The forecast for today was in dry with a high of around 26º C, so I decided that today was the day the final copper epoxy would be applied to the hull. Firstly I went around the hull under the waterline and had another go at hand sanding the spots that I missed previously. The aim is for there to be no glossy, shiny bits. Impossible to do in practice, well it is for me, but I gave it a good go.
Then I mixed up 1.5 kg of the C-Guard Liquid Copper that I have used on Naiad previously and set to. This is a great product but it takes some getting used to since the first coat does not seem to cover particularly well. Hardly at all in fact. It even mentions this in the data sheet, but you should not go over and over the application trying to get a good coverage the first time. After about 15 minutes it looks a lot better.
The is the first coat about 30 minutes after application. As you can see, it looks quite good, but you can see through the coat in places. This is normal. You should also go round the hull with a brush and fill in the bits that the roller could not get to.
You could just do the whole thing with a brush, but that takes a long time, also meaning that you need to mix up small batches. The epoxy has a pot life of around an hour, but that is only just enough time with a roller. As it was I mixed up too much really and should have used two batches of 750g.
Still I did manage to get everything coated before the epoxy stated to gel.
From a different angle with the sun shining on the hull from a different angle and hence the vastly different colour.
It was whilst I was having my cup of tea after cleaning up that I remembered the rudder stock. That has antifouling on the lower part, so that needed to be scraped away, sanded and then coated with copper epoxy.
I had done no work on this part of the stock at all, so scraped off the loose and flaky paint before realising that I needed to remove the gudgeon fitting. One of the six screws came out easily, the rest did not. Four of the remaining had been brass and one was stainless steel. I had to result to drilling them out as none of those five could be removed using a screwdriver. Still, it all came apart eventually and I was able to sand off the remaining antifouling paint.
Since the fitting has to go back in the same place, I needed to plug the holes such that new screws could be put in to hold the fitting in place. I opened the holes out to 10mm and them plugged them with pieces of Ash arrow shafts that I have.
These are three of the recalcitrant screws and, as you can see they did not want to come out easily at all.
This is how the rudder stock looks right now with three wooden plugs being glued in on one side…
…and three on the other.
I’ll give these plugs about an hour to set, cut them off flush with the stock and then coat them with the copper epoxy.
Time for a cup of tea.
Actually, whilst I drink my tea I need to mention something about the C-Guard Liquid Copper product. When I first purchased this stuff back in 2018, it came in a pack that contained the resin, hardeners, copper powder, plastic gloves mixing sticks, stainless steel scrubbing pad and instructions. You can’t get it like this right now as the price of copper powder varies pretty much from day to day. But the very kind Gentleman that runs the company, Tony Grimes, will sell you everything else and leave you to source the copper powder. He even suggested where to get it at the best price.
This was ideal for me since I had nearly 3 kg of copper powder already and this meant that I did not end up with a whole lot more and was able to purchase just the extra that I needed.
Here is the second and last coat and with the masking tape removed.
It doesn’t stay this colour. Once this has hardened properly, at least 24 hours, then you use the stainless steel scouring pad to remove the very top layer of the epoxy exposing the copper to the air and, eventually, the water. At this point it goes green.
I’m not finished with the underside of the hull yet, there’s the keel band to put in place and I also need to do some tidying up in the keel slot which will have to wait until I have the boat on its side so that I can access the slot.
However, I have the last of the major epoxy work done.
The rudder stock also has two coats, so once that has hardened i can complete the remaining work on that.
For today, however, work on Shoal Waters is done.
Time for a cup of tea.