Starboard float – starting to fair and thoughts on QuickFair

I didn’t expect to do any boat work today, but at the last minute this afternoon I found out I needed to have something for work done this weekend… the problem was that what I needed was still on the other side of the country. A quick call and some haggling got it shipped overnight for me to spend Saturday (and Sunday if things don’t go well) working on it. To make up for it, I cut out of work a few hours early, missed traffic, and headed down to try and get some work done on the boat.

As luck would have it, FedEx showed up an hour or so after I did with the QuickFair and the water based epoxy primer from System Three. I also got to take a look at the refurbished HVLP sprayer I purchased earlier in the week. The down-side of this last minute trip to work on the boat means that you get to enjoy bad pictures from my cell phone instead of a better quality. If I’m not still at work Sunday I’ll try and take better pictures… if I can’t it’ll take until at least next weekend.

First off, the QuickFair… I was a little apprehensive as soon as I opened the container of Part A. There was a pretty strong smell to it. Not a *bad* smell, but a definite scent in the air that I just couldn’t place my finger on. I was happy to see an option to mix by weight instead of just by volume, as I think it’s better to do this. It mixes at 2:1 by volume or 7:3 by weight. The first batch I made 70g/30g and it went pretty quick with the notched spreader. After that I mixed two more batches of 140g/60g and the deck had a good coverage of ridges.

So far – except for the smell – I really like this product. It’s easy to measure, has a predictable consistency and spreads like a dream. The instructions say that at 75*F it can be hand-sanded in 3 hours and machine sanded in 4 hours. It was somewhere in the upper 70’s today. What to do with that time… Could always laminate the next deck that’s been sitting for the past few weeks… or… well… we have been neglecting the boat for a while. Took a trip down to the lake to stick on the new registration stickers and clear the cobwebs off the boat and inside the motor. Felt good just to spend an hour or so on the water. Ate dinner after that, and wouldn’t you know that exactly 4 hours had past… Time to break out the long boards.

We used the 36grit and 80grit home-made long boards to take down the grooves. Must say… Am now real impressed with this product. Sands down wonderfully. Spent about an hour taking down all the ridges and stopping a few times to vacuum. After we had what we thought was a good area on the deck, mixed up some more QuickFair and ran it between the ridges.

Flows between the ridges great yet doesn’t sag under its own weight. I can’t even guess how much time it would have taken me experimenting in ratios of micro to cabosil to get flow and sand-ability like this stuff. I figure as long as neither of us break out in an epoxy rash from sanding it after 4 hours, it’s a keeper. 🙂

Reminds me… I need to call dad in the morning while I’m at work and remind him if he sands this layer of fairing on the deck to try the 120grit long board again. It also cut well but we used something more coarse for the grooves. I bet with it being smoother it would work out great to get it nice and level and start looking for any other low spots that should be filled in.

Time spent: 2.5 hours