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Sanding the deck

With the boat finally back in the garage, it's time to fix up the deck and get it ready for a few applications of black. This has been hard going - not having car out of garage means there's no impetus to get cracking to get the car out of the elements, and so motivation is lacking. That doesn't mean I haven't done a bunch of sanding, though.

I also prepared the gunwale for black. I taped off a few spots to stop "black overshoot". In spots where I had sanded through the green tape, I added more on top. I should have put the original blue tape as close to the edge of the green as possible (about 1mm works well). Then, when sanding through the blue and green, it's a lot easier to tell how much is left to go. Now, I have to put blue on to ensure that I don't epoxy the green tape on to the deck.

Once all that was ready, I tagged places that needed black with post-it flags. Tape sticks too well and it's hard to get off with gloved fingers. These worked pretty well.

Then, black: one two three.

I stopped wetsanding at exactly the right time - the cold has arrived. When I got up the next morning, there was a nice thick layer of frost over everything outside. Apparently October has gone from a record high to a record low. At least I timed things well.

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Let's go sailing

I feel compelled to post this video. Rockin'.

You might also want to check out the SwiftSolo Class Association's photos on flickr.

Enough is enough

Onwards. I cleaned up last week's epoxy pass, and then marked all the spots where I had to remove more scratches from the random orbital. Putting a bright light against the surface helps find all those spots. Then sand. Even if cold and wet.

Since I had gone to all this trouble, I figured even with the risk of sanding through, I might as well take a few passes with the longboard to ensure things are at least *somewhat* fair. This board had 220 on it; once I finished a quick pass with that, I hit the 400-grit and 600-grit.

There were still some scratches, both from the random orbital and spots I'd missed with the 400/600, and the 220 had left a mark. I tagged these with tape, then sanded them down with 220 on a block, rinsed, squeegeed, and checked if they needed another pass.

Once all those scratches were gone, I switched to a new sheet of 400 paper, with the objective to remove all white lines (which were sanding lines from coarser paper). Then 600 (again). Then 800. Now there's a nice reflection.

By this point, the hull should look pretty much like a mirror. Mine does, but there are a few obvious scratches. More than that, the entire surface has the very light directional scratches, as metal might if you rubbed it with a slightly abrasive rag. And finally, all reflected lines should be (at most) bowed with no discontinuities.

Certainly I haven't reached that level of perfection. But to remove the discontinuities in the reflection on the hull, I would have to sand all the way down to the wood. Enough's enough. I want to sail one day. Time to flip the hull back and start working on something else. I could do this for the rest of time.

There are a still a few scratches; to get these out I'd have to re-sand down to 400 and back up to 800. Max at one point said "well, kayak builders all say to not bother going past 640 - not worth it". And when I think about it, all I'm going to do is go out and scratch up the hull anyway. Why take these out now?

So, I moved the hull back into the garage, vacuumed the floor (all the paste from the wetsanding collected on the concrete, dried out, and would fly up in the air if I didn't vacuum it up), and, wait for it... started sanding some more.

I know of three places where I've sanded through: a spot on the bow piece (which I think I'll get when I'm doing the deck), a spot around station 6 right near the edge of the black on the left side, and near the transom on the right side you can see red circles that I previously epoxied over. This last part means I've sanded through all three layers from a few weeks ago. Amazing.

So all told, there were seven applications of black for the hull: Sep8, Sep17, Oct1, Oct4, Oct7, Oct13, Oct15. Talk about a Sisyphean task.

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If you sand, you will sand through

If there is a truism about sanding this black, it is that if you sand, you will sand through. This isn't helped any by the vast expanse of black on the hull.

I started out with 220 — and managed to sand through (sigh). I figured, if that was the only spot I might not patch it up. So I continued on to 400 grit. By 400, the squeegee was starting to really slide off the hull — quite noticeable how much smoother the surface got. Both 400 and 600 like to "float" over the hull, they can't get below the sheet of water. To get around this, I would wet the surface, move the water away, sand a bit, then rinse.

With 600 grit, the hull started to get somewhat reflective — I wonder what 1000 will be like. And, of course, I got a bit wet. It's chilly these days, wetsanding is cold.

With another hole sanded into the black, I went back and fixed it. While I was at it, I filled all the dimples, and I decided that the underside of the launcher throat could be faired out a bit as well.

While this was all curing, I went back to the hull and used the random orbital to sand down some spots on the hull where there were innies. This was a mistake. I used too rough a grit of paper. Now I have swirly sanding marks in a bunch of spots - and I'm going to have to sand more to get rid of them all. And sanding means I'll sand through. Sigh.

