Saturday, May 10, 2008

Faired repairs, cleaned deck




I have every other Friday off work, due to a very lenient federal job system. I took the opportunity to work on the boat. I plan on priming the topsides soon in an effort to distinguish minor imperfections in my spot repair and fairing. I will then correct all the imperfections and prime again. Because I'm so close to painting and I'm not removing my toe rails, I need to tape them off. I want them spotless first so I scrubbed the hell out of my toe rails with a scrub brush and it took about two hours. I then began cleaning my interior since I'm motoring to the sandbar on Saturday and the cabin is trashed. I can't believe how much crap was in there. It took about six hours before I was ready to actually work on anything topsides. When I did get to work, I faired the starboard and bow repair, ground out and acetoned many cracks in the gel coat, and attempted to spot fill the small imperfections with 3M high strength marine repair filler. It is a two part system, turns blue when mixed and unfortunately kicks in about 7 minutes. I was not used to the speed since I've been working with 209 tropical hardener from west system.
Saturday I'm going to head out to the marina(6 minutes away) and dewax the topsides with awl-prep before the sun gets too hot, and sand the whole deck down with a random orbital. I don't want anyone cutting their feet on filler, when they're drunk on board, at the sandbar. I'll post picks when I get back. I bought a new camera from the navy exchange at pearl harbor.

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