Fair is Fair

October 24, 2015  Hours spent building to date:  1,605

The big news this week is shiny new bronze (sorry, Mark) opening ports from Newfound Metals.  They were from Molly and John for my 65th birthday.  I couldn’t resist putting them in temporarily for a quick picture.  It will be a real challenge finishing a boat good enough to justify these beautiful pieces of what Richard and Jane Beck call “boat jewelry.”

Other than that, work simply continued on jobs begun last week.  I have at last reached the point of diminishing returns on hull fairing after one pretty thorough fairing, a coat of primer to pick up problems and a final touch-up fairing.  I still have a couple humps, but the surrounding hull is so smooth that I think I have diminished the visual impact.  I did make one dumb move closing in on final primer.  My reasoning was that with the substrate so smooth, maybe I should tip out the primer with a badger brush to avoid roller stiple.  Wrong.  The two-part high build primer is still too thick to close up brush marks and I ended up with a bunch of them, dooming myself to another hard sanding and more primer on the starboard side.  On port the side where I didn’t tip out, everything is done but final pinhole and blemish fairing and topcoat primer, which will wait until just before topside paint.

Foredeck beams went in without drama, and while waiting for some sanding drums, I started patterning the forecabin beams.  Tricky measurement, but it is all working out.

Faired out the forward berth area (again) and primed it with tie coat.  Tough going over tons of tabbing and epoxy, but   is not bad at all — plenty good enough for my feet.

Foredeck beam glue-up The batten down the middle is to make sure the bevels stay at the right angle.

Pattern for forecabin beam at station 6. The battens are sitting tight on stations 5, 11 and 13, and I’m only about 3/16th inch low in the middle at 6 on the first try. For me, that’s watchmaking.