Finding the Best Fairing Tool
I spent five days and 15 square metres of hull testing fairing tools before finding a bigger, stiffer plastic squeegee that actually worked. The first hull is now faired, and I’m moving on to laminating the second.
Well, I was reliably informed that you prefer to see me working on the boat instead of photos of the boat.
Since we are quite scientifically inclined bunch - well, we are after all certified nerds with nerd score* between 80 (me) and 95 (Adam) so it should not surprise you - we decided to put it to the test.
So today instead of bunch of photos you have this presumptuous ape explaining in person what she is doing. As they say - by popular demand…
And I must admit, I’m proud of myself. Took me only 15 square meters of hull (and some 5 days!) to figure out which tool is the best and the quickest for fairing. If you wonder - 15 square meters is roughly 3/4 of the lower hull!
So it is not a trowel - I couldn’t find a polyethylene one, PU would be useless as it wasn’t smooth and epoxy adheres to it so I went with smooth steel one. Worked fine for a couple of days but soon became rather difficult to clean (even with sander!) and it was pain (real physical pain!) to use. Plastic squeegees were fine, but way too small to make it a viable option- it is really hard to keep surface smooth and without edges if you use a tool 3 inches wide!
Finally I tried a bit different thing. It is technically also a plastic squeegee but much bigger, much stiffer - and funnily enough, cheaper! I found it in B&Q of all places and bought thinking about using it for fillets inside the hull - it has just right radius for it. But it has also a very good grip and one long edge which proved much better than anything else with fairing compound!
So I have finally finished putting fairing layer on the first hull. Later today I’ll start laminating first layer on the second hull.
Some of you may notice something different about the tent. Yes, we opened the tent again, ac plus a huge fan (50 cubic meters per minute, a quarter of the whole tent) make sure there is no hot air lingering inside. We have managed to keep temperature below 22 degrees Celsius so it is going great!
*yes, there is such thing like nerd score - based on a form from MIT (where else could they devise such a test?) - if you want to look at it go here: https://www.mit.edu/people/dmredish/wwwMLRF/links/Humor/MIT_Nerd_Test.html
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