Quick Fairing Update

A quick update on the fairing process. In the first couple feet foward of the transom, I've got a pretty good amount of hook, which is basically a depression in the hull. This can negatively affect the way the boat performs on plane, so it needs to be filled, making the back 6-8 ft of the boat a straight run. Bayport Bob had a similar problem and spent a lot of time trying to figure out the best way to correct it. He's had the best success by trueing up the keel and each chine. These can then be used as guides in the same way that wooden forms are used when pouring a concrete sidewalk. The area between the chine and keel lines are filled with fairing compound and and it is pulled down the hull with a straight edge laid across the panel in the same way that the sidewalk is leveled off to the wooden forms. After screwing around with the fairing compound a bit, I think this really is the best way to go. By tonight I should have the keel and chine lines pretty close. I made a longboard by gluing the biggest belt sander belt I could find onto a piece of hardboard and gluing a couple handles onto the other side. I used it on the keel last night and I think that it will help enormously in getting things straight and fair. I may make one out of scrap 1/4" ply too as I think that a stiffer version might be even more useful for the back half of the boat where everything is pretty flat. As I had hoped, the fairing compound has turned out to be much easier to sand than anything so far. I'm sure I will get tired of hand sanding, but right now it's a welcome change from the noise and fiberglass hell that is the random orbit. Will post again when I have something good. Right now, it's just puddles of purple stuff on the hull.

The Fairing Begins

Well, the bottom glassing turned out pretty well overall. It seems we should have used a little more epoxy than we did with the peel ply, because when I pulled it off, the surface wasn't totally uniform.


In places the weave didn't fill in completely, but the peel ply did smooth things out nicely and sucked excess epoxy out of areas where we'd put too much. Places where the weave didn't fill in all the way looked like this.

First thing to do was a quick pass with the sander to open up all the little pockets a little bit. This is my current setup.

The shop vac really eliminates most of the dust, makes your sandpaper last longer, and in this case, kept all the little holes from getting filled with sanding dust. A little information for the uninitiated: surpassing the previous champions, diamonds and a mid-90's Phil Anselmo, epoxy without any fillers is officially the hardest thing in the world. It laughs in 60-grit's face. But a little bit of time last night and I had the weave opened up a little.

The peel ply really did suck things down pretty well because if I sand just a little below the surface, I start hitting glass. Next, I mixed up a very thin fairing compound. A mixture of phenolic microballoons and silica is added to the normal laminating resin to thicken it to the consistency of runny ketchup. I smeared this all over the hulh with a spreader, making sure to make some of the passes in the direction of the weave. The purple color is from the microballoons.

The mix was made so thin so it would settle down into the weave and it worked great. It's tough to capture in a picture, but the weave filled most of the way in, with very few of the pinholes that indicate a bubble was trapped inside.

I have a ton of sanding to do on the sides of the boat and around the transom. The peel ply made a mess in these areas. I already hit them with a paint scraper, so that should cut down on time a little. I'll fill the weave on the sides and then probably switch from the microballoon mix to Quickfair. This is a Silvertip product that is basically like epoxy-based marine bondo. It's very thick, cures in three hours, and sands like butter. It's also pretty expensive. I'm in the fairly common position of being both poor and fundamentally lazy. But to me, it's entirely worth it to spend an extra $50-100 on the hull if it will save me hours of sanding time. I haven't even started the real fairing yet and I already detest sanding. I have to admit that the idea of the amount of work I'm going to have to do to get this ready for primer is a little overwhelming. I let it rest for a few days to try and relax but everytime I do that all I think about is how I'm going to do the next step. The thing won't leave me alone. I'll just try and follow my plan of getting at least one thing done each day and I'm sure it will all come together.

Bottom Glass

The bottom glass is done!! This is a major hurdle in the build, and one that a lot of people worry about, but having helped with the glasswork on Frank's canoe, it seems it just takes time and attention to detail. The night before Cole and I laid out all the pieces of glass that we would use and trimmed them to size. Then we rolled them onto pieces of PVC for storage. For those of you doing this, first press the tape you use to secure the rolls onto the hull or something to cut down on its tackiness. Too sticky and you'll destroy the glass when you pull it off. This morning I put a layer of epoxy onto the hull. Cap'n Gnarly surveyed from the Crow's Nest.

I've mentioned before that this coat saturates the wood and prevents it from sucking later epoxy coats out of the glass. You have to make sure that the precoat starts to set up for this to work though and with the cold front, it took a couple hours to get tacky. I then called up the build crew so we could get going. Frank and Cole showed up with a quickness in their matching Jeep Cherokees. The Flatsstalker Army had arrived. It's hard to overstate how much help these guys were today. Pure gold.

