Today I start on the deck. First task is to glue the back of the cockpit together. That took about 30 seconds. But since once that’s done, the next step is to start putting assembling the deck on the boat. So I took the time to remove the two seven inch high pieces that were screwed onto the temporary frames when I first turned the hull upside down to work on the outside.
With the boat “right side up”, I discovered that the shear line was full of globs and drips of epoxy from the fill coats. I had to take a carpet knife and spend about an hour trimming that down. Mostly it was hard work, exacting and slow, trying to cut it down just to the wood, but no deeper, and fixing the shear line bevel where the drip of epoxy flowed onto that side of the ‘glas.
But I discovered something that I think should be changed in the instructions: when you first put on the fiberglas on the outside, you’re supposed to cut it right down to the shear line three or four hours after the epoxying. But the places where this trim went really fast are a couple of places where I didn’t cut it right down to the shear line, but instead left 1/4 inch or more of fibreglas below the shear line. In those places, the drips and globs ended up being far away from the wood, and cutting it down was simple and fast.
Still using the lousy camera, but it’s looking good.
