A pox on boats! Wait I meant E poxy on boats..

That's how this week looked anyway - several corners have been turned on several projects! First:

The Lightning "Bolt" - the spars, rudder and parts have had their final varnish thanks to Chris, next comes installation of hardware on the spars once the varnish is good and hard.

Chris prepping for last coat

done and done! (actually and done)

On the TNT Project, The team (Steve and Jason) has filled all the screw holes and is into fairing the hull out preparatory to priming. When you have filled holes like this there are often knobs of epoxy sticking proud of the surface. The risk of trying to fair them off with sandpaper is that the epoxy is hard but the surrounding wood is soft - the wood goes first and waves and dips are introduced to the flat surface. In this case we used a body shop file and a Stanley SureForm to shave off the excess epoxy, neither of these tools will remove wood but they work by shaving off the high spots only - very slick!

and here it is gone and flat.

here you can see shiny knob of epoxy

Next the Mini-Hopper development project with Bernie and Troy plowing on. This week saw the transom final fitted and the hull epoxied together with 2 coats of epoxy to seal the flotation chambers so they won't rot if moisture gets in (it will). We discussed installing ventilation ports so these closed area can dry out when the boat is not in the water.

Bernie explains what's up to Glen

rolling epoxy on bottom of deck

a possible future detail.

all sealed up!

On to the 16' Shepherd where George is forging on with creating the inner bottom panels. We epoxied the 3" strips which are scarfed at one end and butt glued to each other onto the main bottom panel. Our concern was for movement as the strips are bent down into final position - finally we glued everything up with no bend figuring that if we bent them down after the epoxy set-up was partial, things would self align later...seems to have worked!

George cuts the ramps.

dry-fitting the strips..

next morning screwed down

all epoxied up - no bends

Next task is to add more strips heading forward, we are concerned about the amount of twist in some of these little strips of plank - however - one at a time seems to do it!

Now on the the engine shop where Peter, Joseph and many watchers are making and following the progress! We are at the point now where parts ordering is next so these motors can begin going back together. Impellers are flying around!

George gets his pristine 3 running.

So that's it for this week, drop in, become a Follower of the blog, buy a raffle ticket, become a Gatsby Member, boating season is coming up (slowly this year)!