January 31, 2017
Halcyon 23
Tuesday
In the cabin, I used a heat gun and scraper to remove the old finish from the berth trim at the v-berth, and both quarterberths. The old finish was tough to remove and didn’t respond in a normal way to the heat gun, so the process was fairly laborious, compounded by the challenges in reaching the trim in the aft berths. I chose to strip these areas since the trim here was quite beat up and I thought that stripping was necessary for best appearance. In other areas, such as the shelf trim fiddles and the various bulkheads, I decided against stripping, and in a later stage I planned to sand these areas to prepare them for their own refinishing.
I didn’t want to to any tasks that would stir up too much dust while still in the middle of the exterior wood refinishing, so I held off on additional interior preparations for the moment, saving the sanding of the newly-stripped wood and other areas for another time later in the week.
Meanwhile, I lightly hand-sanded the centerboard trunk reinforcement by hand, and the inside of the head through hull patch. Outside the boat, I sanded smooth and flush the exterior of the patch to prepare it for a light layer of fairing compound over the repair.
During earlier work in the cabin, I’d removed the loose plywood veneer from a couple areas in the forward vee, and also along the port quarterberth base, so after some final cleanup I applied a coat of fairing filler to smooth out these areas. Since the plywood was essentially sound, but cosmetically unsalvageable as is, patching the areas would allow for a smooth surface for priming and painting later.
I finished up the day with the second coat of finish on the exterior wood.
Total time billed on this job today: 5.25 hours
0600 Weather Observation:
10°, clear. Forecast for the day: sunny, 20s.