2009 building logs

May 2009 Finishing rear steps (finally!).

After 2 months now I think I can safely say the rear steps will be finished this month. I may not get them glued into the boat because of work I need to do inside the wells that would be much easier to do before I glue the steps in, but they will be finished awaiting fitting. Just. Later this month I go to the Sanctuary Cove boat show again. This time for the first time as an exhibitor to see if there is any interest in the hatches I have been importing. So I will be away a week and lose a weekend on the build and next Saturday Jo and I are going to a music festival so I lose another Saturday so I will be lucky to get much done on the build this month.

May 5 Fairing the steps.

I have spent the last weekend fairing the steps. So far I have applied 3 separate layers of bog and sanded them off again. Each time fixing an area of unfairness or filling holes. The first layer of bog was applied straight over the wet tapes that covered the foam edges and as I did so I also bogged as much of the rest of the steps as I could. It is difficult or perhaps a better description is unnecessary when you can rotate the part, to bog both a vertical and horizontal plane at the same time and not get runs.

Once I had the first bog layer on I sanded it back down to flat as I did get some runs. I use electric help when sanding back the original bog coat. On the curved vertical step risers I use a 1/3 sheet cheapy orbital sander and on the flat step tread I use the Bohler. The Bohler is a dream to use and you get a very fair finish. Still not 100% good enough to completely fair so I will still use a board on it so I often stop using the electric tools with some way to go so that I can finish with the boards with some bog still to go. Whilst the Bohler seems to keep a very fair surface what I found I did when sanding the risers is that due to the width of the risers being only slightly more than the width of the sander the middle was being sanded when I did the outside edge and when I did the inside edge consequently it got twice the sanding either edge got and as I result I had a dip in the middle. This is not so much of a problem considering I still have a number of layers of highbuild to apply and also that the middle will get non slip on the tread so it wont matter if the middle is a few microns lower than the front and back edges but it is better to be exactly fair.

On the curved step fronts (risers) there is no problem in using the 1/3 sheet rectangle orbital sander. If you use a long board on the curves then the most that will be in contact at any point around the curve is a centimetre or 2 so there is no difference between a 1 meter board or a 200mm board or for that mater between a short board, long board or electric sander as it is in effect just a short board. The only thing is you must keep it moving along the curve so in other words use it as you would a static board.

So once I had the rough first layer sanded off I applied another thin layer with a tight screed using a flat edge like a trowel edge so long as you are sure it is pretty flat. This will fill any hollows you created and will result in less work if the application is already pretty fair. The pro builders call this a "tight wipe". In the pic above you can see the bottom step is faired but the middle step still has the tight wipe layer of bog on it. It already looks fair.

Once this tight wipe is sanded back and glass starts to be revealed you must stop sanding. You don't want to go through the glass or you have to re-glass it. Not good. Sp if you still have valleys or pits in other areas that contain bog you must back fill them rather than keep sanding down to remove them. So this entails just filling the areas that need to be filled and then fairing these bog touch ups back to the level of the rest of the faired surface.

With the step treads fair it was time to fair the risers. As these are curved  the only way to know if they are fair is to run a flexible batten around the curve. By pushing the batten down around the curve at each end of the batten you will see if there are any highs or lows around the curve. I had some lows so I back filled these lows with bog and sanded them off again. Unfortunately I don't have any pics yet. Then once I sanded that bog off again I recheck the batten and fill again and sand again. Like I did with the tight wipe there is a way to fair the wet bog to help reduce sanding by getting the bog into shape first. This is done by using the batten as a screed. So pile on more bog than needed and screed some of it back off again with the flexible batten.

Then with the risers close to fair (I still had another layer of bog to apply today) I turned my attention to the foam step fronts. Same process as the curved risers but being only 20mm wide it was just a matter of building up the hollows with bog, overfilled rather than shaping the wet bog, and I will just have a bit more sanding work to get the curves of the step fronts perfect curves. I also ran a cove of bog with some coving compound in the mix along the 90 degree edges where each step riser met the tread below. It is important with a curved front that the angle of the coving tool is kept constant or otherwise the size of your cove changes and along a 2 meter stop front with gloss paint on this will be very noticeable.

