December 30, 2017
With other items on the to-do list for the day, I was late at getting back on Joule. I was able to address the cockpit sole and poop deck epoxy work, as well as continuing with the brightwork. To start, I sanded the previous day's fairing compound to take down the high spots and to accentuate the low spots for additional work. I worked through a few 80-grit discs on the RO sander, achieving a fair surface between the areas of the cockpit sole untouched and the area of the core replacement. Using my hand, I continually felt for low and high spots as I worked the field of the core replacement, and eventually arrived at a point where only the low spots remained to be filled.
I moved up to the poop deck and briefly hit the areas where I had over drilled for the future fasteners and to isolate any water ingress from the fresh balsa core.
Having finished the sanding work, I vacuumed the sanding debris and then wiped all surfaces down with solvent to prep for a final skim coat of fairing compound. With the surface prep out of the way, I mixed a small batch of epoxy thickened with 406 colloidal silica and 407 low-density. I used a firm 6" drywall knife to apply just a skim coat of fairing compound to fill in the few remaining low spots on the cockpit sole.
I quickly transitioned up to the poop deck and hit a few pinholes and low spots on the over drilled areas for the fasteners.
I finished on Joule for the day and headed back to the wood shop for some additional brightwork tooling. I had just created the trim piece for the underside of the companionway slide hatch and had fine tuned the fit, but had left the bottom the trim piece rough - the area that fingers would come into contact with. I flipped the piece and placed it in the bench top vice, and using some rough grit sandpaper, I took the concave surface into a fair curve from side to side.
Happy with the balance of the piece, I ran it through the router to achieve the 1/4" round over on the forward and aft side of the bottom of the trim piece. There will be some last minute hand-sanding on all of the brightwork, but for the most part this piece was finished.
Turning my attention to the longitudinal companionway trim pieces, I took the starboard trim components onto Joule and set them in their places - both the longitudinal and the vertical trim pieces. I used both pieces, in their proper orientation, to understand what material needed to be removed to allow the drop boards (or washboards) to fit in slot to secure the boat back on the dock. I noted the areas needing work and returned to the shop to dial the piece in. I nipped a small amount of material with the jig saw, and then finished the dimension by hand-sanding. The picture below shows the top most drop board able to pass through the slot on the companionway's starboard longitudinal trim piece.
While I was working these longitudinal trim pieces for the companionway, I set the top piece of the companionway slide hatch trim BACK INTO THE STEAM BOX! The spring back I was getting on the piece both times after taking it out was back to near straight. I retooled the form for a greater arc and set the piece back in the box to heat through. I repeated the process for the port trim as I had done for the starboard trim - as detailed above. Picture below shows the top most drop board fitting the port trim.
With the longitudinal companionway hatch trim near completion, I set them aside to grab the hatch top trim piece from the steam box and placed it in the retooled form, clamping securely in place.
Total Time Today: 1 hr