2009 building logs

June 2009 Tying loose ends.

With the boat show behind me it is time to concentrate again on progressing the boat build. I have removed the strip planked side decks again for the last time in order to finish gluing and glassing the dagger cases in and glassing some of the deck panels from inside on the starboard hull including glassing the forebeam into the starboard hull. I also have to finish the outboard well work this month so that as soon as the side decks get glued and glassed on, the steps can also go on. So in other words I have a lot of loose ends to tie up this month. Little jobs that have to be done to progress the build.

June 2 Pure Seal test.

First, apologies for the delay in posting updates recently, but I have been rather busy of late. No excuses, I am going to have to dedicate more time to building my boat as I am falling behind my schedule and also update this site more often.

Two and a half years in the water and still the Pure Seal seems to be working well. But to be honest I already knew that. Before I went to the boat show I wanted to be sure the stuff was still working as I knew I would be seeing the supplier of it. At this stage he is still not convinced he will import it again due to the damage the first faulty batch did to his business. Quite understandable. But so far I cannot fault this batch. It is still performing just as it did after just 3 months in the water. The second picture below is of the plate after 2 weeks in the water after I gave it a clean 2 weeks ago but the first pic is of the panel after 3 months. The 2 pics to the right of the cleaned panels. I have noticed that the tiny hairline scratches need deeper cleaning now that I am finding a little more difficult with just my finger, but a light rub with a soft towel and the panels are as clean today as they were the day they went in 30 months ago.

As a result of the Sanctuary Cove boat show I have made a couple of sales of hatches that pretty much cleaned me out of stock. I also have a number of people that expressed an interest in ordering at the show so I am waiting a couple of weeks more for these results to come in and I will be placing my next order. For anyone that wants indent pricing for hatches on this next order (will be placed end of June and should be arriving in Australia early August) you can contact me by email or phone (0413 101 475) to arrange what you need. For those that don't know, indent is where you give me your order and deposit (50%) prior to me placing the order with the factory and I give you about 25% - 30%  less (so about 10% -15% on my cost). So if you want to get in on this shipment contact me know in the next couple of weeks.

Hopefully this weekend I will have the rear bulkhead glassed and the ply pads in place. Then I will get on with the loose end jobs that need doing and decoring the hull around the dagger case holes in readiness for glassing them in.

June 8 Outboard wells and dagger cases.

After missing so much time it was good to get a long weekend and get 3 days of work on the boat. A day for me is only 7 hours though. Unfortunately the jobs that I have set myself for this month are time consuming for not much visual reward. But all jobs need to be done sooner or later so its best to just jump in and do them.

With the side decks off and the rear steps put aside for now the outboard wells are open again. I marked out 2 lines one each side of centre at 200mm in each hull. Then having decided at what height I wanted the outboard rails. I have bought some sheet track from McIntyre Marine. It comes to them in 2400mm lengths so I had them cut 2 lengths into 4 x 1200mm lengths. The plans only call for a 700mm track but I have an extra 500mm so that the outboard can be lifted on the tracks up through the open cover so that the outboards could be serviced easily from the steps and also so if necessary I can lift the outboards up so that I can reach the props for changing or removing nets or ropes tangled around them.

Once I had the height decided I could then mark the drill holes. The holes are 100mm centre to centre so marking them is pretty simple. Then I carefully drilled each hole through the glass and balsa but careful not to go through the glass on the other side. Glass kills blades of any kind very fast and balsa is very soft so you have to push the drill hard to get through the glass then all of a sudden you are through and then you have to pull up fast then you can push to the other glass and you can feel it (you would have to push hard again to get through the glass on the other side, and the other side of this bulkhead already has an extra layer of glass). Once all 48 holes were drilled I had to de-core the balsa between the front and back glass.