So far I have spent about 14 hours fairing to do both sets of steps from the moment I started the first layer of bog. I probably still have 12 hours to go too. After I get the risers and front edge curves fair and any minor blemishes back filled it will be time to start high building and sanding that back. Probably a few coats of this. I like to highbuild then sand, highbuild then sand rather than apply a number of coats in one application. Then once I have them close to ready to paint I will cut one of the outboard well lids as I want to take a finished lid with the LED rope lights in to Sanctuary cove to show what can be done with the lights. Ideally I would not fully remove the lid, I would cut most of it out but leave tabs in so that the entire steps can be fitted to the boat as one piece. Otherwise any slight twist in the fit and the lid wont fit fair again. But because I want to take the lid with me I will cut it out then re attach it in some way before fitting the step set in. So once cut out the entire edges need to be de-cored and back filled on both parts to completely seal the balsa core in. This is critical. It will be a high tread wear area and core integrity will be critical.

May 10 Engine bay lid cut out.

After another 6 hours of sanding then re-bogging, sanding and re-bogging over the 4 weeknights this past week I think I have the steps fair. By wrapping a flexible batten around the step fronts I could see the hollows. Strip planking does not create a curve, it creates a series of small straights and bends that from a distance looks curved, but to finish the curve completely you need to bog the surface then sand back to the base glass effectively building a little part of the curve between each kerf. Eventually you should have a series of lines where the bog is removed to the glass and a series of bogged sections. In places the bog is continuous but very thin in parts, a little thicker, as much as 2mm in other.

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In all I think I applied bog and sanded it off again about 5 times before I had what I thought was a fair enough surface on the step risers. I then repeated this on the foam front edges. As I went I also back filled small pocks and marks, air bubbles and various other blemishes to now have a pretty smooth and fair surface. Apart from edges that still need to be finished (rounded off where they are round, squared off where they will be square) the fairing is almost complete.

Marking out the engine bay lid was easy enough. Cutting it out was much much harder. I dont have an expensive jigsaw. I am told there is a big difference between a good one and a cheap one. I have never been much good with a jigsaw and they say a good tradesman never blames his tools but my jigsaw technique often sees the blade wandering all over the place. But today cutting out the engine bay lid I made a couple of mistakes as well as the poor wandering of the saw blade. The first mistake I made was to cut with the jigsaw flush against a curved front instead of square to centreline, meaning I was following the line on one side but missing it completely on the other side because of the angle the blade was cutting at.

Fortunately I did not cut much at that wrong angle and glue will fill the line that I cut out wrongly. I also had a number of corners that the jigsaw could not reach into, but I figured that I could just cut some from the inside and some from the outside to cut into all of the places. I had marked the lid on both sides of the step set. But cutting from one side to the other meant not all cut lines met exactly to the mm. That is not such a big concern and I will be back filling the edges on both the lid and the opening and overfilling them before sanding them back to neat and square everywhere. So in effect I will need to make the gap between them oversize so that they don't bind anywhere. I am not so concerned about these hatches sealing well (although I will be making sills) as the engine bay is a wet area and there will be more water inside than out!

Once I had the lid completely cut out I attached plates under the steps so that the lid would sit in it and I braced the front so that where the hatch lid was removed leaving a void I wanted the 2 halves to be braced to each other so that the part would not twist or easily break as I mounted it on the boat. This part will come off and go on a few times before it is finally glued and glassed in so I want it to be robust until then, and when fitted it cannot be twisted in anyway or else the lid wont go back on fair. I then lifted the part onto the boat again to see that the cut-out worked.

I was satisfied that the cut out worked well but I realised I may have made another small mistake, I curved the corner of the lid when cutting it out but I may have been better off having a square corner, I am not sure yet. A square corner is a weak point in that at the corner cracks can start whereas on a curved corner cracks cannot start but I may have difficulty with the lid binding with the curve whereas that could not happen with a square corner.

