Seams Sanded - Again

I spent Friday evening and Saturday sanding the areas where the resin had been applied to the top and sides of the boat. Areas where the resin left a sort of dripped appearance on the resin covered sides were pretty much sanded flat, and the transitions from the glass covered seams to the resin covered wood were smoothed.

The rough surfaces of the resin impregnated cloth were sanded mostly smooth, too, with care taken to not sand through the weave.

Several areas ended up with voids below the cloth. In particular, the gaps between the wood fillets and the panels were not always filled with resin, and sometimes the cloth managed to get pulled away slightly, leaving voids below.

All of these voids were sanded open, with the glass removed until the wood was reached.

All this sanding was done with the random orbital sander, with 100 grit discs. I ended up going through 3 discs, but the results were quite nice.

Both the bow and stern ended up with a good, solid covering of glass. The glass at the bow actually extends beyond it by half an inch or so, tapering to the thickness of a credit card. We'll have to see how well this works in practice, or if other boaters will complain.

I used both the block sander and the remaining fragment of the aluminum oxide sanding belt held in my hand to round the bottom edges of the hull in preparation for taping. The hand-held sanding belt fragment did a great job in sanding the hard to reach areas around the cockpit as well as small areas that were just better done with the pressure of one's fingertips.

On Sunday I cut the vanes for the dipping rudders. These were made from a 4 inch wide piece from the old top of the torque box and from a piece of scrap plywood. I then took the long, skinny pieces that had been cut from the upper sides of the torque box and decided they would work as the lever arms and reinforcement backing for the vanes.

I spent some time salvaging some of the 6 oz cloth that had inadvertently had some resin dripped on it. Some of the pieces would serve to patch over the void areas.

Everything was ready for the step: filling and fixing the voids, and sealing the sanded areas.

I mixed up a couple of spoonfuls of fillet material in a cup, and applied it to the wooden fillet voids. A spoon worked pretty well to force the fillet material into the void and to smooth the surface. A paper towel cleaned up the surrounding areas.

There were some other minor voids in the hull seams that were also filled, but a major fillet area was where the stuffing box exited the bottom of the hull. Here the tube was filleted towards the stern so as to provide additional support if or when the boat rests on it.


A cup of resin was mixed and applied to the rudder vanes and lever arms. It took a bit longer than expected, so by the time I got to apply the remaining fillet material it had already started to set. I ended up applying a rather lumpy and stringy bunch of fillet material anyway, figuring they will sand pretty well on the belt sander when I try to turn them into a bit more of a foil shape.

I applied resin to the port foredeck and the port side of the cockpit, patching bits and pieces of cloth over the bare wooden areas. This seemed to go fairly well.

The sanded and now newly resin covered areas look very nice and smooth. Hopefully they won't require much in the way of additional sanding before the job is done.