And Another Week Goes By

Yes, another week has gone by.  And it seems like I've done a lot of work.  Here's what has been accomplished in the last week.

First, I had to remove all of the wire stitching.  According to the manual, just untwist and pull.  But since I'm slow in every step of this construction, and a little sloppy, all of the wires were well epoxied and the epoxy was well cured.  So that meant that I had to use a soldering iron to melt the epoxy at each fastener to be able to cut the wire and pull it out.  Very tedious work since we're talking approximately500 wires twisted and epoxied to the hull.  And then, sanding the hull smooth to remove all of that excess epoxy.  This work took me 4 days during the last week to complete.  Here's what it looked like after completed.

 

 

I did all of the sanding outside.  I started with a sanding block and sponge, but I eventually realized it was way too difficult to get it done that way.  So I used my orbital sander to knock down the excess epoxy at the seams.  Worked well.  Had to be careful not to let it get away from me and mess up the wood veneer.  There are a couple areas where I wasn't too successful with that.  Oh well. 

 

Once I completed that task, I then added thickened epoxy to the stem seams.  Another day.  Then I had to file that down and make the stem seams smooth and round.  And then, I was ready to begin the fiberglass process.  First step for fiberglassing the hull is to apply a saturation coat of epoxy to the entire hull.  Just finished that step.

 

 

 

Starting to look better.  I'll come back tomorrow and begin laying out the fiberglass.