10-27.

Fairing.
The fairing epoxy has a totally different consistency than the regular silica that we use for gluing.  Described as peanut butter, it's really more like a putty.

Daddy did the port side yesterday and sanded it down this afternoon to see how it turned out.  It looks good and feels smooth - no more of the little bumps all along the edges of the fiberglass and no more rough, gouged out places in the wood.  

Spreading the fairing on was pretty simple.  We just globbed it on, spread it thoroughly along the fiberglass edges or other spots that needed filling, and then feathered out the edges to reduce sanding when it dries.  

Here's the transom and back end of the boat covered with the fairing putty.  This weekend we'll sand it down and then start putting on more coats of liquid epoxy.  We're also starting to look at colors for the boat.    The suggestion box is open if anyone has any ideas!  We're considering a pale yellow with dark blue trim or a pale greenish color (called blue ice) with either a dark blue or dark green trim.  The interior (seats/decks) will most likely be a creamy, off-white color.  I'm leaning towards a white or off-white sail - my dad's boats have red sails that I'm not too fond of.

10-16, 10-25.

Glassing the bottom and seams, and coating the hull with liquid epoxy took most of a day to do.  We had to wait for a sunny day - rain had already pushed us back once or twice and hot weather was also prohibitive because of the epoxy hardening too fast.  We wanted to have a full day to work on this so that we could put down the fiberglass and then coat it with three layers of epoxy in succession to ensure chemical bonds between the epoxy, instead of just physical bonds.  By adding the next layer of epoxy as the previous is just starting to dry (feels "tacky"), the chemicals create a stronger bond when they harden.  

First we laid the dry fiberglass down on the boat to make sure it fit.  We cut out pieces to cover the bow and cut the big back piece to fit along the skeg.  Then we put the cloth aside and painted the wood with a coat of liquid epoxy everywhere the cloth would touch.  We've only been using the wet method of fiberglassing since my dad thinks it makes it easier to get the cloth set in place - which it does seem conceptually easier (since I haven't tried the dry method of not wetting the wood before laying the cloth down).  Anyways, once we painted the wood, we laid the fiberglass cloth back down, one piece at a time and slowly and methodically pushed it into place, pouring more epoxy on top of the cloth.  We used plastic scrapers to spread the epoxy evenly on top of the cloth - the trick is to get the epoxy to soak through the cloth so that the cloth becomes invisible, but not to use too much epoxy.  The other trick is to not work the cloth too much with the scraper because air bubbles start to form under the cloth.  Fiberglassing is fun and not too difficult, although the gas mask can give a person a headache if the straps are too tight.

Pouring the liquid epoxy onto the cloth.

Scraping it along, smoothing it in through the fiberglass.  The pieces we used in the bow were a different thickness and weave than the ones along the rest of the bottom which made it much harder to get the epoxy through the cloth - it took a lot more working and scraping.  We ended up putting several layers of fiberglass on the bow area to make it extra protected.

Here's the boat with fiberglass applied.  By the time we finished attaching all of the fiberglass to the seams, the stuff was getting tacky on the bottom, so we moved straight on to painting the entire hull with another coat of liquid.

Cutting a dart to make the cloth fit around a corner.  I think we might have ruined three pairs of scissors this day.  (Well one pair had already seen their demise from previous epoxy and fiberglass adventures, so we had to steal some more from the house).


Tonight (10-25) we sanded the hull to prepare for fairing.  Daddy had already sanded one side, so we just worked on the other side and all the epoxy humps and bumps and borders.  I used the fun little vibrating sander to get the wood and  smoother fiberglassed areas and Daddy used the big hulking belt sander to get the fiberglass edges that were really sticking out and the overlapping fiberglass areas that were really thick and bumpy.

Last time I had to wear a hazmat suit was spraying reed canary grass up in Minnesota with blue-dyed round up - not fun.  This time around is way better!!  And it is really nice to wear these when sanding because you get totally covered in super fine particle dust, which with fiberglass and epoxy in the mix is not something particularly nice to have stuck all over your clothes and exposed skin.

After we finished sanding, we vacuumed the boat to get the obvious dust off, then we used special scrubbers (sort of like the non-scratch abrasive pads for pots and pans) with water to take off the amine blush and lightly sand while removing the hiding particles.  Then to be extra sure we were getting all the particles off, we went back over the boat with wet rags, then dry rags.  We might have to repeat this sanding and washing process again after we get a look at the boat in the daylight to see if there are any patches that we missed.  Once that is done, we will move on to fairing - fixing the imperfections of the fiberglass edges and places I gouged out when sanding earlier on.