As anyone who had built a timber cored boat, whether the core is balsa, cedar, ply and probably also true for non timber, you need to keep any moisture out of the core. It is critical to building a boat that will last. So wherever you have a through hull such as a bolt, pipe or any exposed edge such as hatch lids, you have to de-core and back fill with filler, either glue or coving filler (microfibres or microspheres in resin) which create a barrier that stops moisture reaching the core. The most common way to do this for a through hull bolt is to drill a way oversize hole and fill it then re-glass the oversize hole and then when it is set you redrill the correct size to end up with a hole through the fill.

I have learnt a method (thanks James) for balsa that is a bit easier. It is to drill a hole through just the first layer of glass and the balsa. Then using an allen (hex) key in a drill and to push that into the balsa through the hole and then to slowly turn the drill until the key has cut a path through the balsa. Then using speed, the key is used to to ream the balsa out of the core all around, by moving the key around the hole you increase the reach of the angle on the key and by pulling it against the front glass and pushing it against the back glass you remove all balsa from the now 40mm hole inside the glass. Then push a blower nozzle in and give it a burst but be careful as balsa shavings will exit that hole at velocity.

There are 12 holes in each track x 4 tracks so with 48 holes this is a time consuming job for very little to show for it, but again as any cored boat builder will tell you, decoring is one of the most time consuming chore in the build. The next task was to fill them all. My method as I have outlined earlier in the build when making the hulls, is to mix the glue/filler and put it into zip lock clear plastic lunch bags and cut a corner off to create a piping bag and squeeze it into the hole until it overflows out. Then using a scraper I scrape it back flush to the glass. I ran out of time (Jo had arrived to pick me up from the shed and rather than finish I decided to finish the next day, which turned out to be a mistake). So I got all of them done in the port hull and got about half done in the starboard hull.

The intention the next day was to grind down the set filler back to smooth and flush with the glass ready to re-glass over (with this method you only have to glass one side, the other sides glass is intact) and to fill the rest of the holes and glass them over wet on wet. In fact when originally planning my day yesterday I had intended filling all the holes and over glassing them wet on wet, all of them, which I why I so readily decided to stop filling the night before as it was always my intention to fill and glass wet on wet. Mistake. What I had forgotten was that as the filler/glue sets it expands a little and in a tightly confined space it pushes glue out through the hole, which in normal circumstances is no big deal but with wet glass on it pushes the wet glass away from the surface glass around the hole leaving air under the glass and not adhered to the substrate glass. Not a disaster as it is only about a quarter of the holes and I will simply grind the lifted glass off again and re-glass them. But a lesson for next time. It is to be 2 processes from now on, let the fill set, then glass later.

The plans call for a layer of glass each side of bulkhead 7 (the rear bulkhead) and as it has the uni rope arc embedded in it and also because I have also glued panels back into the bulkhead to transform it from a walk through to and enclosed cockpit I readily followed the plans. As I mentioned earlier I had already glassed the inside of this bulkhead prior to making the cockpit furniture.

I measured and cut the glass ready to apply and got on and applied it. With the inside I hung the dry glass with spring clamps and brushed resin onto it to wet it out. This is a messy method as anyone who has attempted to brush resin to wet out will attest. Wetting out is not like painting, you need much more liquid to get the glass wet through so that it will penetrate and adhere to the substrate glass below, so it is inevitable you will drip a lot of resin. It is also a time consuming method and often results in too much resin.

So this time I wet the glass out on a table with plastic sheet, rolled it up and then hung it out wet (again using spring clamps) and using my hands and a consolidation roller I adhered it to the panel glass below. This method is much neater, much easier and perhaps a little faster. Once I had the port side glassed I applied peel ply. The reason I did this was twofold, first to soak up any excess resin but more importantly to avoid having to sand it later. I will be gluing and glassing the ply pads on and then eventually the rest of the well will be white resin coated to seal and smooth the well so the peel ply will pre key the surface for the next layer of resin.