Right off the bat, the epoxy started flying. Frank has to developed a pretty burly allergy to the West epoxy he used on his canoe and didn't want to risk reacting to the Silvertip, so he was the designated mixer for the day.


For those paying attention: yes, that is a pubic louse on his shirt and yes, the tag line does say, "Crabs, the butterflies of love". The French term for crabs is papillon de amor (or something close to that), and that's what it means. We just call them crotch crickets. Entomologist humor is a unusual at best. These are the people I work with everyday. Yeah, I know.

With epoxy all over our hands, we didn't get pictures of every stage of the glassing, but we snapped a few every hour or so. First, the chines, keel, and edges of the transom are laid up with biaxial tape. There are 3 layers on the keel, 1 on the chine and, two on the transom.

Where the tape is layered, the edges are offset to make fairing easier later. (Note: I have differed from the designer's recommended lamination schedule, with what should be a minor decrease in strength. I do not recommend doing this and if you choose to, do so at your own risk.)

With some discussion on the best techniques, we settled on:

• Frank mixed in a cup and poured into a disposable tupperware container that Cole was using.
• Cole slopped the epoxy onto the tape with a chip brush.
• After waiting to let the epoxy soak in I used a flexible spreader to move the epoxy around, force it into the glass, and make sure the fibers were oriented properly.

Here's the completely taped hull and Frank sampling the epoxy for some reason. It does smell kind of sweet I guess. Tragically, he died later that day. He always was a dumbass.


Gaining some confidence with the tape, we moved on to the sheet of bottom glass. This is the same material as the tape (12 oz. biax), but in a 50" wide section. We made something of a mess getting it straight on the sticky hull, but once on it laid out nice. We abandoned the brush with such a large area, and simply poured straight from the cup and used the spreaders to move the epoxy around. This glass soaks up a lot, so having a dedicated mix man is a huge time saver.

The roller in the foreground here was fantastic for getting air out of multiple layers of glass.


The area by the transom has a lot of overlapping layers of glass which makes it something of a bastard........

.......requiring the triple team.

Since Frank's mixing duties weren't full time, he was able to jump in and touch up areas that needed attention.

Before long we were finishing up at the bow. Once we finished every 6 feet or so, we would stop and put on a layer of 60" peel ply. I broke down and ordered some real peel ply and the stuff is awesome. It a polyester fabric. When pushed into the glass, excess epoxy bleeds through to its surface. It should eliminate most of the weave pattern in the final laminate, and help to keep the glass to epoxy ratio equal, making it stronger. What you're looking at in these pictures is the peel ply not the glass. When I pull the peel ply off tomorrow, the actual glass and epoxy should be pretty smooth with a matte finish ready to accept fairing compound. Let's just hope it comes off.


The actual glassing, from tape to peel ply, only took us five hours. That's killer. If I'd done it alone I could expect closer to 15. This would mean I would have to do tape and fabric separately. What we did today is termed working "wet on wet". This means that each layer, the precoat, each layer of tape, and the fabric, was wet when the next was applied. What this gives you is a chemical bond between each layer, essentially making the wood and up to 5 or 6 layers of glass in places one cohesive whole. Nice. It also makes fairing easier later. The alternative is sanding between each layer, basically making a mechanical bond between each layer. This brings the weak. The Flatsstalker Army made my boat stronger than I ever could have done on my own. This is why they rock the house and will always have a spot up on the bow whenever they want to catch some reds.

This is the first time in the build that I've been really pumped about how one of the building steps turned out, the first time I thought, "Man, we really kicked that one in the face." I couldn't be happier with the glasswork. I hope I still feel the same way when the peel ply comes off tomorrow. I'm tired. I'm going to bed... just as soon as I see if the epoxyis green enough to scrape out the runs.

Sanding

Holy balls, am I tired of sanding?!!!!! I should know. I do it everyday now. Come home from work. Slap on some 60 grit. And go to town for an hour or two.

Sand. Fill. Sand. Fill. Sand. Fill. But I feel like I'm getting somewhere. The boat is close to being ready for glass. It better be because come hell or high water, I'm glassing the outside of the hull this weekend. To prove to everyone that I really have been working on the boat, here are some pics.




The bow still needs a little work, as does the keel line where the bow starts to turn up. Overall it's shaping up OK. It doesn't really show up well in the pictures because of the patchiness of the filler, but the chines are smooth. The quest for perfection eventually turns into the hope that "the best I can do" doesn't look like "a big piece of crap". I mean how good is good enough? I don't freaking know. I've never done this before. But however good it looks tomorrow night, that's about as good as it's going to get. Cole and Frank will be around this weekend, this cold front is going to screw up the fishing, and I'm tired of smelling like epoxy dust all the time, soooo.......bring on the glass! Updates as soon as something cool happens.