Wednesday, August 7, 2013

Boot's approved!

I'm so happy with the results of yesterday's epoxy session. No voids, bubbles, drips or dinkleberries to sand off for a change! :-)


I think this is the best work I've done so far and despite Jimmy (Sticky Fingers) poking at it the results are near perfect! :-)

This is the one area that I was concerned about. It's where I had a hump develop when the joint between the panels deformed when it was bent over the forms. I probably spent 10+ hours sanding and filling it to get it to fair out to the point where you can't see it with the naked eye.


You can see the filler areas. Below a straight on shot of the area showing the filler used to fair out the hump. I think I had to build it up layer by layer, maybe 4 layers total.


Reverse view looking forward. no more hump! :-)


Fiber Fangs! Watchout! They have a BIG BITE!


The transom was the last part done after lunch. Boy the medium hardener kicks fast! Poor ole' Jimmy couldn't hang onto the tub of goo after it started to kick! :-) 


The faster hardener cost me a roller frame but given the results I can live with that. All in all I think we used about 5 gallons of epoxy, a dozen pairs of nitril gloves, three roller sleeves and one roller frame.

I really think all the extra work I put into fairing the underlying layer really paid off big time. I feel that when we're investing this much (approx. $65K) in a boat we don't want it to look like a POS. 

Next step, fair out the keel to bottom join for the last two layers of fabric. Taking a day off today to rest my hands. Standby....

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