Deck Refinishing—Fairing and Surfacing

Winter 2004-05

More Grinding

The first thing to do was give the new glass a preliminary grinding. After scrubbing the decks with a ScotchBriteTM pad and fresh water to remove any amine blush, I attacked the glass with the DA and 40 grit paper. In many areas the glass was quite resin-rich, and I wanted to remove an pools of hardened resin. As I went along I did find a handful of air pockets that we had missed, but therer were probably only 5 or 6, and they were tiny. I ground these areas out entirely. In general however, I was careful not to cut into the new glass. What a mess. The picture only begins to allude to the wonderful fun I was having.

After working over the entire boat with the 40-grit, I got ready for the first coat of fairing compound. I had basically determined that I would need to skim coat the entire surface, which I troweled on with a plastic squeege, trying to keep it as smooth as possible. Once the compound had kicked, I tackled yet another round of seemingly interminable grinding—this time with 80-grit paper. This was the worst yet, as the majority of material that I had applied needed to come right back off. Further, the epoxy fairing compound had a nasty ability to instantly clog the paper.

The grinding was pure misery, and when finished the boat was covered with a thick nasty purple dust. As was everything else in the shop, including me. The grinding took nearly 8 hours, performed, as usual, in a single marathon session. By this time the whole concept of grinding the boat was literally becoming overwhelming. I can understand how projects get started and then never get finished.

Touch-ups

Fortunately, after the first fairing round, the boat was actually in pretty good shape. There were a few areas that would clearly need spot filling, and a few areas that needed more actual fairing, but overall I was quite pleased. Over the next few days I went through 2 more rounds of minor fairing and grinding. For the first I used more epoxy with microballoons. By this time I had burned through about 5 gallons of mixed resin! I also put a layer of light glass over the taffrail/transom hull deck joint, as I intended to have a nice raised, open taffrail, and wanted a smooth rounded transition from deck to hull in this area.

For the final round I used some Alexseal fairing compound that Tim had mixed and had left over from his daysailor project. This was nice stuff with a smooth creamy consistancy and loooooong pot-life which made it really nice to work with. Plus, the nice grey color was a welcome relief from yet more of the nasty brownish-purple of epoxy and microballoons. It was psychologically uplifiting to be putting something different onto the boat!

White! White!

Finally, it was time to apply the high-build surfacing primer! Even though I knew I would be sanding much of it back off, I was really looking forward to spraying on the Alexseal surfacer. Tim had sprayed his daysailor project the previous day, so he was ready to go on my boat as well. As Tim is experienced with spraying, he had agreed to do the spray work on my boat. While I tacked off the boat, he moved the staging. We then donned our supplied air respirators and Tim mixed up the primer with the catalyst and reducer.

We sprayed the house and cockpit areas first, as once we sprayed the side decks we wouldn't be able to reach those areas for additional coats. We sprayed each area, then left the building for 30 minutes or so to let it tack off, then we returned to spray the area again. We put down a total of 3 coats in the cockpit and on the house before we turned our attention to the deck areas. The transformation was instant and dramatic. Even with just the first coat on the house areas the boat looked amazingly better, and I really felt like the boat was finally on the road to recovery.

I tried my hand at the spraying and did one side deck, but found that Tim was both faster and more effective at laying down the product, so I let him do the bulk of the spraying while I "supervised" and helped keep the hoses for the supplied air and the HVLP sprayer under control and out of the fresh primer.

Click here to view a short video clip of the spraying. (AVI format, 3.6meg)

We started the spraying process at about 1530 and were finished up before 2000. Many thanks to Tim for working late, as any who know him know that he'd rather start at 0430 and be done by 0900! When we were finished we stood back and admired the work—I was thrilled. Even with the slightly stippled surface of the heavy surfacing primer the boat looked better than she ever had since we owned her. Click here for another view.

After the surfacing primer had cured I went back and sanded it smooth with 120 grit paper on a palm sander. I couldn't believe how nicely the boat buffed out, and could hardly wait to apply finish primer and paint.

Scupper Work

As we had glassed over the cockpit sole, I needed to reconstruct the scuppers in the sole. Additionally, we wanted to address the tendancy for water to collect at the forward end of the cockpit seats during rainy weather.

The old drains in the sole were still in place, but I needed to drill out the plywood sole in that area and mill a flat-bottomed hole for the drain's grate to sit in. I had previously measured the location of the center of the drains so I was able to drill a pilot hole and then carefully mill the recess using a 2-5/8 inch forstner bit in a heavy-duty right-angle drill. Then I enlarged the drain hole using an appropriately-sized bit.

For the cockpit seat drains, I followed a similar course of action. I created the drains themselves from one-inch pvc pipe. I used a small 90-degree elbow, a short straight piece, and a pvc to hose barb connector. After milling the recess for the grate, I drilled a hole sized to the outside diameter of the pvc elbow, and epoxied the scupper in place.