All Fair and Prime

 Fairing the hull and Priming

After quite a long time away from the boat due to work commitments and Freddie heading across the Atlantic I'm finally back in the barn and persevering with the fun of filling, fairing and lots and lots of sanding. 

We decided to fair and prime the hull before turning over as having painted a fair share of boats before, working underneath is even less fun! We left a strip of around 150mm from the gunnel down the topsides for hull to deck joint. I've tried really hard to limit the amount of filler I've put on the boat, it being made of flat panels there isn't lots of curvature that needs to be smoothed over, and more filler equals more sanding, more cost and a lot more time. The majority of filler I've been using is epoxy with micro balloons and some colloidal silica mixed to a nice thick peanut butter consistency. This was applied with a nice long straight edge and plastering spatulas. Having sanded this back, I then used some quick cure epoxy car body filler to fill any smaller imperfections. 

Once I'd got to a stage where it looked mostly fair, it was time for the first coat of primer. It's much easier to see surface imperfections when it's all one colour. The primer I'm using is International Interprotect which is a high build primer suitable for brush and roller application. It mixes nice and easy in a 3:1 by volume ratio - different to the epoxy we are using that is 3:1 by weight. Learnt this the hard way resulting in a very runny first mix - however, this worked great as a first thin key coat. 

A quick sand up of this first coat with 120g on the fairing board and then back to filling. Using the quick cure epoxy filler really sped up this process as it allows multiple fills and sanding back to back without having to wait the 24hrs for the epoxy and glass balloons mix. 

I've now repeated this process several times, just putting the 3rd coat of primer on this morning. So far I'm quite impressed with the Interprotect as it's easy to apply and really quick to dry when applied. Hopefully just one more cycle of fill and prime and it'll be ready to turn over!