Well the next stage for the kayak is to fair and smooth out the deck of the kayak. Because my quality control on the thickness of my strips left something to desire, I have many ridges, and high/low spots in the deck. The use of the stations spaced at around 20inches made for the deck being a bit harder to keep fair. However the biggest hurtle to over come is due to my just eye balling the fairness of the deck when I made the top half of the stations. By taking care, anyone should be able to come up with a finer finish that I expect to achieve with respect to fairness, and lack of high spots and low spots. Thus I've not titled this page fairing the deck.
Oh yes, also, while I was working the recessed cockpit I did spend a bit of time with the plane on the deck. That time is not included here.
Well earlier today I finished the cockpit, I also got 2 hours in with the plane on the deck
After around 1/2 an hour, I've pretty much finished with the plane. I've not taken it down as much as I could have with a more fair stripping job. I'll live with the hollows and bumps in the deck. Except for a bulge up in the front deck it actually is not to bad (I did not shape, or positions one of the stations properly). There is also a sudden transition at the back where the deckend attaches, but that is nothing that will bother me.
I spent two hourse with a 1/4 sheet RTOS sander, and have finished aproximatly 1/4 of the deck. It is going really slow here, I'm using 100 grit paper. I'll be buying some more course stuff for the rest of the boat. (60-80 grit). this first pass is basically to tak off any edges from the plane, or thouse I could not get at with the plane.
Got some 60 Grit sandpaper. I'm just using the regular plane Jane sand paper. I bought it at Revy, one thing I noticed is that if you get the full sized sheets from the painting section, rather than the 1/2 sized sheets in the tools (sander) section, you will get about 2 times the sandpaper for the same amount of money. The paper looks Identical, same manufacturer and everything, you just have to cut to size for your sander.
Anyways, 1 hour with the 60 grit finished off the rest (3/4) of the boat. After that I spend 1.5 hours filling in the cracks with epoxy thickend with wood saw dust. In the pictures below the kayak looks like it has a horrible case of the measles.
Sanded the entire kayak with 100 grit sandpaper, This coat will smooth out the cuts from the the courser sand paper. As well as clean up the mess where I filled with epoxy. This also allowed me to find more cracks that I missed filling before, as well as opening up some(?). these cracks I filled with store bought wood filler, which will be easier to sand. The job jone sanding with the 100 grit was not the best, after vacuming off the deck I could see spots of the epoxy still in the wood. I'll have to make sure I get this when I do the 150 grit sanding job.
Prior to going at it with the 150 Grit I bought some wood filler and used that to get any more pin holes.
Well later in the day I got the the 150 grit sanding done, this took an hour or so. Here are four pictures of the sanded hull
Well the last thing I did today was to wipe down the hull with water. This raises the grain, before final sanding, and gives a preview of what the hull will look like under glass. So here are three pics.
The wetout with water, really darkened the hull, it is indeed a busy hull. Thats fine. The wet out shows that I still have a bit of blochyness where I had filled. I'll have to do a notehr pass with the 150 grit, and a final pass with 220 grit sandpaper
Well sanding is done. I've finished a pass with the 150, and the 220 grit paper. The deck surface is nice and smooth now.
We just got another foot of snow out side it needs to be 10 deg C before I can epoxy the deck, so I've hoisted the kayak to the ceiling, to wait for spring to get here.... I sure wish it would hurry up.