Starboard float fairing continues

Did some more fairing on the starboard float – ran out of QuickFair so wasn’t able to get as much done as wanted.  I knew we were going to run out and had meant to order some at the beginning of the week so it might be here…  Unfortunately I got caught up with work and spaced out.  Remembered to order it Friday afternoon.  Hopefully it will be here next weekend, but with this being a holiday week I’m unsure if it will arrive in time.

The deck is now faired with the exception of some portions of the edge radius which need some touching up

Set the float so the inner face would be facing upright and have been working on this.  Have made 3 passes from the rear beam aft and 2 passes over the rest of the float.  (By pass I mean put the grooves in, fair them out; fill between the grooves, fair; fill again since the second pass usually doesn’t catch all the ridges)

Also decided to try out the WR-155 Primer and the HVLP gun on a test panel with no fairing, just to see how much of the weave it would fill (mostly to see how much we could get away with on imperfections during fairing).  Did not fill too much on the first coat, but the next 2 might have a considerable amount – enough to fill some small pinholes in the fairing.  Figured while we had a small amount of primer mixed to spray the aft portion of the deck, inner face and transom since we felt those areas were pretty smooth.  Have some orange-peel, but not too concerned about that in the primer… Also was a little on the heavy side after drying.  The HVLP seems to spray completely different than either of us are used to.  Dad’s used to painting with high pressure guns (~90psi) and I’m used to painting models with airbrush type things – does not work similar at all.  More research and practice needed before attempting a topcoat! Overall looks pretty good – will get a sanding and a total of three to four layers of primer.

Seems to almost be looking like a boat… ?

There is still much work to do on the port float (needs foam rough-faired, deck laminated and then exterior lamination and fairing)….  (un)fortunately, there just isn’t the room to do it without more trouble than worth – port hull is suspended from ceiling and work area atop strongback is taken up with the starboard float.  Cannot try to laminate deck with all this dust flying about (and believe me, everything is COVERED with a layer of white powdered dust!) – so must get this float finished and moved off to storage to continue progress.

Have decided to try Henny’s method of fairing for the outside face – instead of using the notched squeegy that places the grooves very close together, will try and use a piping bag to put lines out a few inches apart.  Am hoping it will take a smaller amount of time getting the rough heights to fair between.

Time spent: 8 hours