Second Stabilizer Assembled

I didn't have much time this week to work on the boat. Still, I glued the short section of the first stabilizer where the side did not quite meet the deck, making sure to apply a clamp there to keep things together.

After the resin hardened I belt sanded off the excess, and smoothed out the other drips I had missed the first time through with the sander.

Today I double checked the fit of the side pieces at their tips and did some touch up belt sanding to get them to meet flush at the ends. The 6 inch wide belt has a bit of an upward curl on both edges, so this makes it a bit of a challenge to not remove material that I really want to keep.

I rigged up a long work board (8 feet by 1 foot by 1.5 inches) on which to apply resin to the stabilizer panels, and lined it with shrink wrap plastic. This was much more ergonomical than a long sheet of waxed paper on the floor of the garage.

After mixing up another cup of resin I glued the second stabilizer together. The only hitch I ran into was that one of the foam bulkheads was a couple of millimeters too tall. I was not pleased, especially since I had just applied resin to it.

After some judicial use of paper towels and the little belt sander the bulkhead now fit much better.

As with the first stabilizer I clipped the bow and stern, though this time I added some force from a C-clamp to the bow clip to get things to fit tighter. A bit more weight was added to various points along the top board to make sure of a good joint.

The shrink wrap used to keep the main workbench clean was much better than the waxed paper to see if the sides and the top and bottom were properly fitting together. I could feel if the sides were pushed in too far or were sticking out too far, and see it as well.

With the second work table the process of applying resin to the boards went a bit faster this time. The resin in the mixing cup didn't get hot, and a second batch wasn't needed to finish the job.

Time spent today: approximately 1 hour.