Next job was to de-core the edges of the hatch lid. This is a fairly easy task but must be done correctly and well to be sure of a good seal for the balsa core. I run a router around as much of the edge I can close to the glass with a special blade for cutting a line down into the balsa close to the glass. I run it each side, although being steps there are many places the router wont reach. This is not a big problem because getting the core out is not difficult. Once the slots are cut I use a chisel to push through between the glass either side cutting the core out. You can drag the chisel or push it, the core just comes out in clumps at first. You dont need to worry about it being too neat in there but you must get every last trace off balsa off the glass each side. There are 2 reasons for this. First you want a glass to glass bond for the backfilling you will replace into the trench and secondly anywhere that balsa stops glue it is an ingress point for water. It wicks in through any balsa you leave on the edges into the core inside. Even though the balsa is edge grain (the grain goes from one glass side to the other not along the board) and theoretically water cannot travel across it only along it, you must seal the edges completely to be absolutely sure. To not do this properly would be like putting deadlocks on the doors then leaving the window open. All you need to do is run a sharp chisel along the glass both sides chiselling off any balsa residue. Not hard at all.

With all the balsa removed, I mixed up a thick mix of a combination of coving material and glue mix, the glue to add strength, and back filled the edges packing the mix in tightly and over filling it. Once it sets I can sand it back to a neat square edge, and finish the fairing, including cleaning bog from up inside and under the foam groove that the LED strip will be siliconed into and then fitting the rope light. I will then mask it over and start the painting (which includes more fairing of the highbuild) process.

I am running out of time before the boat show. I only got 2 hours work done yesterday as Jo and I went to Groovin the Moo, a rock concert at Maitland show grounds. We saw about 10 bands, the highlights being the first and last bands we saw. The first band we got to (the 3rd for the day) at around 1.30pm was called Children Collide. They were fantastic. There were a number of good bands after them, Jo likes Little Birdie, we both liked the energy of Mammal, we both liked The Grates. At first I didn't much like the Drones but they grew on me and the last 2 songs they did were good. Neither of us liked the US bands Okkervil River, we didnt like them at all, De La Soul were ok but not much new, they played their hit from the early 90's Hey how ya doin, sorry you cant get through....just about everyone used that as an answering machine message at some point, in the days before mobile phones. Neither of us liked Architecture in Helsinki, they were just a bit weird and maybe we were (well I was) getting impatient for the highlight for both of us and the reason we went, was to see the Hilltop Hoods. They are Australia's best hip hop group and they didn't disappoint us. They were fantastic. We skipped the last band, The Living End, we like them but did not want to stay. We had a great day among all the teenagers.

May 13 Engine bay lid nearly finished.

I got another couple of evenings work on the lid. I am still in doubt to have it finished (including spraying it with top coat gloss white) by next Monday but I am gonna give it a good try. I sanded the back filled edged back to square and slightly bigger than it was before with the edges overfilled. I also got the sides as close to flat as I could but because I cut it slightly out the top step is, when on its side, a little lower on one side and higher on the other by about 5mm, what the really means is that the top step tread is a little to one side than the other 2 which are directly in line. Almost imperceptible unless you are really looking for it, and of course so long as the cut out in the rest of the steps is also in the same configuration, which of course it is because the lid has been cut from it, then it will all fit together and open and close properly and be close to invisible.

Once the edges were all square and flat as I could get them I gave the back (the inside underside) of the engine bay lid a sand to smooth out the tapes under there and then gave it a thick coat of white epoxy. Some people fair the inside of hatch lids and inside hatches but I am not going to. I don't feel it is needed. So long as the surface is smooth to touch and there are not jagged tape edges to splinter, I am not concerned with how it looks. I need it to be sealed and be smooth. The white epoxy is a perfect liner for inside hatches. It is thick and self levelling, dries to a high gloss finish and hides most tapes so that whilst you can see them you cant feel them, and the high gloss finish means it is easy to wipe clean.

