Hull prep and joins taped

Once the final piece of ply was on the bottom it was time for more trimming.  Ran the electric plane along the join between the sides the the bottom and gave it a bit of a sand to a curve in preparation for fibreglass taping the joins.

Before that I had to mix up epoxy and light sanding filler and fill every screw hole in the hull.  Lets just say that took a while, much like using a putty knife when getting ready to paint a wall.

Below is are two side shots of the dry filler before I sanded them all down to make them match the hull, another arm killing job.

Then it was time to see how the fibreglass taping would go.  The tape is 200mm wide 420 gsm biaxial and I cut four lengths, one for each chine 6.1m long:

And carried the roll up onto the top of the hull and lay it down on the bottom/side join and cut to length:

To apply the tape, paint epoxy onto the hull full width of where the tape will go, push the tape onto the epoxy (which will hold it without any other support) then go along with a brush and foam roller in one direction pushing towards the outsides to ensure the glass is fully wet out.  Ensure there is not too much epoxy which will cause it to float above the wood (apparently, just learnt that from BoatCraft Pacific's epoxy building pamphlet!).

This is the first chine join done:

Looking side on:

I did both sides, then took my scales and epoxy up on top so I could mix as I went without getting down.  I thought the chines would be harder, but I actually found the bottom/side join worse when working on top.  I was surprised the epoxy would hold the tape while I finished it, making it easy to walk along from rear to front as I went.

Finished shots, overhead from the front looking back:

Close up of the side/bottom join where the stem cover piece will come up over:

The second side looking to the transom:

Final shot looking from the transom forward, sorry it is dark but I had to shut the door due to back lighting:

Next is to glass the whole hull, that should be fun....