| Iota Refit |
Friday, February 8, 2008 Today, I vacuumed and cleaned the deck so that I might apply a final, pinhole-filling coat of Alexseal fairing filler. The high-build primer had highlighted a few areas requiring additional spot-filling, as expected. Afterwards, I cleaned up the bulk of the sanding dust in the shop to make things easier later on. With a bit more sanding ahead once the fairing compound was cured, I didn't spend too much time on overall cleaning now, but I had to do a first pass, which would make the next, more thorough cleaning quicker and easier. With that, all I could do was bide my time till the fairing compound cured. One more sanding, a thorough cleaning, and some other preparation stood in the way of the finish primer coats for early next week. |
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One of the other jobs involved with this larger project is the replacement of the forward hatch. The owner chose a Bomar 139 BM cast aluminum hatch (22-3/8" x 22-3/8"), which I obtained today. Earlier, I'd cut the opening in the deck in preparation, but I wanted the hatch on hand so that I could determine exactly the outside dimensions so that I could mock up the eventual hatch frame and ensure that I taped and painted an appropriately-sized border around the hatch location, since I couldn't have the actual frame and hatch installed before painting. With the hatch on hand, I traced its outline on a piece of cardboard, and then created a new line 1" outside of this, which represented the outer edge of the mahogany hatch surround I'd build later. With a template of the overall size of the surround, I could be sure to properly lay out the nonskid/smooth pattern when the time came next week. |
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