After such a productive day yesterday today was a bust. It was a rainy cold miserable day, the best kind of day to be working up a sweat sanding a hull but unfortunately the cold meant that the second coat of highbuild wasn’t set properly. Trying to sand it just resulted in the paper clogging very quickly and I am sure it is not wise to do so anyway.

So I spent the day lazily on the couch watching TV and surfing the net. Tomorrow it should be ok.

I also did 2 really dumb things yesterday, that could have turned out a lot worse than it did. In the end I think no harm at all was done, but I did have a sleepless night wondering. The first dumb thing was that I was counting out the scoops of paint when I lost count (after 3!!!!). I don’t know what distracted me but I couldn’t remember if I had scooped 3 or 4 so I decided no problem and poured what I had scooped out back into the drum and started counting again. The problem with this was that I was on my second batch for the day so the pot had already been used meaning there could have been traces of hardener in the mix that I just poured back into the 16litre drum of paint. It could have ruined the rest of the drum but fortunately no harm was done. But it goes to show you can never stop concentrating. I put the drum in the brick chemical room just in case but there was little likelihood that such a small part of hardener could do much damage. Another lesson learnt.

The second dumb thing is a lesson I should have learnt already. I tried to reapply the masking skirts using the same tape that held it last time but it wouldn’t hold properly so I used the clear packaging tape again. But as happened when I used it to stop glue dripping through to the inside of the hull when planking the hull, the epoxy melts it so it is very hard to remove. And you cant leave any trace of it on as it is a weak point that could cause the paint to crack or delaminate from the hull. Or just ruin the smooth paint finish. So I painstakingly removed any trace with a Stanley knife blade. I will also be careful to sand well to be sure. Surely I wont make that mistake again. Don’t bank on it, if I can’t remember the count at 3, anything is possible.

The second coat does look good and the small section I sanded did sand quite easily with 120 grit and the finish is very fine.

So I now expect that I might be able to completely sand this coat tomorrow but I doubt there will be time to coat the hull a third time. Maybe I can get that done on Monday night then a final sand over the rest of the week before applying the copper epoxy next weekend. I doubt I can still turn the hull next weekend, as I need to organize some helpers and I need to be sure I will be ready before having people commit to helping. I must get it done in 2 weekends time though, because in 3 weekends time I want to go to the Sydney boat show.