Tonight I gave the outside of the steps one more go over with some instant filler (car bog) for the few tiny dents and blemishes left on them and then gave them as thick a coat of high build as I could apply using a spray gun. I gave it a coat, let it dry off a little (about 10 minutes) and gave it another coat as I still had some paint left in the pot and as it is a 2 pack, once mixed you either use it or lose it. I had enough for another coat and then just a drop left. I did get some runs, so I could not paint this way if it was top coat but knowing that I will be sanding this off again I was not too concerned by the runs. What the gloss of wet paint does is lets you know if the surface is fair or not. It will dry to a matt finish but while wet I got a good look at the surface and apart from pinholes in the bog that the highbuild fills the surface was pretty good, the coves neat, the fronts pretty fair and the tops very fair.

I am quite pleased with the way it is looking. It means that so far I am getting fairing right and it gives me confidence that I will get the fairing all over the boat pretty right.

May 16 Engine bay lid sprayed white.

During the week I sanded back the layer of high build with 120 grit paper and filled a lot of pin holes that the highbuild shows up in the bog layer and gave it another coat of highbuild. I used car bog which is a 2 pack polyester which is not recommended for filling epoxy boats but these pin holes are so tiny that just the surface tension of the paint would be enough to hold the bog in if it did not adhere to the highbuild so I am not too concerned with it not being ideal. It sets really fast so 5 minutes after applying it you can sand it back.

I easily sanded out the runs I had in the first coat of highbuild and kept sanding until the orange peel was completely removed. On the second high build coat I was more used to its consistency and I did not get another run. The next day when it had set most of the pin holes were filled but I still had a few here and there that needed more fill. This time I applied the fill before I started sanding. These pin holes fill with dust and even after a blow down some are very difficult to find again, so filling what I could see of the newly dry high build was easy.

Today before I sanded the second highbuild today I had to dry fit the LED light strips under each step. Using an air powered die grinder with a tapered bit I ground out the bog over runs and a little of the foam where the gap was a touch too tight for the rope. I want a tight fit but not so tight that I cant get a coating of sealant between the sides and the rope light. I also had to grind out the shape of the wiring connectors which are a little bigger than the rope. I missed an opportunity to hide the wiring in the side edges that I de-cored and back filled. I made a small slot for the wiring to go through to the back of the lid and will run it on the inside. I did not want it visible and ideally I will run it inside the de-cored sides and fill over the wiring and have them come out at the top, next to a hinge. As I will used open pin hinges so the lids can be completely removed (for servicing the motors) I will run a connector plug so they can be un plugged when taking the lids off.

With the rope lights dry fitted I sanded this second highbuild and filled coat back with 240 grit paper. Again I sanded until the orange peel effect disappeared. Once sanded, I still had some blemishes here and there to fill again which I did, it is an ever decreasing repeat until you are satisfied that you have done as much as you can. I still have a few blemishes that I am struggling to completely remove as I am down to the glass and cant sand any further but overall I am pretty happy with the way this job has turned out. The finish of the highbuild when sanded with 240 grit is almost glass smooth, without the gloss.

I applied the first coat of top coat. I decided on Dulux Luxathane R, a 2 pack polyurethane. I chose it mainly because it is a tough paint, can be over coated (another coating) with minimal preparation, can be applied to just about anything without primer and is quite a lot cheaper than any other brand. Having said that, it may not be as good as other brands, but for now it will do. 4 litres (3.2 litres of paint, 800ml of hardener) cost $107, a 1 litre kit of Altex costs $85 so is over 3 times the price. Over the entire boat that could be $1000's. I admit I have not done much research on the various paints being well over a year away from needing to know but I will need to do some research soon. The downside of Luxathane is it is pretty nasty stuff to breathe or get on your skin. No problem for me, I wear gloves and disposable overalls and a full face mask to protect both my lungs and my eyes. There was no-one else in the shed or will be in the shed until tomorrow so any drops in the air will be well and truly gone by then.

Unfortunately I don't have expensive painting equipment, a borrowed small compressor and spray gun. One of the problems with such equipment is that compressed air contains plenty of moisture and if it is not removed from the line before it gets to the gun it will sometimes drip out on the job causing bubbles in the paint. The guys that will be painting Nine Lives next month have some kind of filter system on their lines that remove all moisture but they wont be back for a month and I cant afford the couple of grand one of these filters costs. I doubt I will be painting my boat, I will hire a crew like the guys that will paint nine lives who will have such equipment. Hopefully I will be able to cut these bubbles out and now that I know to expect drops of water I will take precautions to ensure they don't drip onto the job.

