On Saturday in the heat it took 6 hours to finish 1 section, (6 hull panel tapes), yesterday in cooler conditions it took 4 hours and today in even cooler conditions it took 3 hours. All 3 were larger panel sections between the main 4 bulkhead, 4, 5, 6 & 7. Some of the improvement in time comes from getting better at it. Even though I did this only a few months ago it can take a while to get back into the swing.

So now I have just 2 small sections at the stern and 3 small sections at the bow. I figure I can finish these this week and next weekend I will get started on the 15 bulkhead to hull coves and tapes. These are a little trickier and take a little longer, maybe I can do 3 or 4 a day on the weekend and one or 2 each evening so that by the end of next week I will have finished this hull.

One thing I noted today. I did some coves with some left over filler that I intend to sand smooth before applying tapes later. After more than 2 hours they still hadn’t fully set and I could still put an indentation with my finger in them. On Saturday afternoon some coves that I had done that I intended to apply glass on wet on wet set before I was able to put the glass on after only 20 minutes. The difference in temperature was not dramatic. It was probably 22 today and it was 29 on Saturday. Such a small temperature variance can make such a big difference. The variance is not in proportion to the time difference. 22 to 29 is a difference of about 1.32x but 20 minutes to 2 hours is about 5.5x. That’s the exothermic effect I guess. Go figure.