It's been a couple of productive weeks. I'm
close to being done with the primary fairing of the of the hull. I'll soon be adding the rub rails and skeg. I'll prime the
outside of the hull after that. I'd rather glue the rails & skeg down to the hull before priming so the glue will be bonded
to the fairing compound and not a layer of primer.
Anyway let me walk you through a couple of quick areas that I pretty much finished with and
show you how I got there...
The rear 2/3rds of the boat is divided into 2 flat sections meeting at the keel. This flat
area is about a good 10+ feet long. As previously mentioned I used a ridged piece of extruded aluminum to fair out this area.
Here's a some shots of the tools used...
The last picture shows the sheet rock or wallpaper knife I used at first. This wasn't a good tool
for me. It flexed and even though the edge was straight it would leave depressions and uneven areas in the fairing compound.
Here's some shots of the bottom with fresh fairing compound (a ketchup like consistency)...
Here's a technique that should have been decent in theory, but was mediocre when tried - The photo
shows a couple of beads of fairing compound run parallel with the keel. The idea was to put these down and then sand them
to a point where they would be even in height with a straight edge from keel to chine.
I figured the "guide beads" would help prevent the depressions I was leaving when faring the large
area on the hull bottom. This was when I was still using the long, blue handled drywall knife. After this idea fizzled, I
started using the rigid aluminum sections.
Here's some shots of another technique I tried for building up the transom and chine edges so they
could be sanded to a sharp edge. (Later, during the priming step, I'll put a very slight radius on the edge. I figured it
would be much easier to get a uniform radius on the finished edge if I started with a sharp one.) I used packaging tape on
the vertical edge surfaces and allowed the tape to kind of bow back away from the side. This allowed the void to be over filled
with a little extra fairing compound so I could then sand it back to the true intersection. It's kind of hard to see since
the tape is clear. The last shot shows the corner of the transom with the tape pulled back a little.
The last area I'll show a little detail on is the rounded chine section near the bow. Here there
were some flat spots and general unevenness from the strips forming the curved chine. I made a tool to apply the fairing compound
uniformly to each side of the hull. It's just a plastic spreader bent to the appropriate radius and held in that postion using
fiberglass packaging tape.
Here are some various shots showing the sharp edges and general fairing. Note that even though
there appears to be a lot of different color patches, these are just different batches that cure to a slightly different color
and surface texture. The really dark maroon colored areas are unsanded.