The clear Klass Kote two-part urethane was sanded and polished today. Looks pretty good! Bought myself a new tool... the Porter Cable 7424XP 6-Inch Variable-Speed Polisher ! It worked much better than my cordless drill that I had been using. Here are some more pictures: You can see a bit of the deck in this one. That's the next step... finishing the deck and hatches. Then it's time for the rigging. You can see the small brass rudder keeper that I made. Below is a section from my Vintage Marblehead Construction Manual on finishing: How to get that perfectly smooth, gloss finish : So how do those guys get that perfect, glossy finish? 1.        First, they sand the paint . Just about any gloss paint will create some orange peel. To get a glass-smooth finish you will need to sand it down a bit. Start with very gentle pressure using a sanding block with 800 grit and WET sand it. This should just flatten the orange peel at least enough to where the urethane

Most people who make their own wooden mast also choose to make their own booms. Normally you would make them out of spruce and simply mill them to correct dimensions. Some decide to also laminate their booms from two or three individual layers that they’ve milled down on the table saw. In my case, because I have access to a laser cutter and can play around a bit, I decided to make my own “artsy-techno-structural-funky-scifi-ishy” booms out of 1/32” plywood. I ended up with a really funky set of booms, but I like them. Contact me if you want the same booms, but if not, then use your own creativity and imagination to come up with your own design. There are several businesses that will happily laser cut the parts for you. For my latest main boom, we used National Balsa because the laser cutter that I have access to is down. They cut two sheets of plywood for me using my own designs, and they charged $65 (USD, 2018) including materials and shipping. It’s a bit spendy, but if you can s

The paint is on! I began the finishing process (applying filler, paint, and varnish) by brushing on some two-part epoxy filler below the waterline. I'm using Interlux Primekote 404/414 . Great stuff, but extremely smelly! Pretty expensive too. But it sands down wonderfully. It fills all the deep scratches and pits and such. The filler goes on pretty thick, but you end up sanding most of it off. Keep in mind that I'm only putting it where paint will go. The topsides will stay natural. The pictures below are after sanding the filler off.  It may look rough, but it's actually just filled the scratches and other low spots. It feels very smooth now. Then I masked the boat. I'm making an accent stripe at the waterline. There will be one thin line of clear wood, and then another thin line of white above the waterline. Next I mixed up some two-part Klass Kote epoxy paint. The first coat was clear. It's really only to act as a "bleed" coat

Lots of progress today! I finished the deck! Here's how it looks. First, early this morning I was able to epoxy down the last few bits of planking. By this afternoon it was dry enough so that I could sand the entire deck. It was pretty rough looking before I started sanding: It took about 30 minutes or more to grind it smooth with my random orbital sander and 60 grit paper. I then followed with some 220 grit. Afterward, it looked great. Then added a layer of 1.4 oz. fiberglass cloth for added strength and waterproofing. Here's how it looks now! Later tonight I'll trim the edges when it reaches the "green stage". Then tomorrow I'll lightly sand it with 220, and then add a second coat. Aloha!

Did the trim around the aft hatch (for the rudder post and control arm access) today. Looks OK. I've never been very good at getting the ends of my planks to perfectly match the parts they are flush to. Ugh. I'm such a rookie. The walnut "caulking" is looking OK too, but not perfect. Sigh... The rough look of the planking will obviously be sanded down, and will look much better. That's the funnest and most satisfying part of this whole process! Should be there in about a week or ten days. Aloha!