Now that the trim is installed, we’re down to the brass tacks stage of prepping the hull to be painted. All the random pinholes need filling, the sharp edges need rounding, the sharp corners need filleting, and the curves need to be triple checked to make sure they look right.
It takes a lot of time filling and sanding and filling and sanding and filling and sanding. Fortunately, the (rather pricey) fairing compound I’m using is ready to sand 4 hours after application which means I can make pretty full use of the day. I prep an area for fill, put the compound on, and then go work on another area for a while. By the time I’ve got compound on that area I can often start sanding the place I faired before.
Here’s the kind of thing I’m doing.
In this photo, you can see the fairing I’ve done to blend the forward end of the spray rail into the hullside. When this is painted, it should look like a smooth, organic bulge that gradually builds from the hull. Here’s the aft end of the quarter guard. Rounded over and smoothed into the hull.
Here’s the front end of that same guard.
I’ve got a couple more days of this kind of thing before it’s ready for a first coat of “real” primer. By “real” I mean that it’s not just to help the eye find imperfections. But I undoubtedly will find a few things I missed when that first coat goes on. It’s the nature of the beast.
And while I am generally able to keep fully occupied through a day right now, there are times I’m waiting for things to dry. I’ve begun building my leaning post, which allows me to fill those times. I started off by buying a 22 gallon bait tank from Pacific Edge tackle.
This is a helpful starting point that I’ll be turning this into something that looks like this:
To make that happen I’m first building a piece that will be bonded to the top of the baitwell, and then I’ll build extensions for the sides at the bottom. I cut the top and bottom of the upper piece on my CNC machine and then bonded them together with some blocks of Doug Fir. Then, to plank the curved piece that contours the opening to the bait well, I cut a bunch of 3/8″ wide strips of 1/4″ plywood left over from planking the hull and bonded them in place, holding them tight using some plugs I cut out, also on the CNC. A picture says a thousand words. This next image shows the part on it’s back. In other worse, you’re looking up from the bottom.
The plug is separated from the glued assembly using plastic and clamped in place. Tomorrow it will be removed and discarded, leaving a frame with a solid, curved panel with the same curve as the opening of the baitwell. The frames that will be part of the final leaning post have been skeletonized to save weight. Here’s a look from above. You can see that the curved panel is formed of small strips butted up next to each other. Eventually this will be faired, glassed, bonded to the baitwell and faired again.
This really just gives me something to do when I’d otherwise be twiddling my thumbs, but it’ll be nice to have gotten a head start on the interior furniture once I get to that point. Tomorrow, it’s back to sanding and fairing and sanding and fairing and…
-Ben