Finishing glassing of the boat

After the garboards and the hull bottom were glassed, next up was to sand everything smooth in prep for glassing the next two hull planks, which I intended to do with some 4 oz cloth I had hanging around.

Sanding

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Sanding was mostly done with my random orbital sander, a home depot “rigid” brand that I’ve used for about ten years with no problems, although this time it managed to stop spinning under load for me. After taking it apart and watching a few videos on YouTube I figured out that the main bearing was seized - taking that off, cleaning it out with some WD 40, adding new grease, and putting it all back together again had it spinning beautifully. I’m still not sure if that sander is long for this world (the motor will occasionally slow down for no apparent reason…) but it’s had a good life and was sufficiently revived to get me through this last big project.

You can see in the second photo above that in order to truly flatten the hull I wound up sanding very closely if not just barely into the top layer of the overlapped fibreglass. I’m not worried about this, as there’s a second layer below and in order to get it super flat you either have to do this or build up on either side of the overlap quite a bit with fairing epoxy, which I prefer not to do. This is now super smooth to the touch and will disappear under paint.

The inside edge of the centerboard case isn’t quite as smooth, although I don’t intend to paint that, so I figured just getting the worst of the drips off was ok. If the centerboard doesn’t actually move freely for some reason after install, while I doubt this section would have any part to play in that, I can always further sand it smooth and recoat with graphite epoxy if necessary.

Fibreglassing bottom two hull panels

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With the hull smooth, I moved to fibreglassing the bottom two hull panels. Since I ran out of 6 oz, this was done with some 4 oz I had hanging around. I cut out sections to fit each side of the boat, and then taped them in position ready for epoxy.

Since the hull panels are vertical in some areas and even past vertical near the stern, applying the epoxy was a little difficult. I found the best method was to pour a little epoxy onto a plastic spreader (what I call a squeegee) and then quickly apply that to the hull. This produced pretty even application for the first coat while minimizing drips and such.

You can see in the picture above that I wrapped the fibreglass up above the joint between the garboard plank and the second hull plank, so that joint will now have two layers of fibreglass, one 6 oz and one 4 oz.

After the first coat set, I cut away the excess fibreglass and then used a foam roller to apply coats two and three to fill the weave.

During the sanding I noticed I had a few bubbles in the fibreglass that I didn’t notice formed during the fist coat. That’s a pain in the butt. But I just sanded them out and will fill the depression with thickened epoxy later. Minor loss in strength and abrasion protection, but really only super minor. These will disappear under paint as well.

On to the transom and prow

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Since I added fibreglass to the bottom two hull panels, you can probably guess I also wanted to add it to the transom and prow. I managed to find a scrap of 6 oz that was big enough to cover the prow and wrap on to the hull panels, but for the transom I had to use a piece of 4 oz.

This was again relatively straightforward. One other helpful hint about applying epoxy to vertical surfaces like this - I found that after you get the first swipe or two of the squeegee on, it helps to remove the tape from the edges, as if you don’t bubbles form much easier as the tape resists the movement of the fibreglass as you smooth out the epoxy.

Water tank fill hole

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Remember last time I just used a hand drill to create a round hole in the water tank fill hole? Well in prep for paint I decided I better go back and clean it up. I widened the hole to take all of the putty out and cut the fibreglass back to the edge.

I might still add just a touch more epoxy around the edges to make sure the fibreglass edge itself is not exposed and won’t catch on a rock when beaching.

Skegs

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In parallel with glassing the hull, I started to build the skegs too.

What to build them out of was a big question. I looked around for single large pieces of wood, but those were really expensive and unwieldy. Then I looked at building them out of some cheap soft wood but adding then metal strips to act as runners - turns out thin metal strips are also really expensive.

So in the end, I had a few scraps of white oak hanging around, and I decided I’d just build up the right size by gluing together 1x2’s of white oak.

I used the plans to create a paper template of the shape of the skeg, and used that to arrange the 1x2s into the right position to support the overall shape.

Gluing them together happened piece by piece.

After the epoxy cured, I scraped off the squeeze out with a heat gun, then took my sander to it not to make it perfectly flat but at least get it closer then it was.

Using the paper template I created to mark the shape of the skeg to cut out was harder then I imagined, since it kept moving as I started to trace it. So instead I started by finding the aft portion of my build cradle that had the curve in it that the hull sat on while being built. The skeg should match that, right? So I used that to mark the curve, and then used the paper template to mark the full shape.

Since I was a little short I glued on two small pieces.

The second skeg I cut the 1x2s out using the first as a template, albeit adding a little bit of length on each to make sure I didn’t run out of room again.

Next time I’ll be:

• final prepping the hull for paint. This means more sanding, and a decision on whether I want to use fairing putty or high build primer or anything like that.
• finishing up the skegs and getting them glued to the boat. The big question here will be if my itty bitty bandsaw will have the grunt needed to cut through 1.5" thick white oak. It may not.