The Hull Truth

March 17, 2016  Hours spent building to date:  2,300

(Title to this post appropriated from one of the best boat restoration sites on the Web http://www.thehulltruth.com)

I think I have declared the hull finished three times before this.  But as I was milling lumber for the trim and rubrails, I kept running my hand over the boat and could still feel bumps.  Then I opened the overhead door to natural sunlight and could see shadows.

So one more time I got out the grinder and some super-sandpaper used for auto body work and chewed into the hull.  I really didn’t anticipate any problems, since the normally unsandable Xynole hull sheathing has had almost a year to cure.  The same old problems at the root of the bumps emerged:

1) The scarphs at the curvy end of the boat probably have more stress on them than those further back, and although they looked great, I overcoated them with epoxy and kept adding filler around them to try to hide the resulting hump.  Given the amount of structure and tabbing beneath them, there is no way they will ever let loose, so I sanded the one down that was still high, got rid of most of the filler and that was it.

2) The Xynole sheathing has selvedges on the edges that I should have trimmed off, but who knew?  These constantly caught epoxy and filling and couldn’t be sanded down until the Xynole was rock hard.  Now it is and they came down fine.  Future builders:  just use plain 10 oz glass on the hull.  Xynole is like body armor in toughness, but just too hard to work with.

I reprimed the whole hull today, and there are still lots of imperfections, but once the boat is trimmed out and on the water, they will be very tough to spot.

Primed up the forward windows, and as you can see, they look fine.  And with all the painting gear out, I used all the excess primer to work my way back through the deckhouse interior.

While waiting for paint to dry, I took all the small pieces of cherry left over from beams and drawers and sheathed the “dashboard” over the head and forward of the steering station.

Off to Florida tomorrow for a USA Today/Gannett reunion, so no posts next week.

Bumps ground out. Almost all of the high spots were filler, and I never really had to grind into the Xynole.

Deckhouse priming.

Dash sheathing weighted into epoxy with paint cans, lead weights and other heavy liquids.

Dash sheathing.

Current view from the loft.

Wood for rubrail is all ready to go.