Fairing the Hull

Had some time off between Christmas and New Years and the weather has been extremely pleasant! So it was a good opportunity to get the PaperJet down from the ceiling and start the fairing process. You would think that a a hard chined boat like this would not require a whole lot, but it turns out that you have to do some blending in of the fiber glass seam tape and the hull. In hind sight I should have used a 4" tape vs. 2" as specified in the instructions that way I could have had some room to blend the tape vs adding fairing material.

The other area that needed some work was the bow, so I applied a liberal amount of filler in that area so that I could get a uniform shape on both sides of the boat.

I spent a lot of time sanding down the fairing material and getting smooth with the hull. This initial fairing highlighted a few spots that needed additional work. Mainly I need to add some more material to the joint in the hull, and secondly I need to add some fairing material to the chine areas so that I get a nice consistent chine across the hull.

I was debating whether I would do a second round of fairing prior to primering the boat, but decided that I would be better off adding a coat of primer and doing the final touches of the fairing over the primer. I really had a couple of thoughts behind this. Firstly, Stan Sussman affectionally known as Paint Boy from Interlux suggested that it would be better to have a coat of primer under the fairing material. Secondly in my effort to blend the fairing material into the hull I was beginning to get a little thin on the clear epoxy coat!

I feel like some progress is being made now that I am seeing a primered hull!

Next step is to add some more fairing material, do some more sanding, and another coat of primer!