I had a poor week in terms of work done on MM. I didn’t get a chance to get anything done during the week and next week does not look like being much better, work being fairly busy right now. Today I finished the starboard hull to deck panel. I sanded the inside, glassed it and put it back on the boat to set.

As I have said many times on this site, sanding is an extremely unpleasant task. Another way to put it is it sucks or blows, whichever term you prefer! I hate it and today was no different. I decided last time that it is actually easier to fill the entire inside panel with glue then sand it all back off again rather than sanding just the panels then gluing the gaps and glassing onto the still wet glue wet on wet, especially on warm days like today. It is just too slow. I had 2 rollers go exothermic on me last time. This time I only used the one roller, and the wet out only took an hour or so instead of over 2 hours last time. BUT, the sanding, which seemed easier last time did not seem so easy today. Granted I didn’t have any fresh 36 grit sanding discs left so I was sanding with near smooth paper toward the end, so that wont have helped, and I only had a 6″ disc to use instead of my 8″. I ruined my 8″ last time I used it, I took a worn sanding disk of it, they attach with hookit to velcro backed disks, and was distracted by something, and a bit later when I came back to the sanding I was doing, I picked up the sander again and started sanding, and wasn’t getting too far, so I stopped to check the paper. I had forgotten to put a new disk on so I was sanding with hookit. It doesn’t sand too well and of course I ruined it. These soft pads are $50 each and I don’t have any cash until next week so I had to borrow James 6″ pad and 1 sanding disk! James had a good laugh at my mistake then told me he had done it many times!

I wet out the glass and needed to put a little more glue into the stern section at the bend to smooth it out under the glass. I also needed to take the temps off the panel so I took the most forward one off and left the rear one on, then once I had wet out past it, I put the forward one back on and took the rear one off, besides the shape retention of the temp, there was also the legs to stabilize the panel while I worked on it. Then after the wet out was complete, when I needed to put the panel back on the boat, I trimmed the 2 temps down to the boomerang shapes retaining the inside shape but only 50mm wide to remove all the mdf weight while we lifted the panel back on the boat. Because I used the temps while the panel was off the boat I don’t have the blisters caused by the panel moving and bunching the wet glass on the inside, that I had happen on the port side. The panel still changed shape slightly which resulted in it not exactly matching the bulkhead shapes back on the boat leaving 3mm or 4mm gaps here and there. I could pull that down by putting screws in through the glass but I don’t want to do that as it weakens the skin and has to be patched or filled. The gaps are small enough that glue will fill it when the panel is permanently attached to the boat and then both sides of each bulkhead will be coved and glassed to the panel, so it wont matter.

I have had the U bolt threads re tapped (thanks Leo) and it seems I may have imperial bolts and metric lock nuts! That is what lead to them seizing. Anyway, I can proceed with the forebeam even though I have the wrong locking nuts because I have 4 normal nuts for each bolt 2 nuts on each thread, they lock to each other anyway so I don’t need lock nuts, and besides I also plan coating the nuts with glue and glassing over them anyway, cocoon the nuts so they could never undo. So with any luck I may have the forebeam halves glued together tomorrow.

Jo has updated her page, read it here, Jo’s page.