Then when I did the starboard glassing I just had to first fill the remaining drill holes, which I quickly did (took about 20 minutes). I then went about wetting out the glass as I had done on the port side and applied it over the holes including the dozen or so that had setting glue in them. Once that sheet was on I started on the next sheet and as I hung the wet glass I noticed the glass lifting from around some of the wet glue holes. I tried pushing it back down and noticed how hot the now nearly set (through exothermic reaction) area around the holes had become. I could not get the wet glass to stay down all over the holes and there was a pronounced mound there now. I tried apply more resin to no avail. I will need to grind it off later as mentioned earlier.

Again the time flew by and the day had gone with just the glassing of a bulkhead done.

Today I set about trimming the dagger case on the port side, which had already been cut through the hull and side decks and to cut the starboard dagger case into the hull and side deck. This is a difficult (not technically just physically) task because the cases are quite heavy and go through the angled chine so the shape is not as straight forward as it would be on a flat hull panel.

It was however somewhat easier than the first one, which was a series of trial and error (fortunately not much error because starting with a too small hole and slowly getting it big enough has the end result of an ok fit). This time, using the hole of the port dagger case I traced it onto a piece of 3mm mdf and cut that piece out. I marked the centreline onto the template, reversed it for the other hull and I had a stencil to cut out to. The centre line is not actually centre on the template because of the angle of the chine the case goes through the line is offset. With the line pre-marked on the stencil and the case centreline already marked on the inside of the hull it was easy to place the stencil correctly and trace out the cut-out shape.

I also tried a different cutting method. Last time I used a jigsaw and within seconds the blade was blunt and smoke was pouring out of the cut as the blade gets very hot cutting the glass and burns the balsa. This time I traced the stencil onto each side of the hull panel (inside and outside). To get the stencil in the correct place outside I drilled holes on the centreline one against the bulkhead to mark the front position and then 3 more along the centreline. Then using the drill holes as a guide I ran a straight edge to mark the centreline and placed the stencil, lined up with the first hole as the front and traced the shape onto the other side of the hull panel. Then using a grinder with a solid cutting disk I scored the glass through both sides leaving just the balsa so that the jigsaw only had to cut the balsa and the glass edges guided the jigsaw blade. It was a bit tricky around some of the curves but overall much easier than trying to cut the entire panel with the jigsaw.

I used the same technique when trimming the dagger cases. Once I had the dagger cases roughly in position through the hulls and against the bulkhead (BH5) I marked the outside hull line with a marker pen, then removed each case (they are quite heavy because of the extra uni layers I applied to them for added strength) and scribed along this line with the edge of a grinder blade. The outside of the case has about 5mm of glass at the base so a jigsaw would have really struggled to get through it. But with them already cut the jigsaw had a much easier time of it. Once I had the angled case bottoms trimmed I cleaned up the angles with a grinder and replaced the cases in their through hull holes to see if the trim was close. Within 10mm is close enough. I will remark them for a more accurate final trim, then remove them again to de core the edges to be re-filled with uni rope and filler (uni rope to a depth of about 20mm and filler for the last 10mm or so) then when they are glued and glassed into the boat I can grind back the few mm of overhang and glass them from outside. The edges of the hull panel will also need to be de-cored and filled with uni rope.

Hopefully I will get the dagger cases glued and glassed in next weekend. Then I will make the grey water tank that will fit behind the port case and the cupboard that will sit behind the starboard case.

June 17 Forward lockers glassed.

Taking the side decks off the starboard hull allows me to finish the chores that I had not had access to. I have finished them in the port hull and now the starboard hull. These chores are glassing the inside of the foredeck and side deck joins and coating the inside of what will be a fender locker with white epoxy. What this reminded me of was how annoying a task glassing upside down, especially inside small cramped spaces. I almost always get resin in my hair and today was no exception. That and the fact you wish you were an octopus with 4 pairs of hands to keep it all up while smoothing it out. One little edge comes away and all of the sudden the entire tape is falling. It takes a little longer to glass upside down because to be absolutely sure it sticks it is safer to give the panel a coat of epoxy first, let it tack off, so it gets sticky, then run the tapes. So I ran the coves first, then brushed some epoxy on and let it go off a while. In the middle of cold winter, that while was a couple of hours!

