Blog Post #3

 5/11/22

Hours Today: 6 Hours

Total Hours: 20 Hours 30 minutes

Today, my focus remained on prep work. I mixed up some epoxy, and assembled my second set of out-walls. I have found that painting a small amount of unthickened epoxy prior to putting your thickened epoxy prevents the wood from absorbing any of your thickened batch, making for a stronger bond.

After this, I got beneath the boat and ran epoxy fillets, thickened with wood flour, beneath the cockpit seat. To do this, I mixed the appropriate amount of epoxy and poured it into a plastic bag. Similar to icing a cake, I cut the corner off and laid a bead along the amidships frame and the daggerboard trunk where it met the underside of the seat. I then went over it with a plastic fillet tool, which I cut from a plastic spreader and sanded to shape. 

For the next hour or two, I cleaned up my skeg and first set of out-walls with some 120 grit sandpaper, and began the process of fitting the skeg to the hull. 

When laying epoxy fillets, after a couple of hours the epoxy becomes clay like, at which point I am able to dip a finger in rubbing alcohol, and run it the length of the fillet. This makes the fillet as uniform and smooth as possible. 

To end the day, I began sanding the hull a little in preparation for a second coat of epoxy. 

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