I've been doing most of the fairing inside the hull with a flexible spruce batten wrapped in 60 grit sandpaper. I don't always try to cover the whole batten, but use different lengths of sandpaper depending on the size of the spot I am smoothing out. The bare parts of the batten don't remove wood I want to stay on the boat, but help bend the batten to the shape of the hull. I thought of this technique on my own for fairing an inside curve. I highly doubt I am the first to come up with the idea; I won't be applying for a patent anytime soon.
The photo above shows the third and last coat of fairing material (epoxy plus filler) on the inside of the hull. It's much thinner than the first two coats and went on very smooth. The density of the epoxy paste can be controlled by adding more or less filler to it. For the first coats, I aimed for a thick peanut butter-like paste that wouldn't run. For the final coat, I mixed the epoxy to the consistency of mayonnaise. I had to throw out one batch because I didn't like the way it turned out. It's far better to make this call early than end up having to remove a big mess later.
Nobody asked about it (I don't have that many readers), but if you thought the little hand plane I showed in my last blog entry was as small as it gets, think again. This one is an instrument maker's plane sold by Lee Valley.
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