Smoother

April 3, 2015  Hours spent building to date: 886

Returned to the boat (and more snow!) from Sarasota after a great break and have been working diligently ever since — it just doesn’t look like it.  It is simply hard to show a boat growing smoother in pictures — they all look a lot like the unsmooth pictures.

And it’s going slowly filling, fairing and sanding on the keel.  It’s simply very tough — and quite uncomfortable — working straddled over a 2-inch piece of fiberglassed wood.  I can do six feet or so at a time, and that’s it.  It’s really hard to get a big sander on the smaller keel pieces, so I’m using a small one and hand sanding.

Everything is looking good, though, especially the bow, which is just about done, and I like the shape.  The chines are looking very sharp, but on the pieces that are underwater.  I am undecided on the pieces that show.  I could use Quick Fair and bring them to a razor edge, but that would invite instant dings and angular edges won’t hold paint.  So I will probably shape them up to an edge and bring it back to something rounder and closer to the tough, abrasion resistant Xynole underneath.  My son John thinks that I should do that and just sand the chines down if they get nicked up.  That’s one of the advantages of a wooden boat — changes and repairs are a piece of wood, a screw and some filler away.

I really need to get a coat of primer on the boat so see what it really looks like, and adjust from there.  But (thankfully) the trailer arrives April 22, so I can’t keep fairing and fiddling forever.

Bow smoother

Bottom smoother

Boat smoother