Canoe building
Fairing Inside












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insidesurformed.jpg
Surform plane cleans off epoxy.

insidesanded1.jpg
Random orbit sander with 60 grit works on inside.

insidesanded2.jpg

      
















The inside took a different set of tools.  First, a surform plane with a rounded blade cleaned off the large amount of epoxy that had dripped through the staple holes.  Then a curved blade hand scraper was used on the smaller radius curves, and to remove glue drips before sanding.  The random orbit sander works fine on the bottom and sides.  Glue, in contrast to epoxy, causes the sandpaper to clog long before it gets dull.  After scraping the curved parts, the sander works well there too, if it's tilted a bit so that the curve of the sander edge fits the curve of the canoe.  The edge of the paper wears out soonest, since you are using it much more than the center.  The big factor seems to be whether there were glue drips, since they get stuck in the part of the paper that is most useful.  I tried using a foam pad between paper and sander to get the whole sheet to conform to the surface, but I didn't get it to work well.  I found that putting just a little piece of foam under the center of the sandpaper did help a bit. 
 
The ends that were too narrow for the sander were done as follows.  First, the blade was removed from the surform plane, and used to smooth the ends by hand, cutting on the pull stroke.  A smoother surface results when you cut this way, but it takes a while.  The big advantage here, of course, is that it fits into the narrow ends.  Then the surface was smoothed using a curved edge scraper that had been sharpened, with the edge burnished not perpendicular to the blade as usual, but parallel to the blade.  The scraper was held in gloved hands at a shallow angle to the wood, and pushed into the ends of the boat.  This scraping did most of it, but the surface was finished with sandpaper.  A sanding sponge was not satisfactory, as the soft backing encouraged a wavy surface as softer material abraded faster.  The sandpaper was affixed with double sided tape to a small oblong of slightly flexible wood paneling (1/4" thick) that was attached to a stick.