Saturday, July 26, 2008

Fairing starboard side float deck and gunwales

I've spent the last week fairing out the starboard side float deck and gunwales. My plan is to finish both port and starboard decks and then change out the supports for holding a float for access to the hulls and all that freeboard area on this design.

Step one was to apply beads of System Three quick fair across the deck. My fairing strategy is to sand these beads down with the flat long board (60 grit sandpaper) until the fiberglass on the hull is reached. The remaining high bead level indicates where and also the height to which fairing material has to be applied.

The above picture shows the beads sanded down. I was actually quite surprised at how much putty would be required to get the decks flat.

So I applied the fairing putty and filled the low areas. Sanding this first layer down did not yield a finished flat surface.
Here is the deck getting pretty close to finished. Still quite a bit of dust on the surface. I think I lost a couple of pounds this week working away on the long board.

A picture of the chain plates finally getting cleaned up and looking a bit more presentable.

Quick fair putty requires a sealing coat of epoxy. I plan to paint (2 part LPU) directly on this surface after some fine grit sanding. There will be no paint priming for the float decks. I hope the flatness of the deck will still be apparent when the non skid surface is applied.

This is how I will leave this float and do the same job on the port side.

2 comments:

Tor Rabe said...

Looking good Grant!

I found that it was less work to fill with fairing compound three layers with only a breef one minute fairing in between and then sand it all down. The fairing compound tends to shink when hardening, also I found it more time consuming to have to mark, fair and re-apply fairing compound to a few spots than to just fair some more with the 60 grit.

Tor, F-22 "Panta Rei"

GK said...

Yes I hear you. I was filling up the low spots too many times.