Cleaning up the bottom

Now that the bottom is on, we turned the boat over again and trimmed the bottom to the hull sides then rounded the chine to a nice radius.  The hull is starting to get a bit to heavy for Kristi to turn over in the air so we carry it into the yard set it in the grass then roll.  It's still pretty easy for the two of us to carry around.  The bottom trimming and rounding took a good bit longer than planned, yeah I know what's new.  First of all, I could not find my laminate trimming bit for the router so instead of stopping and going to the store for another one I decided to just man up and hand plane the bottom to size.  In retrospect this was a mistake as it took way to long.  And by the time I got the the last mm, where you have to be a bit careful to not gouge the hull sides, serious fatigue was setting in.  Fortunately Sanding Queen (queue ABBA) had just gotten back from a Christmas party (no spouses yey) so she was able to come in and help finish the job :-)

You can dance, you can jive, having the time of your life

See that girl, watch that scene, dig in the sanding queen, oh yeah.....

Hull bottom trimmed, sanded and ready for epoxy coat.

Closeup of radiused chine.  I find it tricky to hand sand a nice even radius in solid wood but it's a lot easier in ply as the layers act like gages.  If the lines formed by the ply layers are parallel and not wavy then the radius is reasonably constant.

First coat of epoxy is on.  Only one coat for now.  I wanted to have the wood sealed so that it would be ding resistant. Plus I can work on the boat outside and not worry about a lttle water splashning on it.  The last two coats will go on at the same time as the chines get fiberglass tape.

Total time to date: 225hrs