Catching up the blog

         I decided to catch the blog up because its actually way behind the work we are doing .

 Painting the hulls one side at a time and letting gravity do the work to smooth out the paint seemed the easiest way to get reasonable results . When it came time for the 2 part polyurethane we found that it absolutely loves temps higher than 25 degrees hates any form of moisture and a very light tipping with a soft brush to remove bubbles from the foam roller does the trick . Work fast as a team don't try to go back past the wet edge if you make a mistake its already too late and you'll just make it worse.  

                             
                                   Replacing some more rotten timber on the deck with oak .

 I decided to seal the front hatches up so they are more water tight so a suitable lightweight plastic hatch was fitted into the original hatch lids . The original hatches will be glued and screwed down .

 

The original foward hatches were cleaned up and given a layer of fiberglass to strengthen them and seal them up before painting .

                                           The main hatches received the same treatment 

 Here is the layup for the new rudders the old rudders were simply ply and one had some rot in it we could have repaired it but took the opportunity to make some better ones .

 5 layers of 60z fiberglass cloth are laminated between the two sheets of 6mm ply to achieve the          desired thickness for the new rudder blanks . The laminate will be super strong and longer lasting than the original rudders .

 After being clamped flat to the bench for 2 days we cut the blanks and boy are they strong . I doubt they will ever twist or warp and will probably outlast the boat . Super happy with the result .

 The old windows had two many bolts . We are making the new ones recessed and with no fasteners simply glued in with a special UV hardened Sikaflex  . The primer for this is fairly expensive but drilling all those holes in the new Lexan seemed like a bad idea .

The new windows are all cut out and ready to fit as soon as we finishing painting the decks and cabin tops .

 Here we have The rudders after shaping and a layer of fiberglass on the outside .

 I bought some canoe rudder Gudgeons from Duckworks to fit the new rudders they have pins with split rings  . This will make the rudders quick and easy to remove for when the boat is on the trailer .

 Sitting the boat back together to have a look at how we are going to mark out for the sections of the deck that will be painted in gloss and the non skid paint .