Improving the fish eye view.

My intentions were to allow myself a few cosmetic imperfections on the under side of this ship but since I  have chosen to use insanely expensive Awlgrip paint as my topcoat, it seemed like a shame to paint over a sub par surface.....so.  You guessed it.  Decided to trade a few more days under a palm tree for a few more days in the shop.   

You're looking at the under side of the port side aft hull.

I've used my v-grove trowel to apply micro / epoxy over the hull surface

Here's the port side escape hatch and if you look closely, you will notice that I am working my way forward with the filler. After this step is complete, I'll use the long board to knock it all down, apply another skim coat and then I'll have a fair surface for the fish to look at. 

I think any vehicle that has an escape hatch is worthy of note.  Ian Farrier doesn't mess around. 

Here's a shot of the under side of the port side hull.

Endless sanding...... ( only four more weeks allowed)

Rather than burden the viewer with endless photographs of sandpaper, sanding boards, dust, dust masks, itchy sleeves and bulging shoulder muscles,  I have limited the number of recent posts.  Sanding and prepping for the top side painting of a boat is not very exciting nor much fun.  However, if you are really short on entertainment options, here are a few pictures of some of the tools with a brief description of some of the fairing methods that seem to be working for me.

After mixing my own bulk fairing compound using epoxy resin and glass micro balloons, and bringing all of the boat surfaces up to grade, I've switched over to a product called Quick fair made by Sysem Three.  It's a thixotropic fairing compound that is formulated under vacuum and when mixed, it is easily spread over the hull surface in such a was as to minimize any further rough sanding.  The stuff is insanely expensive but in this application, it is literally saving me a few days of my life that could otherwise be better spent sailing with my friends or sitting with my feet in the sand under a palm tree.

Quick Fair 

It mixes 2 : 1 so I just marked two areas out on my mixing board with a sharpy pen and then I scoop the stuff out, smooth it out over the areas in roughly the same thickness and call it good to mix.

I then use various steel blade "sheet rock" spreaders to smooth it out on the hull.   Since I've been using super low grit sand paper on long boards ( sometimes 20 grit), this filler eliminates these sand marks and will only require a quick go over with the Festool RO150 DA sander

here's a pile of the tools that I have been using to fair the hulls and deck

forward port side hull right before it runs you over.