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.

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.

Interior spaces all painted

Well, I have not been keeping up so well on the posts lately, but I'm catching up now with these next few posts.  

I've got the hull interior spaces all painted with several coats, and it looks good.

Here you can see that I had packing tape masking off the area where the seat meets the hull panels.  I pulled the tape off and I have clean hull panels to take the fillet that will fasten the seats to the hull. 

Here's a shot showing the storage space in front of bulkhead 3.  I like the Rustoleum paint.

Almost hull panel time

I've now completed the second coat of paint on the interior spaces, and it looks great.  Two coats of Rustoleum Gloss White covers nicely.  Here you can see the shine.  That should go a long way towards brightening the storage areas, and it will be easy to see whether they are clean or not.

So I thought I was finally at the long-anticipated point of starting to put on the hull panels.  I grabbed the garboard panel on the port side and put it in place to check for fit and consider my strategy for keeping it on the boat.  

As of now, I plan to stitch the panel in place along the bottom seam with copper wire, and probably at each bulkhead, then fillet in place.  I haven't yet decided whether to push down the stitches and fillet over them, as I did on my kayaks, or to fillet between them, and remove the stitches before filleting those areas.

At any rate, I discovered I was a little premature with the hull panel, as I had neglected to epoxy seal the edges of the bottom of the hull.

Nothing for it but to take care of that now, so I went around the edge of the hull bottom and applied unthickened epoxy with a disposable brush.  I got a box of about 100 of these for not much money, and they are really handy for jobs like this.  I also did raw edges of the transom which needed coating since I had beveled them to accept the hull panels.

Interior painting started

Another thing I wanted to do before starting on the hull panels was to paint some of the areas that would become more inaccessible as construction proceeds.

I decided to use Rustoleum Gloss White for the interior spaces, and with the prep work done I was able to get to painting.  I used a brush for the corner areas, and the same type of foam roller I use for epoxy for the larger spaces.

I tried to stay well away from the edges where I would be installing fillets later on.  I was glad to notice that the paint rolls on easier than the epoxy did.

I expect I'll have to do probably one more coat to get even coverage, but it's a good start and will save time and effort later.

Interior paint preparation

I decided that before I got hull panels installed, I wanted to do as much inside finish work as I could while access was still easy.  So I started out by rolling on the final coat of epoxy on the bulkheads and other interior areas.

Everything looks so shiny and nice!  

I thought I was good to go and could proceed immediately to painting the interior spaces white.
  

I had purchased some porch and floor white enamel for this job, but it was a latex paint, and I just felt more comfortable putting on something oil based, so I returned what I had and purchased Rustoleum Gloss White for the job.

To make sure I was getting good adhesion, I painted a small test patch, let it dry, and then was disappointed to find I could scrape it off with my fingernail.  <sigh>

I sanded up another area with my random orbit sander and painted a test patch there, and found I had much better adhesion.  But I couldn't get into all the spaces with my power sander, so I did a third test patch, just removing the gloss with a 120 grit sanding sponge.  That also worked well, so I proceeded to sand all the gloss off my latest coat of epoxy by hand with the sanding sponge.

With everything dulled up, I can start on my painting after cleaning up the dust.