Sorry for another unacceptable hiatus in updating our progress. And… sadly… I don’t have any photos to share this time. Basically we’ve been sanding for the past week. Once the planking is finished, you need to smooth things off enough that you can apply fiberglass. This means using a thickened epoxy mixture to fill all the staple divots and other dings and serious low spots, and then using a sander to knock down the high spots. The goal at this stage isn’t to get it perfect, it’s just to get it close enough to glass.
The two critical items are these:
1. Sand down the high spots s0 that you don’t need to add unnecessary filler after applying the fiberglass.
2. Make sure everything is smooth enough that the glass will go on without bubbles, bridges, etc.
To knock down the high spots I bit the bullet and bought another new tool. A Hutchins Hustler linear air sander:
These things are expensive, but they’re great. Seriously cuts down on the time and suffering associated with fairing a hull.
I’m pretty sure that as of this evening, we’re good to go on both counts. We bought 24 yards of 1808 glass this afternoon and unless something goes awry we’ll be glassing the sides tomorrow morning, and hopefully the bottom on Friday.
After that the serious fairing begins. We’ll fill all the low spots and sand until our arms have fallen off to get it as fair and smooth as we possibly can before priming and painting. Exciting stuff. With a little luck we’ll have the hull done by the end of the month and be on to the interior in September.
-Ben