I went on to do some other work, a bit more trimming of the dagger cases, come grinding of glass edges inside the boat under the cockpit seating in readiness for glassing the rest of the joins under there and cutting some plywood for making a grey water tank that will go between the port dagger case and the hull sides. I then wet out the tapes and finished the glassing inside of the forward sections in the starboard hull including inside the D section open to the hull. With these sections glassed on both hulls the side decks can now go on leaving just the insides of these joins left to glass through hatch lids or in the case of the most forward section, through holes I will cut in the 0 bulkhead and glue back in once the tapes are on, then the nose cone will go over the top of that bulkhead, sealing that area forever.

I also glued and glassed the ply pads for the outboard rails onto the back of bulkhead 6. These odd jobs are not done yet for a reason. They are unpleasant jobs that I have put off until now. But I can tell you this, as unpleasant as they are, winter is definitely the best time to be doing them. They are doubly unpleasant and or more difficult in the heat of summer.

I am waiting on a tool to arrive that I have bought on ebay. It is called a die grinder. It is a high speed air tool that with a shaped tungsten carbide burr (I actually already have the die grinder, $30 delivered and a set of different shaped burrs $50 have not arrived yet). This tool will be perfect for easy and fast decoring of balsa. I have to de-core both the hull edges around the dagger case and the dagger case edges. Once de-cored I will back fill with uni ropes and glue and glass the cases in. In the meantime there a a lot more jobs I want done before the side decks go on. The most important of these is re positioning the doors into the ensuite (starboard) and wardrobe (port) to make room for the mast posts. I also have the lay extra glass in the hulls to accept the loads that the masts will exert. This work will be easier with the side decks off due to extra air and light in the hulls.

Hopefully I will show some pics of how a die grinder helps with decoring when it arrives. I don't have a decent camera at the moment and have been using my phone. Hopefully I get hold of another camera soon so the pics improve.

June 21 Port Dagger case glassed in

During the week I glued and glassed the ply outboard pads onto the rear bulkhead. The bulkheads already have way oversize back filled holes that will meet up with the holes on the tracks. I wont attach the tracks until I have made the trucks, which comprise aluminium side plates attached to a 50mm x 250mm x 400mm cedar mounting block again with aluminium plate either side and all of this attached to 200mm long cars that will slide along the tracks. To be absolutely sure that it all slides freely (and not mounting the tracks perfectly parallel will affect this) I will wait until I have the cars and have made the trucks before fitting the tracks.

Yesterday I de-cored the dagger case ends and the hull panel cut outs and back filled the dagger case ends with uni rope and filling compound. It took me a few hours to complete all of the de-coring. I used the die grinder and burr that I purchased. It is a high speed air tool that rotates at up to 20000 rpm and takes bits with 1/4 inch shank. A burr is like a shaped (cylinder, Christmas tree, cone, ball etc) file that acts as a cutting tool. They are designed to grind metals so balsa is no problem for them but they do not remove the balsa fast. In fact along the straights I found it faster with the old fashioned chisel and mallet. I started on the starboard hull panel cut out first. I de-cored to about 20mm, but these edges are angled so in reality the depth was more like 40mm along the deep edge 20mm along the shallow edge.

Then when I started on the starboard dagger case, which I was decoring over the stern of the boat whilst standing on the steps. I did them there because the cases are heavy and I was too lazy to bring them down the steps then lift them back onto the boat again, a funny thing happened. I dropped the die grinder to the ground, a drop of about 8 feet. It fell on the bit, but being tungsten carbide it was un harmed. The die grinder I bought is an ebay cheapy. You can pay up to $200 for good ones, mine was $30. What had happened as a result of the drop was the shaft had bent just slightly so that the bit span off centre. I checked the bit in another tool to be sure the shaft of the bit was not bent but it was fine. It was definitely the tool. I cursed my bad luck (and stupidity for buying a cheapy) but had to push on. To my surprise the tool cut faster with the slight wobble of the bit than it did before. I couldn't believe my luck.

