Upside up again - fairing and finishing

With the centerboard slot gasket installed I completed turning the hull right-side up again.  I grabbed a couple of the stands that were under the building jig and screwed parts of the jig side panels to them to make a stand to raise the hull off the floor, and it sits nicely on the skegs. I expect to put similar cross members on the boat trailer for support there.

I had noticed while installing the centerboard slot gaskets that the uphaul line for the centerboard was not going to line up as I expected with the hole in the front of the centerboard case, being an inch or so too low.  Not sure how I messed that up.

I decided to fix that by routing the line out of the back edge of the board vs. the top.  That position comes around higher when the board is raised.  I bored the new hole.

And filed a rope channel.  On what is the front face of this photo you can see the old hole filled in with epoxy.  This should put the rope close to the right height when the board is raised.

With the hull upright I proceeded to trim and round over the top of the rubrail.  Always satisfying to make curly shavings with the plane.

Here's a view from the bow of the result after routing off the corner and doing some sanding.

And then I worked some more at fairing the deck/cabin joint.  This was necessary because of the fiberglass tape that I applied on the exterior to strengthen that joint.  I iterated a couple times on this and then decided it was good enough.

I also finished up the fillet and fairing of the top of the mast trunk.

And then I could move on to paint.  I had done the cuddy interior and the floor while the boat was upside down, so now I continued with the seats and seat backs on the inside, and the deck, cabin and roof.

I was second guessing my choice of color for the deck and cabin roof until I layed out the sail for a color comparison.  The sail and the roof/deck are in the same color family and should look good together.

Here's what things look like after two coats of paint. 

And here's a view towards the bow.  It's fun to see the finish going on.

I've got at least one more coat of paint to apply, and will need to be a little more careful at the line where the two colors meet to get that looking good.

Next up I'll be laminating the top trim for the seat backs.  That will add about 3/4" more height to the seat backs, and I'll be able to put a generous round over on the edge for back comfort.  I'm planning to have the top 2 inches wide to make a comfortable arm support.  Stay tuned for that.

Protecting the pointy end

With the skegs installed, I was looking forward to starting the hull paint job.  But as I viewed the bare hull my eye kept returning to the pointy end.  I thought about that one layer of fiberglass cloth and thought about the potential abrasion from all the beaches I expect to pull up on.  I knew I would feel better about the situation if I had a little more protection in place.

So I decided to delay the hull painting and put a couple layers of dynel cloth on the pointy part. Dynel is an abrasion-resistant cloth, and I have applied it to the front edges of the rudder and centerboard also.

Here is the first layer of cloth cut and marked with dots from a black Sharpie pen so I don't slide it too far out of place when applying the epoxy.

Here's the bottom layer wetted out with epoxy.  It takes more than the fiberglass cloth does, and seems to swell up a little as it absorbs the epoxy.

Here's the second layer in place.

I knew I would have to apply fill coats anyway, so I tried something new this time, and applied the first fill coat right over the wet cloth.  Seemed to work OK, and maybe saved me one iteration.

Here's one of the followup fill coats.  You can see the microballoon-thickened epoxy has sagged before it dried.  It's hard to get it thick enough so that doesn't happen.  If you mix it too thick it doesn't spread out smoothly.

Here's what it looks like when almost done.  You can see that I have sanded and filled multiple times, marking the low spots each time with pencilled circles.  

I don't think I'll be able to get this perfect, but I don't want it to look too lumpy.  I put one more coat on this evening and hope that will be the last one.

Sole fillets -- new recipe

No, this post is not about how to cook up the catch from your latest fishing trip -- it's about the boat again.  

After letting the epoxy cure from gluing down the cockpit sole (floor) I removed all the clamps and put a fillet of thickened epoxy around the edges.

I was able to reach over the edge of the hull from outside the boat to do the area between B3 and B4 shown below, but the area shown above was done from inside. Working on hands and knees does slow down the process.  I ended up doing this fillet in two sessions.

This was the nicest fillet I've done to date.  I did sand it a bit to remove a couple high spots, but otherwise would not have had to bother.  

This great result is due to using a new recipe for thickening the mix.  In the past I have used wood flour alone, wood flour with a little silica, and West Systems filleting blend #405.  All those options produced good strong fillets with a fairly rough surface.  The wood flour closely matches the plywood in color, and the #405 is much darker in color.

For these fillets, I made a mix of 2 parts silica, 2 parts microballoons, and 1 part West Systems #404 high density filler.  It takes quite a bit to thicken up the epoxy (about  2+ heaping plastic teaspoons-full for each pump of resin), but goes on nice and produces a smooth fillet that seems quite strong, and yet is fairly easy to sand.  

The fillet on the left is the new one, and the one on the right was West Systems #405 filleting mixture, which I then had to fair with a microballoons fairing mix because it was too rough.  I then scraped/sanded the fairing mixture smooth.

Bottom line is that the new recipe is highly recommended!

Fairing rudder and centerboard

A while back I had mixed up a batch of epoxy thickened with microballoons (tiny glass spheres) and filled low spots in the centerboard and rudder.  This lightweight fairing mixture sands very easily, and can be worked by hand or with the random orbit sander.

I used some partially worn out sandpaper and a flat block to smooth some areas, and backed up the sandpaper with the large wood cylinder for some of the curves where the blades transition to the flat areas.

I found I had a few spots that needed more filling, so marked those with pencil and applied more fill there.

I found that it's easier to tell where the curve is not fair by running my hand along the surface than it is to try to spot those areas by eye.

Sanding, more epoxy, first fiberglass on mast trunk

Since last update I've been spending a lot of time sanding all the parts that I've previously epoxy coated.  The power sander made a good job of the flats, but all the edges including access holes and  scuppers were done by hand.  Took some time.

Today I put the second coat of epoxy on the original parts, and the first coat on some new pieces.  It works good to hang them up on a 2x2, otherwise it would take a lot of room to lay them all out somewhere.

A couple days ago I gathered together the parts of the mast trunk to see how that fits together.

I'm going to preassemble this part, as it's easier to work on it on the bench.  I started by putting two layers of six ounce cloth on the inside where the mast will impact as it's inserted.  After that was cured I trimmed the glass.  The remaining parts of the mast trunk got the first epoxy coat today.

I had a bit of epoxy left over the other day, and mixed in some microballoons (tiny glass spheres that make sanding easier) and faired some of the rough and uneven portions of the centerboard and rudder.  I haven't tried sanding this down yet, so will have to report results later.