December 9, 2024

PT11-30

Saturday

Over the weekend, I applied a quick second round of epoxy filler, focusing mainly on the forward upper port bulkhead where the saw had slightly wandered, to fine-tune the filler I’d applied earlier.

Now, I block sanded the repairs flush and smooth.

I took a few moments to lightly sand the fresh fillets on the aft tanks, and the epoxy-filled alignment slots on the hull.  These slots would require another round of filler whenever I had some material leftover in the near future.

Happy with the results, I moved on and, again using the sanding block, sanded a chamfer into the edges of the hull on both halves, including around the gunwales and slightly down the inside edges of the bulkheads on each side.  The flat of the chamfer was roughly 3/16″ wide.

Next, I applied two layers of masking tape to the hull, leaving it to extend past the chamfered edge and some margin past the face of the bulkhead.  I applied this tape in sections, first pressing two layers of tape together on a flat metal ruler, then applying them to the hull, securing the tape tightly to the hull flats.  This masking went around the gunwales and onto the interior edges of the bulkheads as well, just past the area where I’d ended the chamfer, leaving the chamfered void clear open.

When the masking was done, I propped the two boat halves up against the bench, with the bulkheads facing up, and secured them so they were level in both directions.

I mixed thickened epoxy to a loose consistency with high-density filler and a bit of cabosil, and used a syringe to apply it into the chamfered edges all the way around on both sides.  This time, I realized my bench was amply strong to walk on, so I could work off the benchtop instead of from a ladder, which was much more convenient for this fussy work.

I used the leftover epoxy, applied very carefully with the tip of a nail, to fill the edges of the hardware holes, bringing the epoxy up so it met the edges of the bulkhead at each hole.  I kept the epoxy away from the threaded and unthreaded holes in the hardware, but tried to bring the fill out as close as possible to the centers of the hardware.  This was truly fussy and nerve-racking, and I came back a couple times shortly thereafter to check the epoxy and make sure it wasn’t tending to flow into those threaded holes.

I had unrelated shop tasks to complete later in the day, which was just as well since at this point there was nothing else I could do to the dinghy till the epoxy cured.

Total time billed on this job today: 4.75 hours