Topsides

Again this week has been spent on the topsides first off is the photograph of the completed repair on the port side which I had forgotten in last weeks blog.

Port side repair complete

First off this week I sanded the blue section of the topsides and gave it two coats of International Toplac which can be seen in the photograph above. I am not happy with the result probably more about my painting skills than the paint. I put on the first coat which looked reasonable apart from some runs which I sanded out and continued with a second coat in order to reduce the risk of runs I used a much thinner coat which made matters worse sure enough there were no runs but the brush marks are still visible. I shall leave it for the time being and get on with the rest of the topsides and if time and weather allows deal with it at a later date, however I take some small comfort in that it looks alright from the other side of the creek. Next time I will try using use a roller.

I then moved on and gave the transom a good sanding to prepare for painting it has come up reasonably well but requires a little bit of filling in places which I shall use some epoxy with West Systems lightweight filler.

After sanding

I then moved on to start sanding the gelcoat repairs on the starboard side I got as far as the aft area today again this area will also require the application of some filler in a couple of places, one of the problems using thickened epoxy is that it drags when trying to level it off I tend to try and build up the repair but then the stuff is hard work to sand back. The photograph below shows the moulded cove line which has been finished with what appears to be some sort of gold coloured tape which is peeling off in places but in others it sticks like the proverbial and it takes a lot of hard work to sand it away I don't know if a heat gun would be useful here the intention is to remove all the gold coloured tape and then paint it to match the rest of the blue areas of the topsides.

Gelcoat repair after sanding

The blog for this week seems to a short one in spite of the effort that has gone in but sanding epoxy thickened with colloidal silica does require some effort there will be more of this next week.