serene – 1, part 10

oat building is a labour – intensive process, and only skills and experiences could help to reduce workload and improve quality. Up until now, I’m quite pleased with the building, my 4th one. Today, I cut a slot into the aft hull to install the skeg box, the excellent Fein multimaster oscillating tool offers a nice cut as usual. Things went on smoothly, I have great confidence in this 5 cm fiberglass tape, it produces very fine and strong seam lines, so I decided to use just 2 layers (one inside, one outside).

In my previous boat, I used 4 layers of fiberglass to secure the skeg box in place (which results into more weight added). The skeg blade is smaller, 30 x 14 cm, I guess a deeper V – bottom would track easier, so I would need a smaller blade just for some weather cocking conditions. Still stay indecisive about skeg’s control, I’m not totally happy with HW – 3‘s skeg control line, which runs over the aft deck, though perfectly functional, potentially could interfere with self – rescue actions.

Working on the skeg box vs. hull joint (the external side), then give the bottom a rough fairing to remove excess putty and smoothen out the edges, then apply 300 gram of thinned epoxy to it. A long busy day with lots of dust. Next would be exposing the hull to sunlight for 1, 2 days for the xylene solvent to completely vaporize, before glassing the external seams and other jobs. The hull part would receive an additonal overall layer of fiberglass once it’s jointed with the deck part.

Serene – 1 p1
Serene – 1 p2
Serene – 1 p3
Serene – 1 p4

Epoxy & putty are heavy, typical density is in [1.1 ~ 1.4] ton / m3 range. Wood & plywood are usually lighter, with the most normally used in [0.5 ~ 0.8] range. In order to use less epoxy, putty for joints, a good fit is required, hence wood working skills are anyhow important.

Use a small foam roller to stretch epoxy on fiberglass surface, and roll thoroughly, don’t use a brush, it brings in too much material. Don’t worry about the initial un – smooth result as epoxy has great “surface tension” and tends to make a much better gloss (as compared to paint).