With the improved cutting of the die grinder I used it to de-core the 2 case ends including the 25mm back edges. Again I cut to about 20mm deep. Then over to the port hull to de-core it, what took me nearly an hour on the starboard side took me only 20 minutes with the wobbly bit. The bit is able to take the balsa off the inside of the fibreglass but to get a completely clean inside glass surface with all balsa removed, a chisel is still the best method.

I then cut some uni to the correct size to make the uni ropes that will fill the de-cored edges. I found that 400mm makes a nice size rope to fill a 20mm deep by 20mm wide trough. I wet 2 of the uni ropes out and filled the edges of the cases. I then filled the rest of the gaps and overfilled with filler compound (resin and microspheres). I then placed a sheet of plastic onto the edges and placed a piece of ply onto the edges to keep the rope and filler firmly in place using heavy blocks to keep the ply down firmly.

This morning I found that the case edges had not fully set, not surprising as I did them at about 5pm the night before and I use slow hardener. It was firm enough to give the port one a clean up so that I could fit it into the boat. I cleaned up all of the sides of the case that will be taped to the bulkhead and also gave the bulkhead a clean up (light sand with the grinder to be sure there are no rough areas to upset the glass tape). Then I wet out a uni rope and pushed it into the hull panel de-cored trough and filled the rest with filler.

Then I ran a thick bead of glue along the front fact of the case and slid it down into the opening. I had a milk crate below the opening to stop the case at the correct height. I had slid the case into and out and back into the slot a number of times with the milk crate in place. Now that I had glue on the case the bloody milk crate slid out of the way and the case dropped to deep. I had to lift the case back out, jump out of the boat, replace the crate, and climb back into the boat and replace the case. This time it worked. Bloody Murphy! Anyway no harm done I clamped the case in place, adjusted it to square and plumb and tightened the clamp to be sure it would not move.

I then filled the rest of the gaps in the through hull with filler by using a scraper to push filler up from below until it had filled the gap and was coming out inside (which I checked by climbing the ladder to look). Once done it was time to tape. I started by glassing the base from the inside (the outside wont be glassed until it is set because the case is a mm or 2 proud of the hull in order to be able to grind it smooth). A little more filler from the inside and glass which I was wetting out on a sheet of plastic. I coved the inside of the case against the bulkhead by pouring a runny mix of coving compound down the join point then once it has reached the bottom I pressed a tape against the compound using conduit then applied a second layer of glass. I could reach the inside of the base from inside the hull by hand and coved as well as I could and pressed glass down into the wet cove and against the hull side and the case side. I then poured more runny coving compound over that and laid another layer of glass over that. Then finally the edge of the case against the bulkhead on the inside side of the hull (open to the companionway). This of course was the easiest to cove and tape.

A double check of the square and plumb of the case and a smear of the left over filler on the outside joins to be sure there are no voids and I am pretty much done. The overfilled coving mix on the hull panel will be a guide when grinding that I am getting down to the copper epoxy as a reminder to be careful not to grind through the glass. I do have to take the copper epoxy off in order to glass the outside of the case onto bare glass, then a thin layer of bog to fair the panel back then recoating with copper epoxy to finish.

One down one to go. It was satisfying to finally have a case in. Next Saturday I will get the other one in.

June 27 Starboard Dagger case glassed in

During the week I trimmed the overhang of the port dagger on the outside of the hull, at the same time removing the copper epoxy and bog back down to glass so that I can glass the cases glass to glass on the outside, re-bog it, re-fair it and re copper epoxy it. I ran a straight edge over the opening up and down and fore and aft so as to be sure that the case was trimmed flush so that when done it will re fair to a flat hull panel. I also had to make the edges curved so that glass would stick to it all the way around.

