Beautiful day today in the South of UK. Time to get on with the Fairing.
It’s great to be moving on from the fibreglass processes to be honest, concluded those with a final sanding down a couple of days ago and a wash down ready for the next layer.
We are using the West System 407 low density filler that is recommended for fairing. Supposed to be strong but with good sanding qualities.
I did a quick test of it after cleaning the boat by putting a fairing layer across the bottom of the hull. Yesterday I did a rough sand to take down the obvious high spots. The initial finish looked good, nice and smooth even with a high grit sandpaper.
So with the sun shining we made a start on the rest of the hull today. One thing we changed from the other day was to use some bigger buckets. I had been using 1L buckets for mixing, with 500ml of resin and 100ml hardener. To get the thick, nice mayonnaise consistency this mixture would take up about 1000ml by volume of the low density filler, give or take a bit. The 1L buckets weren’t really big enough as we had a fair bit of filler spillage over the top, so we upgraded to some 2.5L buckets! Going for it!!
Also pleased that we had bought some plaster mixers for our drill. Mixing this much compound by hand would be impossible.
To do whole of the rest of the boat took us about 4 or 5 hours, two handed. We used the significant majority (more the 80%) of the 3.5kg tub of filler. Working reasonably quickly the compound did not go off in the pot at the kind of volumes I identified, but I wouldn’t hang around to get it on the boat.
As recommend I tried smoothing the compound from a couple of directions to ensure it filled any underlying holes or slightly under filled weave on the glass. I would have liked a smoother finish but I’m sure that needs a little more experience than we have at the moment. Should have done that Plastering night class after all.
So there we have it. First layer of fairing compound across the whole hull except the 100mm or so that will eventually take the overlap from the topsides.
On with the sanding!! Maybe tomorrow…..
Pete's Class 5.80 Build Blog 