawhorse about in mid-seating area.  There's plenty of room to work underneath with that arrangement.

But here's what I'm excited about - paint on the hull exterior!  I started with a brush to do the skegs with their finger grips and fillets.

And then a foam roller for the remaining areas.  This is again Rustoleum paint from Menards.  It seems to go on well and look good.

Here I have two coats on the bottom and garboard planks, and one coat on the other two hull planks.  It's looking pretty good!  I'm holding off on the transom until I have the rudder hardware mounted, and a boarding ladder constructed.

Here's a shot of the pointy end, where I spent so much time fairing in the two layers of dynel cloth that I applied for abrasion resistance.  It's not perfect, but I would say there is no lumpiness, and that was my goal.

I applied this paint directly over the 80-grit sanded epoxy with no primer.  After the first coat, I could see the scratch marks left from the sander.  After the second coat, less so.  

I'm not really going for an absolutely glass-smooth high-gloss auto finish here.  I'm looking for something that looks good from a bit of distance and is easy to repair and maintain.  I'm thinking this level of finish is just about what I'm looking for.

Hull fairing and final epoxy coat

Upon my return from Sail Oklahoma, I continued work on the hull bottom.  In places where the fiberglass overlapped I needed to apply fairing compound and sand it back to make the transition gradual.

At the bow, the cloth on the garboard planks overlaps the bow transom, and the cloth on the tramsom overlaps the other way, and onto planks 2 and 3, which have no cloth.

The seam in the cloth falls across the garboard plank in front of the centerboard slot,

And at the stern transom cloth laps both ways, plus an extra thickness where the seam between the two pieces of cloth on the bottom meet.

The fairing mixture I used was epoxy thickened with micro-balloons (tiny glass spheres that sand easily.  I applied it to all the places shown above and sanded it back.  There were still a couple low spots (more easily detected with the hand than the eye), so I applied more to those areas and sanded again.  

I eventually got to a point where I decided it was good enough', and then applied a final coat of epoxy.  I did that because I felt there were some tiny spots in the weave of the glass cloth that were not fully filled, and on planks 2 and 3 there were a couple areas where I had accidentally sanded down to or close to bare wood.

The real test of how well I did on the fairing will be when the paint is on and the boat is out in the sun catching reflections from everything around.  But the shiny fresh epoxy gives a preview and confirms that it's good enough for me.

Fiberglassing the hull

With the hull bottom filled, sanded, and edges rounded over I could proceed to apply fiberglass.  I purchased 50" wide fiberglass, which I believe is the widest that is generally available.  Even so, this width is not wide enough to cover the hull bottom and both garboard panels, so a seam is needed.

I determined that I could lay the cloth on the hull so the seam would run through the middle of the centerboard slot, reducing the amount of overlap that needs to be faired and smoothed over.  I covered the remainder of the hull with a leftover piece of a narrower width left over from a previous kayak project.

After trimming the edges I started saturating the fiberglass.  Rather than using a squeegee this time, I used a roller to apply the epoxy.  This worked well, was very controllable, but was somewhat slow.

Job done.  Here you can see the overlap seam aft of the centerboard slot.  As it turns out, this will be near the skeg that is installed later, so any unevenness in the seam will be fairly unobtrusive.  Another reason to run the seam here vs. down the center of the hull bottom.

Here's where I ran the seam in front of the centerboard, minimizing the amound of fairing I will need to do.

I also applied cloth to the bow and stern transoms, and overlapped that onto the hull panels. This was a little fussy, as I had to cut away around the hull strake laps.

And here's a shot with the first coat of thickened epoxy on the cloth, and the 2nd coat of epoxy on hull panels 2 and 3.

After I finish filling the weave of the fiberglass, the skegs get installed, and then paint.