I will cut this coat with wet and dry (about 400 grit) and give it another coat so hopefully the finish of the final coat will be good. Then I can fit the LED lights, glue and seal them in with silicon sealant and they are done for now and I can use it for my boat show display. Whilst this process has taken such a long time I have really enjoyed it.

May 21-24 Sanctuary Cove Boat Show

In order to sand the steps and get a second coat of paint on I had to bake the steps. Dennis gave me the idea and it worked a treat. I made a temporary oven by leaning 3 sheets of play to form 2 walls and a roof and then draped plastic sheeting over each end and placed an electric heater inside (actually half in half out so that the thermostat would not cut the heater off). It got to 50 degrees C inside and after a few hours inside this it was hardened. I sanded the runs out of the risers and water bubbles out of the treads with wet and dry 400 grit.

The light in my shed at night even with strong Halogen lights is not great for painting white on white so to avoid getting runs in it again I decided to wait until the next morning to spray the second coat. Unfortunately, so paranoid about getting runs again (as I had no time left to cut them out and coat a third time) and inexperienced at spray painting, I gave the second coat a very light coat. The end result (after another stint in the oven so that I could transport the steps to SC boat show the next day) was that I did not give a thick enough coating in order for the paint to self level into a smooth finish. I had what could only be described as more of a splatter covering of paint. It was glossy in parts and spotty in others. I looked OK, but I now know I can do much better than that. Having said that I doubt I will want to paint my own boat. Painting is crucial to getting a great looking boat and I doubt I could get a good enough finish.

But one thing that the painting exercise taught me was that I am capable of getting a good fairing finish. You never really know until you have a coat of gloss on, but after applying paint to the steps I could see that in all the critical areas, such as along the coves, around the curved edges and across the front of the curved risers. It also showed me how fine a job needs to be done. The slightest blemish will show up like a neon sign with gloss white paint on.

May 31 Removing the strip plank panels for the last time

I did not get much work done this last weekend in May, I was pretty tired after having done the SC boat show and on Saturday I helped Dennis lift his boat up another meter off the ground in order to get the rudders into the sockets. We jacked it up a cm at a time until we had it high enough to get the shafts up under the hull and into the socket. This took a few hours. Then with the help of the guys helping jack up the other boat I had them help me lift the strip plank panels off each side of the boat. I have removed them now that the steps are pretty much finished, so that I can glue and glass the dagger cases into the hulls which I cant do without the lids off. I also have some glassing inside the starboard bow to do, then the 2 sides will go back on for the last time and be glassed onto the boat to seal the hulls shut.

On Sunday I started work on preparing the outboard wells so that when I glue and glass the steps on the work inside the outboard well is done. The plans call for both sides of bulkhead 7 (the rearmost spanning bulkhead) to have a full layer of 450gsm glass on both sides. This bulkhead has been cut in an arc from centre line into each hull in order to bury a uni rope, so it makes sense that it would be re strengthened with a layer of glass each side. I have already glassed the inside of it before I made the cockpit furniture. If you don't recall, I also glued panels of 25mm duflex back into the bulkhead in order to change it from a walkthrough into an enclosed cockpit. So all these joins need to be smoothed so that the glass goes on without lumps or air bubbles. Once I had sanded the rear sides of the bulkhead ready for glass it was too late (not enough time left for me to finish the job in the time I wanted to work until) so I made the ply pads that will go either side of the bulkhead in order to hold the outboard rails. After cutting the 4 pads to size I routered the edges round and sanded them ready to be glassed onto the bulkheads each side once the layer of glass is applied to the back. I still have to mark out the centre lines of each pad so that I can attach them in the correct place and I will also de core the bulkhead at each bolt hole in advance of it going on. Where ever you go through a bulkhead or hull or deck panel you must de-core it and back fill it with glue in order to protect the rest of the core from moisture.

Due to the boat show I did not get as much done on the build as I had hoped. Hopefully I will make more progress in June.