Final sanding

There she is after using a fairing board to sand her with 80 grit followed by random orbit sander 80 grit, then 100 grit fairing board, then 100 grit random orbit sander, then 120 grit random orbit sander.

I highly recommend that you have some serious ventilation or do your sanding outside. Definitely wear a respirator/ mask and glasses. I did an initial sanding in the garage because it was late and the random orbit sander was too loud. Well the next day every nook and crany of my garage had a fine red dust layer on it.

Those are the two fairing boards I made with 1/4" ply wood and spray on adhesive. One is 80 grit, the other 100 grit.

This is how the wood looks wetted down. The final sanding with 100 grit is done by hand after wetting down the wood and allowing it to dry. Wetting it makes the grain stand up or something.





Next I have to get ready for the fiberglassing. Yikes... that's scary.

Final Hull Strips

Just a few strips left!!

Gets a bit more difficut towards the end because both ends are tapered and need to be squeezed in. But as the length of the strip gets shorter, the less bending capacity you have to position the 2nd end in for the sqeeze.

The taper is pretty much marking where the full width of the strip wil meet the the other side, then drawing a line to the tip of the taper. After that its mostly using the block plane to get the right angle. If you didn't cut a perfectly straight center line, like me, then you may have to pretty that side up with a box cutter or sand paper.

Blurry picutre, but you get the idea. Just 2 strips left.

One strip left.

And finally the last strip. Its practically a sliver.





Ta-da!! All done stripping the hull now.



And here are some of the shavings. Love the shavings. Curly, nice color, smell good, and they go crunch when you smush them.

External Stem- Stern end

Here's the internal stem fully stripped and almost ready for the external stem to be glued. Joe recommended a 45 degree cut at the end, towards the center of the boat, to allow more external stem to show.


Attaching the external stem has been a true pain in the A**! The problem is that I laminated and bent the external stem at the same time as the internal stem. Bad idea. The internal stem changes shape with stripping and trimming. Probably worse is that the external stem changes shape just sitting around. Mine seemed to straighten.

Well once you have a thick 'ol chunck of semi bent hard wood, its very hard to bend it more once its laminated. So my suggestion to you is to save the laminating of the external stem until its time to attach it.

Darryl gave me that great tip, but unfortunately it was a few days after I lamintated them.

I was, for the most part, able to whittle down the internal stem of the stern side to fit the external stem. This picture is from that process.


It wasn't a perfect fit, but close enough.

That darker color is my attempt to steam the external stem one last time to undo any extra tension that may be there by forcing the stem to fit with clamps.

The thing is that with enough clamps you CAN make the external stem fit, but it will be under tension, which is a bad idea. Joe said during hot days the glue may give a little and the stem may start to apply stress to the fiber glass... overall not good for the structure of the boat.

I'm dealing with the bow end now with some suggestions from Joe.

1) Try to shape the internal stem. Well that isn't quite going to work b/c the external stem is too straight and I'd have to cut into the 1st station to bring the internal stem down far enough.

2) Bend it with steam. That's virtually impossible since the laminated stem is really too thick for the steam to penetrate. I've steamed the sucker numerous times without success.

3) Shave the external stem as much as possible, then steam it. The thinner the wood, the better chance you have of steaming it properly. That's what i'm trying now. Lots of water on a wash cloth and a very hot iron. If you can steam well enough then the wood will relax and take a new shape. That avoids any tension built into the boat.

4) If all else fails, get more material and re-laminate the external stem to fit the internal stem exactly.