Today the first thing I did was to give the port dagger case on the outside of the hull a coat of resin. I want it to tack off during the day then later in the day when I glass over the joins the glass will stick better to the tacked off resin as it goes around the corners. It is important to get a good smooth adhesion of the glass with on air bubbles or kinks in the glass. The clearance inside the dagger case is only a few mm all around so the glass has to go down as well as I can get it so as to not close that gap between the case and the dagger too much.

The next job, or the main job for the day was to glue and glass in the other dagger case. As last time I started by wetting out a uni rope and pushed it into the de cored edge of the case through hull cut out, then I buttered the leading edge of the case that meets the bulkhead and I put the case into place, adjusting the height so that only a couple of mm of case protruded out of the bottom of the hull, and for plumb and square and clamped it in place. I then coved the joins using a long thin strip of ply with a rounded end. Last time I used a piece of conduit but I found the ply easier to control I could reach down the inside (hull side) join and cove it top to bottom with the extended coving tool and also along the inside hull join. Of course coving the outside (companionway) side with a regular coving tool. I pushed glue down into the gap through the hull from above and below to ensure no voids. I then glassed all of the joins. For the hull side I used the conduit to apply the glass as I did last time. I used the detail roller down inside as far as I could reach.

Glassing to the bulkhead on the companionway side is again very easy as is glassing to the hull. I then smeared a little more coving compound around the join on the underside of the hull.

I then glassed and bogged the port side hull exterior joins on the tacked of resin coat from early. It worked well. There are a number of angles and tight joins so I needed to cut a number of small pieces of glass and overlap them in order to go around the various corners without the glass wanting to lift or crease. Once I had 2 layers of glass all around the edges I let it tack off for a while and went on to another task for day. I need to bog this glass while wet but I need it to tack off so that it does not move as I apply the bog.

The other task I had set myself for the day was to re position the forward doorways in each hull, through to the robe on the port hull and ensuite on the starboard hull. The reason the doors are being moved is that the masts have been repositioned from outboard on each hull side to inboard down to the chamfer panel and the masts would protrude into the doorway if I don't reposition them out toward the hull sides. An easy enough task, cut out the new doorway side and glue the piece taken out back in on the other side.

The method for marking and cutting the new door position was to get a piece of mdf with a straight edge and run that down the hull centreline against the bulkhead (the doors are centred on the hull centreline) and mark out half a doorway profile and cut it out. Then using the template I moved the doorway the correct amount as per the revised plans I have been sent and re marked the new door cut out, and cut it. The plans suggest that because the door is moved close to the hull side that the normal curved bottom cannot fit and 100mm of bulkhead must be retained so a straight section 100mm parallel to the hull side is called for.

Once cut out, the piece that came out is curved exactly like the other side of the doorway and can be glued back into the other side to complete the door relocation, well almost, because of the straight edged cut out, that will need another piece cut out and glued into the space it will leave but I decided that would be easier once the rest of the panel is glued in. I have plenty of offcuts to make the small pieces to fill the gaps. Once I have these small sections glued in too I re-glass the panel each side to complete the re position. I also still have to de-core the edges and back fill with uni rope but then I have to do this for all the doorways anyway.

The the last thing I did today was apply some bog to the glassing of the port outside hull joins. A good days work, I got a lot done. I am getting close to being ready to close the hulls up. I just need to glass the reinforcing into the hulls for the mast posts and then I am going to close it all up. By the end of July the hulls will be closed.

June 28 Starboard Dagger case bogged

It was such a beautiful winter day today that I decided to have a light day and take Jo (an Jake) out for a late lunch at The Entrance. So all I did today was to grind down the starboard case overhang to flush with the hull panel (removing the copper epoxy) and glassing the case from the outside and bogging it.

