April 17th, 2005
Was a busy weekend working on the boat and doing fun stuff with my family. I worked on the transom yet again, sanding in preparation for priming. I decided that I wanted to at least get the rear of the boat prepped so I can hang the Suzuki. It's going to take a while to rig it, so I figured I might as well get started. I sanded and sanded trying to make sure there were no shiny spots on the rear of the transom, top of the side decks/battery boxes and inside the splash well.
Once I was happy with that I washed all the bits three times to make sure there was no sawdust residue. Then a couple hours later I applied the first coating of the System Three Primer. You mix it together at a 1:4 ratio. This is a two part primer that has some microballoons in it for fairing purposes.This means that it should fill tiny imperfections. One you add the catalyst to the primer and stir it thickens up pretty substantially. Because of this you'll want to thin it a tiny bit with a 50/50 ration of water and rubbing alcohol. It only requires a little bit of this mixture to thin, so add a tiny bit a time and stir, before committing to larger quantities of water/alcohol. One coat was not enough and I almost think that two coats isn't enough either. Will eyeball it once it's cured a day, and see if I need to do a third coat.
As much filling and sanding I've done on the transom, there are still tape seams you can see. I'll fill one more time, and then I give up. The seams don't have a hard transition, but you can see them just the same. Mind you I don't find it too offensive, but I've gotta say that I'm sick of sanding already, and I have 85 % of the boat left to do. What's a whiney feller to do? (answer: get busy with 40 grit paper and quit fretting.)
Also glued in the rear wheelhouse bulkhead, filleted and taped most of the seams. It's going to require quite a bit of filling and sanding, as my taping job was fairly messy today. It was quite warm under the canopy and fillets were cured hard in an hour. Also taped the starboard side of the wheelhouse deck before I ran out of energy.
