Sanded out...

I forgot in my last post to mention why I'm fairing the hull, putting the cart before the horse with as much deck work as I have to do for the cockpit and deck.

First, the toe rails have some old damage on the starboard side I need to repair, where the shape has a bunch of wiggles and gets wider. The top surface of the toe rail isn't fair either, on either side so I'm going to build it up, and block it back down with a long board so it is fair and true.

I'm going to fiberglass over the hull to deck joint on the outside, and want to make sure I am low compared to the faired hull, and don't have to float out the top half of the hull, or grind half the fiberglass I put on back off. This was an oversight on my part, as the bulkheads were originally installed in the boat before the deck went on. The deck was tabbed to the hull, around the bulkhead tabbing. I should have tabbed the deck to the hull where the bulkheads sit to keep things water tight and avoid having a path for water to get to the main bulkhead.

Second, I'm going to have an outboard well on Pylasteki, and it is difficult to sand out and fair up to a hole, so I'm pushing the boat to finish primer, so I can scuff it and shoot top coat and not have to try to fair up to the hole.

I finished sanding the first layer of Awlgrip Hull Guard Extra down smooth with 80 grit on a 5 inch random orbital sander. I pulled a skim of awlgrips pink fairing compound in the worst of the lows, old docking scars and pin holes, stress cracks that I opened up.

It was blowing 20-25 yesterday, so I rolled on a coat of sprayable fairing compound on the hull. I'll be sanding it with a 5 inch random orbital, followed by a 16 inch file board with 80 grit, and the occasional wooden paint stirrer with sandpaper stuck to it. The fin along the counter, under the transom, I'll sand out with a piece of styrofoam shaped roughly to fit the curve and push in towards the fin at an angle in a cross hatch pattern. 5 inch orbitals don't sand inside corners very well, and hand sanding puts in grooves... Just have to make a board to fit the shape and not sand inline to the inside corner.

The process is to sand off the roller stipple and get a smooth even thickness coating, then to use the 16 inch file board to identify the holes (low spots) if the material is thick enough, I sand evenly over the whole surface until the sandpaper starts to scratch the low spots. If I start to burn through to the white primer, or hit fiberglass at any of the high, high spots (where a hard spot along a bulkhead or stringer might be) I will apply another coat to build the whole surface out evenly.

If it sands out, I'll spray a coat of high build primer over the hull and sand it out to 220 grit, followed by 545 and topcoat.

Making somethings shiny is easy, making it fair takes leveling the surface to average out all the imperfections.

I do prefer to spray primer, but I've got nearly 250 feet of a run from where my air compressor is sitting on Noel, to Pylasteki and not quite enough air line to make the run.

Zach