Work Day 9

Today I spent playing with more epoxy.  After sanding down the cabin floor at the wood shop I began to paint the wood with epoxy.  It was  particularly windy day here in OK so crap from the ground kept getting stuck to the epoxy, but its not a big deal because I will just sand back the area I will be painting over.  The epoxy really did reinforce and protect the wood.  Even after one coat the wood seems more sturdy and really impervious to water penatration.

My plug for west systems!  

The wood drying on the first coat

Unfortunatly never got to do the back side of this wood. I tried to dry out the roller and stopping it from being a one use item....Well that didn't happen. After coating the back side of the cabin floor wood, the roller just fell apart. I will have to buy another one in order to finish coating all this wood.  But there is no rush on that since I am waiting anyway for the shipment of goods next week before I can install it.

Next I started to take a look at my dried epoxy and fiberglass repair job on the machined holes.  It actually didn't turn out half bad.  I went to the store and finally bought my own orbital sander with several different type of sand paper discs.  I used this sander to grind down my work flush with the boat surface.  After one grind it became clear where I screwed up. There were some uneven crevasses that I did not scoop enough fairing compound into.  Should have seen it because these were too deep to sand. So ground it back and then coated them again in fairing(which is pretty standard to do twice).  We will see if the grinding tomorrow comes out.  Although, today they were pretty flush with the boat surface.

before grinding

after grinding bottom hole

applying new fairing compound to even out and ridges or lows 

Next I went on prepping the cabin surfaces, mainly the cabin floor for the forward area. I ground back as much of the wood as I could with 60 grit sander paper.  This actually worked pretty well. Though I still had 1/8" gap in the surfaces some places it is was sanded back flat so that epoxy could fill the void between the plywood and the fiberglass.

you can see the orbital sanding lines here.

this is the original condition after I peeled off all the plywood.

Next I attempted to even out some the keel. I used some the fairing/thickened epoxy mixture to create a good base and fill the rest of the holes in the keel.  This actually would create a good layer for fiberglass to lay down on the next day. I tried to shape it so it took the keel shape. Turned out pretty good.

could have put a little more on the top here.

notice I sanded back the keel more so you do not lay fiberglass on any paint that might chip away.

 Finally I tried one last task for the day, raising the boat off the trailer with a car lift.

Our strategy was to back the boat in the lift area.  then to wrap towing straps around the extended yellow arms and run them under the boat in front and behind the keel.  This would have been a great idea and appeared to be a good one, it just wasn't meant to be.  As we raised the boat off the trailer (only began to lift weight off the springs, did not actually leave the trailer).  Something snapped!  I looked assuming it was one of our straps and to my surprise it was not.  Turns out the arm closest to us in the picture broke.  There are two bolts that hold the arms in place(when you swing them at an angle under your car).  Well they can take a lot of vertical pressure.  But because the boat straps also pulled in they pulled sideways, something they were not designed for. So the bolts sheered off on one arm.  Luckily it gave out before the boat was off the trailer. The shop was pretty good about me breaking the thing, after all they said it was ok to use the lift. I just hope it gets fixed!  Because this baby all together is 17k!  So after the boat lift fiasco, we called it a day and put it away. It sucked that it did not work, because I could have painted here as well as taken care of the pressure dent.  The dent is a growing priority on the work list as I will be in the cabin more and more here in the future.