Heh.

It's currently preventing me from wearing myself out sanding out the initial
fairing compound treatements on our hull.

However...

Starboard is nearly ready for final fairing - one more day and it will be.
We hit all the "deep" spots first, with our AdTech 621 - but just using a
regular wide putty knife for filling them - compound, and sanded them to
dull.

Second step was to fill all those again (inevitable flattening with a
standard DA/RO sander required a second, much thinner application), as well
as going over the other, much shallower spots, and then pulling a 24" long
paint dodger, pressed into service as a fairing knife, over all of it.

Sanding of that area involved the entire hull, as there were all the other
surfaces which got a very thin skim coat as well as the 'holes' we filled.
However, that knife followed the curvature of the hull, and subsequent
sanding (about half done, the last couple of days' worth of layup having the
sanded interrupted by the rain) is merely to scuff the surfaces - again, the
entire hull, but as there's very little material which needs removal (other
than the inevitable ridges created by the knife), it's actually been easier
than the first coat.

Once we have it all fair, we'll do a bit of fiberglassing on the leading and
trailing edges of the keel, the bottom of the keel, and the very stern of
the boat, over the rudder.

Morgan 46s were built as split hulls, which made for much more effective
layup, as every part of the layup was reachable - and they were laid up
flat, having an assist from gravity. However, of necessity, the mating of
the two parts involved some filler at the edges, before they were glassed
over from the outside.

The hull halves were held in place with special clamps on the molds. Inside
got progressively wider tapes along the entire insides, securing those
halves together. Then the exterior had the molds removed and glass attached
in the same fashion, but not so severely, the interior already having put
the two parts together. After that, the ballast slugs were put in and
secured (the resin and marble dust slurry), and the bilge and mast step
built. All well and good...

But the leading and trailing edges have suffered from multiple instances of
sanding, and are pretty much gone at those surfaces. Also, the inevitable
slight manufacturing irregularities in the edges meant that the factory used
filler before putting on the glass. Anywhere it was less than perfect, I
ground it out, and we've replaced it with new. Once faired, we'll lay on
some more fiberglass on the pointy parts of the hull.

The final step (with some associated minor fairing after grinding/sanding)
will be for us to add glass to the bottom of the keel, and wrap it
substantially, more so on the starboard side which had a lot of material
ground off by the flat rock shelf we dug a 2' hole into during our wreck's
pounding in the 3 days the storm continued before salvage.

So, while progress is slow, it's very definitely moving. We've had several
folks who have done similar work stop by and compliment us on how well it
was going. Given that this is really just the roughing-in, in construction
terms, I'm sure we'll be thrilled with our end result.

That last coat has been occupying a lot of thought time, as I'll want to
long-board it, but am still up in the air as to how to accomplish that.
There's a specialty tool called a power boarder, which one of our previously
active members has offered to rent me. However, it can't do concave
surfaces, and we have an awful lot of that in the turn of the bilge - so
they'd have to be done by hand, anyway.

I'm currently mulling cutting some 4'x4.5" plywood strips, applying three
(the one in the middle for the concave examples) 2x4 pieces for handles,
epoxying them (for a shiny surface), and getting some roll stock of
sandpaper. I'd bet I could pick up 4 day laborers and make short work of
the fairing sanding, particularly, if I can manage the staging right, in
that this stuff sands like butter when it's green - about 4 hours after
layup in this heat! Let it go a full day (or, in the case of the part I was
going to sand today, a couple of days) and it's a great deal harder, but
still not difficult to fair out with a power sander. So, starboard almost
finished, and the port side yet to begin, other than some fairly significant
inside radiuses we did on the strut assembly, and the minor shaping on the
tail of the keel (necessitated by chasing filler and on the starboard side,
some delamination, the first attack on which was 1/4" chop, cavasil [sp] and
epoxy slurry, which built it most of the way out)...

Stay tuned for developments!

L8R

Skip (or maybe "Sandy")


--
Morgan 461 #2
SV Flying Pig KI4MPC
See our galleries at www.justpickone.org/skip/gallery !
Follow us at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/TheFlyingPigLog
and/or http://groups.google.com/group/flyingpiglog

"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you
didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail
away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore.
Dream. Discover." - Mark Twain