Fairing Hull

The hull is complete, but there are many staples to remove.

Staples removed, now I'm planing the glue drips off, smoothing the wood a bit.

A random-orbit sander with 60 grit paper sure smooths it off in a hurry.

Sanding before fiberglass. No cracks are filled yet; sanding will be completed after that.

Contrasting stripes are Ammann bands.

Stern

This was much easier than expected. I planed off glue drips and edges between strips, then sanded with 60 grit paper on the random orbit sander. The plane blade is set for a very shallow cut. Moving the plane or sander diagonally to the grain provides an appropriate combination of smooth cutting and fairing of the surface. Fingertips run across the wood locate any unfair curves, which are fixed quickly. A scraper was used on the harder maple and redwood strips. A few cracks were filled: masking tape covered the wood except for the crack, epoxy (system 3 resin with fast hardener) with sawdust and microfibers was wiped into the crack, and after it had hardened a scraper evened it up. The final sanding was done immediately (30 min) before glassing: 80 grit random orbit sanding once over the entire surface, followed by scraping of the maple strip to smooth it more and bring out the wavy grain.

Planing and scraping worked well, in general, but it appears that your wood makes a big difference. Most of the wood gave a smooth surface with hand scraping, yielding fine shavings. However, strips cut from one of the three original cedar boards did not scrape well, and tended to roughen on scraping, regardless of the grain direction, unless much less pressure was used than on the other wood. The wood that did not behave as well had much larger growth rings than the other, as can be seen on a previous page.


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