Bottom Job: Day 1

Today we drove over to the new WoodCraft store in Raleigh and bought an adjustable hole cutter bit for the drill press to allow us to easily churn out some mast plugs without buying a bunch of hole saws. The new shop is really nice if not a little expensive but they are now a nice local source for all those woodworking tools that are no where to be found in your local Lowes warehouse. We also bought a chisel sharpening gauge and I did some chisel and plane sharpening.

A while ago Jake from Team Seacats posted a nice how to on bottom jobs for fiberglass boats. Our hull is a little different than an N-20 but the desired result is the same, a fair and smooth surface that will glide through the water.



With the hull over, we rang in the new year with some planing and sanding of the chines and checking the fairness of the bottom surface. I felt a great sigh of relief as I ran a batten over the bottom checking for low spots and watched hours of sanding melt away from the task ahead of us. It seems that all our careful measuring and curve drawing paid off big time. I made us a pair of sanding boards like Jakes out of some plywood and dowels. They worked great and tomorrow we will lay down the fiberglass tape on the chines and work on the keel strip. If we have to wait for stuff to cure we will start on the masts, or the rudder or the tiller or the sprit boom shaping or the center thwart or the hatch molds.

Happy New Year and happy 2008