Sanding and filling holes in the deck ready for glassing is painfully slow. The orbital sander with the vacuum cleaner attached has sped up the flat surface sanding but I still had all the holes to fill and all the gunwales to fair by hand. Friend Kevin gave the sander and vacuum cleaner a work out on the deck on Thursday while I fitted the four layers of 3 mm ply doubler under the deck at the stem. Friday was a mixed bag including finishing off the last 125 mm of capping on the gunwales, sanding some of the ceiling in the cabin and fitting hinges to the V bunk tops in the evening. Most of Saturday was spent filling screw holes out in the cold wind. Each hole was primed with neat epoxy to fill the exposed wood and while the epoxy was still tacky filled with a thickened epoxy mix. Today I warmed up planing and torture boarding the gunwales. On Thursday we had taken a cut down the edges of the gunwales with the power planer and today I used a medium length plane to round off the edge and finished up with a very fine setting on a 50 year old hand plane. I have had this plane since I was a teenager and used it to trim the edges of 1/16 inch Queensland cedar veneer we used to use for building cold moulded Moth Class yachts. it is one of my favourite wood working tools as it is simple and very light so you can wield it all day.
The final task was to torture board the edges with a metre long board and 60 grit paper which was pretty good exercise on a cold day.
I now need some fine weather now for the deck glassing.
Friend Kevin helping with the sanding. Photo taken from a ladder in the neighbour’s yard.
My favourite little hand plane had a four hour workout today
Elaine approving the hand planing job. The glue lines in the plywood are a useful planing guide