Day 49 - Fill Coat on the top deck

Yesterday I drilled holes in the boat - here's one of them. On the top deck, you can see some of the grid of the fiberglass mat. That's what I'm going to fix today.









First used my sanding block with 80 grit, then switched to the orbital sander with 100, then 120 grit. After that, I followed up with some hand sanding with 150 grit and 220 grit sand paper. Lots of dust. I was wearing gloves when I was doing the sanding. Found that the dust makes my skin dry.





Cleaned the boat with the shop vac and wiped it down with a mist of water and some paper towels. Ran a line of painters tap along the side of the boat to catch any drips that could occur as a result of the resin application.




Using the 7" foam roller, I applied the resin. Here's the boat half done. quite a difference in the finish. There are a number of small bubbles in the resin that need to come out.










Here's the result of the work tonight. I used a 4" wide foam paint brush to smooth out any marks in the resin and to remove the air bubbles. It's almost smooth as glass. Going to let it setup for a day or two, then I'll flip it over and start sanding the bottom of the boat in preparation for the varnish. That should be fun. I did a small area on the stern and found it takes about 3 coats to get a good shine.