I did not do as good a job of the angles when decoring and backfilling on this side so whilst I had the top of the case edge almost exactly flush the bottom of the case edge protruded about 10mm which all had to be ground off. I had buried the uni rope about 5mm down so by grinding 10mm off I was grinding some of the uni rope out. Hard work. Anyway whilst it was a little harder than the port hull it was not a major problem and once I had it ground flush and the copper epoxy stripped away I set about glassing and bogging the edges. After cleaning dust away (with compressed air) I applied a coat of epoxy and some filler to fill the tiny gaps that you get when you grind a uni rope, and let it set off a while. I wet the glass out too so it would tack off a little before I applied it.

While I was letting it all tack off I sanded the glue joins of the repositioned doorways in preparation for glassing the parts back on to return the full panel strength. I also need to fill the small void created by the new door shape but before I do that, the plans now call for 4 layers of 450gsm glass as a platform for the base of the mast posts. The plans call for the glass to span both sides of the bulkhead so I think I have to remove the base of the bulkhead against the chamfer panel, glass the support platform and replace the bulkhead base, so in effect the void will get bigger before it gets filled back in.

With a half hour or so of contemplation with plans in hand about how I might tackle this next glassing task and equally important when I might do it as this glassing goes onto the sole so I need to be sure that I have all the plumbing or wiring that I need to go under that sole in before I can glass it down, I sanded the bulkheads and went back to the glassing job on the remaining dagger case. I easily applied the glass and mixed up some bog with some left over resin that was also starting to get warm in the tub so I needed to use it a little sooner than I would have liked but I got it on without disturbing the glass.

I will have to let this bog set a few days before I attempt to fair it as the resin is taking a couple of days to fully set in winter. I am glad I finally have the dagger cases in the boat, I have been putting them off for some time (as I do with jobs I either don't like or don't feel confident about) and is another of the to do jobs ticked off.

June 30 Port dagger case exit sanded

I had hoped to get a couple of hours each of Monday and Tuesday to get into 70 hours and to have both case exits sanded. Unfortunately I only got to work one of the afternoons and only got one of them done. The port hull. I sanded the bog down and discovered that here and there there was glass that was not adhered to the glass below, in other words a bubble. They are easy to find, when you run your finger over them the sound that is made changes like tapping a wall to find the studs. Once you start sanding the glass will be sanded off leaving another area that will need to be back filled with more bog. You would think that ideally you would need to re-glass the section but I have 2 and in some places 3 layers of glass over the joins so unless you go through both layers there is no need to re-glass the entire area just fill the area back up and re fair. To be sure though I decided to fill with glue rather than bog. It is structurally harder. I decided I would run a smear of it over the entire edge of the exit of the case to harden that area.

I also ran my hand up inside the case to feel for splinters. It is inevitable I think that when you are running many small pieces of glass up inside the case that some of it will set as splinters away from the surface. The only way to know is the hard way, run your hand up and gently feel for them. Where they exist I tried to remove them with sand paper as best I could. The once I was sure I could do no better with sand paper I ran a smear of glue over the edges to be sure as good seal was created by the smear of glue and also be sure that the glue itself was not going to be sharp points that could damage the surface of the daggerboard as it is raised or lowered through the shaft. I will give this smear of glue another sand once it is set.

Then once this additional glue sets and I backfill any lows spots left I can coat it with some high build and sand that back, ready for a couple of coats of copper epoxy to restore it to the original finish. I will have the other side (starboard) sanded to the same level later this week. Nine lives will be painted soon then they will apply copper epoxy so I will run their paint roller with copper epoxy over my case exits when they do their hulls.

I am still not quite getting the hours I need each month. I have been aiming at 90 hours but am only getting to about 70 each month. Maybe next month. Next month I plan to start getting to some of the internal under sole work such as other through hulls, conduits for wiring and plumbing so that I can finally glue the soles down.