Work Day 15

First today I tackled the newly layered cabin floor with the fiberglass.  I began to use west systems microfiller to level the ridges and paint the floor.  Unfortunately I ran out of epoxy before I could finish, but it was clear it was working.  So the game plan is to buy a gallon of epoxy in order to lay up the wood decks.  When I get this new epoxy I will finish the other half ot the cabin floor. Then sand down the high points, and follow with one more micro filler level.  This of course will happen sometime late next week because I will need wait for new epoxy.

I checked up on the center forward cabin and it is solidly in place and ready to bare loads.  So with that I had a friend pull the boat out the shop and into the storage yard. The reason for this was to save money and begin to work on painting prep while I wait for the epoxy.  

The painting prep requires scraping of the green under paint and the copper oxide.  So I started by spending one hour on the port side keel up to the waterline.  I started by spraying paint stripper on the green under body paint then using the paint scraper to get paint off. I laid down a tarp to catch most of the pain instead of it falling on the ground.  I was able to get most of the green paint off but not the cuperous oxide, the really toxic crap.  I will try to scrape all the green paint off because it really gunks up the sander and then sand down all the oxide in one day for one side.  I learned this when dealing with the machined hole repair because I had to sand away the green paint around the lowest hole.  This took forever. With it scraped away I can get straight to the copper oxide.  The goal will be to sand down to the white layer which is a barrier coat from the 1970s.  Then apply epoxy barrier atop that and begin to paint.  

After an hour of scrubbing the white, is what the goal is

the non vertical portion below the waterline was significantly harder to scrape 

As a sample I scraped above the water line, and it was much easier.

So the total scraping area I did today was I about 1/5 of the port side.  So, I would expect the entire port side to take 5 hours to scrape.  Ran out of paint stripper after this area so I will go buy a gallon or so before I do the entire side.  After the entire side is stripped a day with full paint suit sander, vapor mask and glasses will ensue.  This should prep the boat to lay down epoxy barrier coating. Then of course there is the starboard side to prep.  So this is easily a full weekend of just paint prep.  

Work is picking up so I will have to wait a few weekends and try to knock out the paint prep in one weekend.  Then the goal is to have it in the water by memorial day weekend for a shake down cruise.