40.) It's Not Art, It's an Ark (A Small One, Anyway)

The photo in my last post was a closeup of the hull ready for more planking.  The way I can tell that I'm finally finished with fairing is when the scratches left by 80 grit paper look even and uniform across the surface, with no shiny spots remaining (which would signify a low spot where the sandpaper hasn't touched the surface.) It took four layers of epoxy mixed with fairing filter and a lot of hand sanding to get to this point. The area up near the port bow still needs more work.

Here's a view from farther away.

This only works if you use a sanding block so that you don't accidentally press the sandpaper into the low spots.  Next is a photo of my new favorite way of hand sanding--using a roll of 3M sticky back sandpaper on each side of a strip of wood.  I peeled back the paper for the photo so it's easier to see what I am talking about.

The picture below shows dry-fitting planks to the port side. (No glue/epoxy yet.) Each plank has to be tapered to fit its neighbor.  I'll show how I do that in the next blog post.  Now, that I've had some practice, I am getting pretty good at it. The seems between the planks are going to be much tighter on the port side than I was able to get them when I started on the starboard side.