A Fly in the Ointment

I'm making some headway on the fairing. I feel like the hook is close to being done (plus I'm tired of looking at it), so I started pulling fairing compound foward today. I also pulled the first coat on the transom. I feel like the rest of the hull will go more quickly than the hook because I'll just be smoothing out the lines left by glass overlap, filling small imperfections, etc. I'll have the hull to use as a guide. With the hook, I've basically been sculpting a new bottom out of thin air, which is taking a lot of time. Today, the DHL man brought me a big vat of Quickfair and a resupply of spreaders, stirrers and cups, which should get me through the bottom of the hull at least, so I'm good to go. I need to find a flexible straight edge to pull the Quickfair up near the bow. The radii on the curves are much tighter up there and the piece of aluminum saw guide I've been using won't work on anything with much compound curvature. I'm told there is a large sheetrock knife at Lowe's that might do the job.

Frank finally finished his cedar strip canoe and it's pretty sweet. For pictures, check out his website through the link in the sidebar.

I went out to trim up some half-cured Quickfair tonight and found this robber fly stuck to the hull, a victim of the fast curing fairing compound. These guys ambush other insects in midair, especially honeybees, drag them to the ground, and suck the life out of them. Karma's a bitch sometimes, I guess.

You guys thought I gave up didn't you? I haven't been posting because with this fairing process, there's been a lot of work, but there hasn't been a whole lot of visible progress. The whole boat has been sanded with the RO, filled with a thin fairing slurry and then sanded with the RO again. I mentioned before that I had about a 1/4" hook in the bottom of the hull a couple feet foward of the transom. This was much more minor when I was stitching up the hull, but the buildup of fiberglass where the transom meets the hull made it deeper. It took a lot of time, but I used Bayport Bob's method and filled and leveled at the keel seam and chines. This was done with a longboard. I then dumped a bunch of fairing compound in the gap, and used a straightedge to drag it down the boat. You can see the filled back end here.


The right side has about an hour with a longboard put into it. The left side is untouched. You can see the low spots where the board didn't hit. The edges are purple because they were done with the epoxy/microballoon mix. The filler is QuickFair. This stuff is awesome to apply. It comes in two buckets, one part has the consistency of cake icing and the other of warm Crisco. I weigh them out on the same sheet of plastic, mix with a spreader and then apply to the hull. The mixed product has the consistency of mayonnaise and pulls across the hull really smoothly. It works great. I won't say how much is in the hook. An embarrassing amount.

I also have been squaring up the chines on the back 2/3 of the boat. They had to be rounded over for the glass to take the bend but the boat should corner better with a harder chine.

The final product won't be this sharp. Once they're fair, I'll put a small radius on them. They still have a ways to go.

The bow curve wasn't very fair and I wanted a slightly less canoe look up there. Again, it needs more work, but it's getting there.


Too put it bluntly, fairing is miserable. It has to been done manually, which is agonizingly slow, and I'm not real clear that I'm even doing it the right way. I have a long, long, long way to go on this. Keep plugging I guess. All the previous steps were short enough that the next new thing was just around the corner. Not here. It's tedious. This is where a lot of people give up on the project. I can't though. When I sit on the couch, the thing mocks me from the garage. "I can hear you in there, Elie. Come finish me. You'll never catch another redfish on that flyrod if you don't finish me. You know who doesn't finish boats, don't you? Hippies, that's who. You're not a hippy, are you? ARE YOU?"

Damn boat. On a positive note, Clutch has created what might be the ultimate boat building music in their new album, "From Beale Street to Oblivion". Songs about giving O'l Scratch the boot. Check. Songs making fun of vegan bike punks. Check. A song called Mr. Shiny Cadillackness. Check. Bluesy yet totally ass-rocking. Chiggity-check. Cole burned it for me and it's my current fairing music.

Also, there is a new website dedicated to the class of boat I'm building. It's called www.microskiff.com . They had a get together last weekend that I went to and got a lot of advice on setup from people who fish these boats every weekend. It was a great experience. Many thanks to all the people I talked to. I also got to spend most of the day on the bow of a Hell's Bay Whipray (Thanks Jason). What a sweet skiff. Anyone out there who wants to trade a Whipray for a partially faired FS18 hull, please contact me. I think we may be able to work something out. Didn't have a whole lot of luck with reds though. Spooked several hundred, but only managed two this size.

I've never seen fish that skittish. More to come as soon as something noteworthy happens. Click on the map in the sidebar to see where people who check out the page live. Don't ever say people in Russia and Australia don't like the FS18. I have the proof.