Filling Craters on the Moon

This is precisely how it felt.  It seemed as if we had drilled a million little holes in the hull, and now  everyone of them had to be filled.  While I have used the West System epoxy and filler before, I have always found it cahllenging to get the mixture and consistency just right without using measuring cups/pumps.  So when I started looking around, I found the System Three Epoxy products, and in particular the QuickFair product.  It go good reviews on the JamesTown Distributors website, so I decided to give it a try.  It is a simple epoxy and hardener that already has the glass beads mixed in with the resin.  It uses a 2:1 ratio when mixing, that I have become quite good at eyeballing when mixing.  The other big criteria for our epoxy filling solution was it needed to be relatively easy to sand.  By all accounts this stuff worked great. Made prep work quick and for the most part worked like a charm.

Initially, we were putting way too much on, and then having to sand it off and continue fairing it.  Finally Peter devised a "skimming" method that used the old contour of the hull to fill just the holes using a large putty knife and paint mixing sticks.  It meant that when the epoxy shrunk down some, you had to come back over and do it again, but it certainly reduced the amount of sanding.

So speaking of sanding, Peter made some great sanding boards of different lengths out of lauan plywood with little wooden handles screwed and glued on a angles that made holding them.  We used some adhesive and attached sand paper to them.  The smallest one was about 30 inches, and the longest was about 50 inches.  These "long boards" allowed us to get really good fairing without creating more divits and ruts, that an orbital sander might create.  The only drawback was that we had to hand sand the entire hull, multiple times (after each reapplication of the QuickFair).  After starting with 80 grit sand paper, we worked out way down to 60 grit,m 50 grit, and finally down to 36 grit.  This 36 grit was awesome.  Tough as nails, and just tore through the epoxy and filler.  I''l try to take some pics of the materials and get those posted.

Needless to say, this took --- FOREVER!!!  It just really did feel like we were never going to finish.  Always a little more to do.  And oh, by the way, when were were done ... we had to flip the boat and do the other side!!!!  Ugh.

In retrospect, I think we should have grabbed the orbitals and just gone at it, and worried about all the detail fairing for later.  But the end result was a hull that was pretty well faired when it was all said and done.