Initial fairing of our Didi 40 Cr. This is the section where the radius chine is four layers of 3 mm plywood and the temporary screws have created shallow hollows which show as the darker plywood in the photo.
All the temporary cleats are off the plywood cladding of our Didi 40 cr and I am progressing the filling of screw holes and fairing of the radius chine as fast as the weather allows.
Another deluge convinced me to purchase yet another tarpaulin to protect the hull and almost as soon as it was fitted another heavy shower came through. I used the time to router the edges of some of the stringers which will be exposed or inside lockers. I have a mental picture of testing the lockers for snags with a silk scarf.
With still more rain I trimmed off the ends of a few overlong screws and removed a few screw heads that were stopping the production of a neat routered and fibreglassed edge on the outside of the wet locker. There was still time to move to sanding the bulkheads in the quarter berth before the rain abated enough for some external work.
Outside I practiced using the hand plane, the belt sander and the orbital sander along with a long torture board. The belt sander does a particularly efficient job at fairing the transition from the flat 12 mm plywood to the two times 6 mm radius chine but it is too short to trust on the round parts without regular cross sanding with the torture board. I have now sanded enough to start filling the shallow hollows formed by the temporary screws which held the plywood together while the glue cured. The darker areas in the photo show these shallow hollows. The sections of the radius chine made up of two 6 mm layers have shallower depressions around the screw holes but they still need a wipe of filler.
I am now sealing all the screw holes with neat epoxy and once it is tacky laying on the filleting filler. This ensures the plywood is well protected and the filler sticks well to the tacky neat epoxy so it is quite a time effective method. I have done about half of the hull including filling the screw holes in the flat plywood panels and just need the rain to stay away for a little longer.