And just as you save a day so you can lose one! I didn’t get to do any work yesterday but it was better to have the beam bogged and ready to sand as if I had not I would be doing it today instead of sanding the beads and backfilling today.

I decided not to cheat on the underside as it is much easier to cut into the bead with a flat sander on a concave beam. In fact you cant really use a flat rigid sanding board, you need a flexible board. 3M make one but again it is easier and cheaper to make your own. Just screw or glue a handle or handles on a length of 6mm ply, it will bend to meet the shape of gentle bends.

So after about an hour of solid sanding (solid means 2 minutes on 2 minutes off on a warm day) I had the beads down to what I felt was fair. Until I decided to have a look using the conduit to look for highs or lows. I didn’t find any highs but I found a couple of lows. One in fact surprised me for 2 reasons, first I could not see it and second that I created it by sanding too far. This is part of the reason that 2 different layers of bog will go on, to fair out better with each layer until eventually the surface is fair enough to paint with gloss and look great.

When I glassed the beam I had the glass layers overlap on the underside so that any unfairness would be on the least visible side. Now that the beam has had a layer of bog beads applied and then back sanded the overlap line comes into sharp focus. It will of course disappear again once the backfill goes on.

Hopefully tomorrow I will get some sanding done so that I can put the final bog layer on, just so I can sand that off again on Saturday. Its fun for all the family.