Thursday 27 July 2023

Fairing

 The boat is all glassed and fairing is in progress, this is the part that I said I would not bore you with hundreds of pictures, the goal is to put on the thinnest layer of fairing epoxy mix, and to get the boat fair, the mistake commonly made is to put on a thick layer of fairing mix and then to spend time sanding it off to create a very expensive dust.



if you would like to read more about epoxy, reinforcing with epoxy glass, and composite wooden boat construction have a look at the following link to the downloadable version of the west BIBLE on epoxy
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This has been my GO -TO reference on all things epoxy and boat repair ever since I built my Wharram Tiki 26, it answers every question you are likely to have about tool,s plywood, wood as a construction material, hull construction technoques, tanks, deck construction, fillets, fillers, prepping for paint and plywood  and composite construction. And more!

Wednesday 19 July 2023

 Hull glassing


the hull has been glassed. The bow panels where there were relieving cuts to enable nice bends were filled with west filler and then they were glassed over with one layer of glass, another layer was then put on the panel , so there is a double layer over the relief cut area - 




I decided after much consideration to run my hull glass as a horizontal layup rather than using lots of vertical pieces with lots of overlaps. this worked really well with my 80cm wide glass cloth, as each panel is narrower than 80cm 





Thursday 6 July 2023

 Hull ready for Full Glass layer

The hull is prepped for the full layer of glass. The final layer of glass on each of the joins was laid down wider than the the last and feathered into the ply using a sander





My new sander -  the last Dewalt sander I have, had a problem with the platen bearing -  granted after 12 years of use and Dewalt say the part is obsolete  - I have however found a  replacement  - it uses a special dry unlubricated bearing, So I had to order 10 pcs, it will take a while to arrive  - so welcome to my new DW, still made in Mexico and the same price or a little cheaper than its older sibling, it does have a better dust bag and extraction - maybe just because it is younger






  Working on rudder, Stainless, mast step, companionway hatch and lots of small things and of course sanding, and received my NEW epoxy good...