I didn’t do any scraping over the weekend, instead I continued the transom work and gave myself a chance to stop aching.
The laminated plywood for the repair came out very well and I was able to hold it against the hull and draw the outside of the hull on one edge.
I used panel pins on the rough line and a very flexible batten to fair the curve which you can see about 2.5mm away from the rough line.
I heavily scored the line with a sharp knife to keep tear out to a minimum. It’s not really needed where the cut is in the same direction as the grain.
But it is very necessary where the cut is across the grain.
A few minutes work with the jigsaw and the shape was cut.
I kept the cut just outside the cut line, deliberately, so there were a few fuzzies but not on the good side of the cut.
The patch was then screwed over the hole with the cut edge aligned with the hull.
It’s not so easy to see in a photo, but the edge of the patch does not follow the shape of the hull.
I used a sanding disc on an angle grinder to fair the patch to the curve of the hull as you can see here. It was a bit tricky since I had to avoid sanding any of the hull in the process.
This part got away from my a little…
…but most of the edge was good.
I trimmed the bottom of the path to the level of the aft deck, again by drawing on the patch along the deck and then sing that line to cut the excess away.
This is not the final fit since when it is fitted to the top of the hole, this bit will extend beyond the deck and will need to be cut down again. But it shortens the patch a bit making it easier to locate and handle.
Today’s job was to cold scrape as much of the antifouling paint off the starboard hull. This took around two hours this afternoon and in places quite a lot of the wood was exposed. There are also a few scratches as expected.
The area between the bilge runner and the keel did not scrape off so much of the antifoul, but that’s because it’s further way and thus a stretch. Still, good enough.
The aft section did not scrape away so much either and I may revisit this tomorrow afternoon.
This side showed more cracks between the laminates as seen here.
With a major scratch closer to the bows.
As well as cracks between the laminates. I’ll fill these with neat epoxy. The hull will be warmed first with the hot air gun, masking tape applied either side of the crack to limit the spillage, then the epoxy dripped into the cracks. The hot wood will thin the epoxy which will then flow deeper into the crack. Or so I hope. This will be carried out once the hull has been properly scraped off and sanded and at that time I’ll also fill in the more egregious scratches. That won’t be for a few days yet. Lots of scraping to do first.
Time for a cup of tea.