Filling and Fairing

Another three months, another batch of blog entries ...

After placing the bottom planking, the next step in the process is to fill all the screw holes, correct any high or low spots, and generally fair the surface so that it'll look smooth once it's painted. Before starting that conversation, though, here's a good picture illustrating all the screw holes that needed attention:



All those screw holes needed to be filled - by hand. I used Famowood wood filler. It was a pretty easy product to use, though it releases acetic acid when you use it, so you have to have good ventilation. Also, you have to keep the lid on the bottle, lest the filler should dry out. It took a couple days for the filler to cure, at which point the excess was sanded off. I began sanding by hand, using a sanding block, until Kelly came over and asked what the hell I was doing. He suggested that I use a random orbit sander to smooth everything out. I was hesitant to do that, for fear that I would sand a bunch of dips into the surface. In fact, once I started using the sander, I did run into that problem for the first several screws. After that, I learned to use the sander correctly, and didn't have much trouble with dips anymore. Also, I did continue to do some of the sanding by hand, just to make sure I didn't create any problems for myself.

After the screw holes are filled and faired, the larger process of fairing the hull begins. It might seem logical to think there wouldn't be much work to do, but trust me, there's plenty of work. I had several hot spots that had to be tended to: the crack of which I wrote previously, the area around the centerboard trunk, the butt joints in the side and bottom planking, the stem, the junction of the bottom planking and transom on port side, and several smaller areas. The best way to handle most of these is to use epoxy filler - if you use it carefully, there's not a ton of cleanup to do. Here's a picture of the application process:



Here's a good picture that illustrates several of the areas that received attention in this process. Much of the filler for the screw holes has been sanded down, and is difficult to see because its tone is similar to the wood itself:



The hull looks really rough based on the picture, but trust me, it's smooth. There's A LOT OF sanding to make it smooth, but it gets smooth. And anyway, it gets painted, so looks don't matter much at this juncture.

The thing about fairing is that you have to do a good job, or your boat might look like junk. It's a real pain to sand and sand and sand for hours at a time (not to mention it's dusty and dirty and all that). But time spent at this step will lead to a nicer looking hull later on. This is especially true once you 'glass the hull, but it's important at this step as well.