A Flow Coat

Woo-Hoo!!!!

Greg finally decided to do something different. After months (yes, months!) of sanding and fairing, Greg decided that enough is enough. We flow coated the boat yesterday. When I went over there, I was expecting another round of sanding and fairing, so I didnt take the camera. (Like Ive said countless times, there are only so many sanding and fairing pics I can take.)

One of our concerns was epoxy runs. In order to address this, we thickened the epoxy ever so slightly with just a touch of wood flower. It seems to have worked, but we wont know for sure until after the epoxy dries. Wish us luck.

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I Almost Cried

I went to Gregs for another round of work last night. When I got there, I saw something that almost made me burst out in tears. Greg had virtually cut the boat in half.

After rolling the boat, Greg measured the width of the boat, and it was something like eight and a half feet wide, roughly six inches over the maximum width allowed without getting a permit to tow a wide load. Greg had originally decided to risk it... after all, the width would be difficult at best to measure. Apparently he changed his mind.

In order to get the width reduced, Greg put a relief cut in each side, from the top to about three inches from the bottom. He then used straps to pull the hull to the width he wanted, and then filled the relief cuts with thickened epoxy and re-taped the hull, inside and out. He cut through the spray rail and everything.

Its his boat, so he can do what he wants. But had I known what he was thinking, Id have done everything in my power to talk him out of doing that. We could have used straps and epoxy and pulled the hull in, attaching it to the frame pieces, and things would have been much less invasive. Additionally, the bottom is probably ever-so-slightly hooked now, and the spray rails will likely have a noticeable bend at the cutting point. The biggest thing though, is the fact that were going to have to re-sand and re-paint this scar, and probably re-tape it a couple more times as well.

I almost cried.

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Almost There

Almost There
Originally uploaded by OzzyC.

I figured it was about time for another actual picture of our project. This photo really doesnt do the boat justice, but I wanted to show you something. Next time, Ill take the shot from the bow, and youll get a better idea of the boats overall shape and progress. (This shot makes the boat look more like a giant brick than an actual watercraft.)

What you should notice in this picture is just how sharp weve cut the chines, how flat the boat is, and how patchy the boat looks now. (If you click on the picture, you will see a larger picture, complete with notes on the boat.)

Along the chines, you will see something that looks a little like mold. Greg did a fog coat of black spraypaint. The idea here is to do a very light hand sanding with a long sanding block. After this sanding, we will be able to identify the low spots. These low spots will be easily seen because the fog coat of black spraypaint will remain in the low areas, whereas the paint will have been sanded from the higher areas.

Feel free to click here if youd like an idea of how things looked before we built up the chines.

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