Epoxy Coats

Sigh. Still way behind on the blog. I'm writing about things that happened weeks ago. It would be better to write about what I did each day on the day I did it. Unfortunately, lately I've working on the boat after work and after my wife and I get the kids to bed. When I'm done, I'm so tired it's all I can do to crawl into bed.

Anyway....

After all the sanding, next up was to add two coats of unthickened epoxy.

I started on the bottom, with the hull upside-down. I used a small foam roller and a small disposable paint tray. I wound up reusing the tray (but not the rollers). As usual when starting a new phase, I was a little nervous about glopping epoxy over my boat but as I got going it went smoothly. After I rolled on the epoxy, I went back over it with a 2" foam brush to remove any bubbles. I was paranoid about drips - especially on the skeg and the near-vertical panels near the sheer line. So after each coat I hovered with the foam brush. As I mentioned before, I decided not to do anything special with the first coat on bare wood. I just put on a thin coat and it looked no worse than using the scraper technique - and it wasted less epoxy. After the first coat hardened, it took me a few days to get back to working on the boat so I had to lightly sand it first. After the second coat, it appeared I had completely filled the weave of the fiberglass on the bottom.

The bottom after one coat of epoxy

Next, I flipped the boat over and worked on the inside. It was pretty much the same drill. One coat followed by a light sanding (and wiping) and a second coat. This time, I got both coats on in sequential days, so the sanding wasn't as crucial as before. Of course, working on the inside was more difficult and time-consuming due to all of the seats and bulkheads. It was especially tricky getting all of the dust out of the longitudinal joints where the panels met. Like the bottom, it looked like I filled the weave of the fiberglass with the second coat of epoxy (actually the third coat for fiberglassed sections).

The interior after two coats of epoxy

Also, during this time, I added epoxy coats to the daggerboard.

The daggerboard after epoxy coating

Now it was time to sand off most of the epoxy I just added.