So, I cleaned up the launcher throat and cleaned up the transom (which is starting to look done). And applied another three-round application of black epoxy, one two three (including the throat).

And once everything cured, I started sanding again. Rule number one about sanding off patches: sand the edges to feather them in. Work your way into the spot which you were covering up. And only sand that spot enough to remove the gloss, no more. Even with this approach, once I started wetsanding a bit - I sanded through in another six spots. Six is too many. One two three. Oh, and on to the second can of black graphite powder. Hope I don't need a third.

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Still Wetsanding

With another layer of black on, it was time for... wait for it... more sanding. But that just turned up spots I had missed with the previous application of black. Time for an entire new layer... again. Three layers — one two three — overnight in the middle of the week, because I wanted to be sure I could wetsand on Friday (I intended to take the day off). Each application was very thin - only three squirts per side - which made "line runs" less likely.

Having put all this black on, the one thing I can say is make *sure* you pull as many loose bristles out of these brushes as possible, it's a *pain* to get them out of the epoxy. (Although that said, using the sharp point of a pencil to pull them off works ok. Another option is a x-acto knife, or any kind of knife point.)

On to Friday. I started out with wet 60 to pull off the "big" high spots, then moved on to 220. As I went, I squeegeed off the area I worked to see how many dimples remained. 220 turned out not to go quite quickly enough, so I returned to 60 and went another round over the entire hull. After a few hours it started to look rather smooth. Then mark the dimples, return with the 220.

Eventually, I stopped marking the dimples. I used to do "passes" on the hull - sand all the way along, squeegee it off, circle the dimples, repeat. But with the squeegee, it's easier to just squeegee one area, mark, sand, and repeat just in that area. That way there's less moving the hose around (which is a hassle - it always wants to fall off the hull).

Of course, all that sanding meant I sanded through the black. Time for more (two, three).

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More wetsanding

Well, onwards with the sanding. Things were going slowly with my 220-grit, so I figured I might as well try using 60-grit regular paper and see how it worked in the water. Result: not too bad. It just falls apart a bit quicker. However, it does sand down the high spots pretty quickly. I took all the pieces of dull paper filled with caked on dust, and breathed a second life into them - the caking went away. But they still don't last long - I eventually bore a hole in the middle of the paper.

So, I scribbled some more, and moved epoxy from the hull to the floor (slowly) and gradually wound up with something smoother and greyer. The 60-grit leaves a greyer colour than the 220-grit does.

The hull had a lot of long edges from the last application of black, and so needed quite a lot of work. The 60-grit allowed me to make some headway fairly quickly - but I've still got a lot of innie dimples on the sanded area. It's pretty easy to see these dimples where more sanding is required - when the water is running, they turn up as black and the sanded area is a dark grey. Of course, sanding just means I'll sand through. Getting a good, smooth coat of this black stuff takes for *ever*. The trick with sanding is you must take *one* stroke, check, repeat. Always you want the fewest possible strokes. Especially with this black stuff.

So, it's time for another layer of black. Tape. Fill dimples (3-squirts). Cover up a bit more (3-squirts). And then cover up again (3-squirts). By the end of these three applications, I figured I had filled most of the dimples, and covered most of the thin areas. The strategy was to spread out the epoxy with each application, so it remains fair, and has a slightly raised middle section where the sanded through part was.

And that completed another 240 applications of epoxy (I'm now past 440).

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Bits and pieces

I've ordered a number of pieces, and have more to go. Specifically:

From VMG:

• The vang arm
• The vang attachment assembly
• The mainsheet base

From Roger at Aquilo Boats in Calgary:

• launcher throat
• spinnaker pole ring
• forestay fitting
• centreboard foam blank (the old style one: 57” long. Greg: "I still think the older one would be fine, there is only a slight difference in plan shape. If you keep the skins pulled tight with not too much resin and to the layup recomended in the PDF it will work fine, just like Brams centerboards made with the same core. The new ones are higher aspect ratio and a bit thinner. This makes them easier to make and most importantly easier fit inside the CB case.")
• rudder foam blank (layup)
• mast base
• foam spreader cores

Other things kicking around the house:

• Mainsail (under the master bed)
• spinnaker
• the rigging kit (box in the garage)
• tiller extensions (in the hallway closet)
• the mast and boom (from Bram, in the garage)

And finally, things I need to get.

• the "butt plug", a.k.a. mast base fitting (from Greg)
• spreader collar (from Greg)
• boat cover (from Bram)
• a spinnaker sock (from Bram)
• mast head fitting (from Bram)