December 16, 2022

Further 6

Friday

The final step before beginning to fill and fair in the hull-deck joint beneath the now-removed rubrail was to ream out the fastener holes, which would allow them to be successfully filled with epoxy, and also to prep as needed any recesses or voids present in the space between hull and deck moldings.

This was a good opportunity to highlight some of the specifics of the area on this boat.

After cleaning and solvent-washing the joint, toerail, and sheer strake (and immediately-surrounding areas), I masked off the toerail just above the prepared area to keep it free from any epoxy during application below.  Then, I applied thickened epoxy fairing filler as needed to fill the fastener holes, voids throughout the area, and begin to create a fair overall surface that I could fiberglass over when all was said and done.    The first round of filler wasn’t going to complete the work, but began to form the required contours and would make it easy for a second round to complete adequately before glasswork could begin.

During the afternoon, I wanted to move the project forward, but the next logical thing to do was to start sanding the remainder of the topsides, which, frankly, just wasn’t a Friday afternoon kind of thing to do, and would have created a new mess to clean up before the weekend, as I don’t leave the shop a mess over the weekend (I can barely manage it over a night or two).  So instead, I rolled out and cut 3′ long sections of 6″ and 4″ 1708 tabbing for the hull-deck joint–it had to be done eventually, and this was more the right speed for the end of the week.  In the past I’ve found this to be a good size to manage during installation, butting the joints and offsetting the layers by half so each seam has good overlap.

Total time billed on this job today: 4 hours

0600 Weather Observation: 32°, cloudy, dew point 26°. Forecast for the day: Snow likely, then rain and snow, 35°