Rails varnished and interior painted
It has been a while since I posted boat progress and I’ve made a lot of it in the last month, so much that I’m feeling the launch day is getting close finally. I’ve been working on it almost daily except for a three-day break to go turkey hunting and one day to go swing flies on the Skagit, one must have priorities. Trout season opened last weekend so this week I’ve been out in my float tube wishing that I had the boat ready to roll but I think it is possible I’ll be done in about 15 days if I can keep to schedule from here on out. The big news is that the interior is done! Well, I still need to put in oar locks, the seat and the hatch but really the interior is done for the most part.
After getting the rails on at the start of April there was a lot of work getting the rail corners finished up as well as general sanding on the rails. The seat pyramid took a few days more than anticipated too and I spent time on a front compartment that I decided to not add since I never did get it to fit properly, I even made it twice. Once I got all that work done then finishing the interior took up more than a week. I got the rails stained while I painted the inside of the seat pyramid. I then attached the pyramid and started varnishing the rails. Varnishing took four full days with one coat and then waiting 24 hours to lightly sand and coat again. The interior took three full days to paint too, one day priming then two days with the interior paint.
I think the seat will go with the olive green exterior
While all this was going on I ordered my seat, handles for the transom, U-bolt and a bunch of Little Scotty gear – anchor lock, fly rod holder, extension for the fly rod holder, anchor, brackets, etc… All of that got delivered in time to finalize the extra pieces of wood for the interior for handle re-inforcement, U-bolt and seat mounting. I also got my oars and oar locks. I even got a PFD for Lira so she’ll be ready to go when I get the boat completed.
Outside edges all taped up
Since coming back from turkey hunting I flipped the boat and got going on the exterior. I added fillets to the edges three days ago, sanded everything yesterday and taped up the edges today with 3″ tape. I got way better with tape and epoxy since doing the interior. That needs to dry for 24 hours then I can sand the edges and add fairing compound to smooth out the transitions. Once that is dry more sanding then I can get the fiberglass cloth out of the bottom and let that sit on the boat a few days to get the kinks out before epoxying it down. Lots of epoxy work on the bottom, adding the stiffeners (which I’m pre-bending now), fairing compound and finally painting. The end is in sight but there are still a lot of days in there. Two more on the edges, two to let the cloth hang, three days to epoxy the cloth and stiffeners in place, two for faring and sanding then three for painting. Add another day to finish up the interior stuff which puts me out about two weeks to have a boat ready to go.