Thursday 6 April 2017

WINTER'S OVER!

It's about four months since I last posted. I confess that the disappointment with my application of the Epoxy Resin did take the wind from out of my sails, but there was more reasons to it than that for the long gap.

The cold weather (can't work if the wind's from the north) kept me 'grounded', and then it was Christmas and so on and so forth. This, however, is not a journal about my private life, but the log of the building of Seagull. To anyone reading this blog in years to come there will be no obvious gap in the build. So what have I been up to today?

I began by fixing the problem near the bow where the Epoxy resin had bubbled up. I broke the brittle bubbles and gave the whole area a good sanding. This is what it looked like:

Before

I then cut out a piece of the fibre glass cloth to patch over where the bubbles had been - I had read this was how to repair the hull if damaged.

After one coat of Epoxy Resin, the area now looks like this:

After patching (the white marking is ok it's only sanding marks)

I also mixed epoxy resin with filler modules and filled the holes on the transom:
Before

After

This left the broken piece of wood on the stem - which had snapped in the freezing weather:



I removed the broken piece and glued it back together again. Next the steamer: kettle and drain pipe were returned to action. The wood went into the pipe and steam from the boiling kettle passed through it for 30 minutes.



The previously snapped piece was quickly screwed and glued in place - successfully.