April 4, 2023
Further 82
Tuesday
With a chisel and sandpaper, I removed the excess bungs and smoothed the areas as needed, then, over the course of the day, spot-applied a few coats of varnish over the raw bungs and sanded wood nearby to bring the treated areas closer to the state of the rest of the coamings before I focused back on finishing up the final few coats of varnish on the entire pieces.
Meanwhile, I made some progress on the after cockpit hatch. With new 1/4″ thick prefab fiberglass stock now on hand, I ripped it down to 3/4″ width, chosen to match the 3/4″ balsa core I planned to use to fill the hatch (mainly because it’s what I had on hand). After considering options, I decided the best approach to install the hatch edges was to hot-glue the strips in place along the edges, bending them to match the edge of the laminated top skin, then secure the edges from within with epoxy fillets. This saved the potentially difficult and messy hassle of trying to clamp the narrow strips while simultaneously gluing them with epoxy. I let the long curved pieces hang wild over the ends for later trimming once the epoxy had cured.
Inside the boat, I installed newly-arrived plastic covers over the openings and bolts securing the coaming on the port side.
Total time billed on this job today: 3 hours
0600 Weather Observation: Mostly cloudy, 38°, dew point 32°. Forecast for the day: Cloudy, chance of sprinkles, 55°