Squirt Plans

Squirt Plans

Thursday, September 19, 2013

Painting On Hold

After I flipped the boat I sanded the hull one last time. I started with a pass over with 150 grit and then switched to 180, using an orbital sander. Everything was pretty smooth by the time I finished but still I wanted to take out any low spots. I used a fairing compound from West System that was easy to work with. My only problem was I didn't make enough. I ended up having to do a second batch to finish and luckily everything worked out. To spread the compound I used two 6" cheap plastic squeegees, placing one over the other to make it stiffer. I would definitely recommend spending a few extra bucks and getting a nice one.

After I had finished applying the fairing compound I ran into my problem. I'm currently using my parents garage to hold my Squirt, which is fairly small, but I was planning to make a plastic sheeting-room inside to do my painting. The problem is my dad also uses the garage to hold his wine, in which he uses a wine cabinet that has an AC unit to keep the temperature controlled. This AC unit needs to have a decent amount of free space to intake air, as well as to blow it out. Because of this my plastic-sheeting room would need one side to be clear of the AC unit which would then blow dust all over the garage. I found this out the day after I applied my fairing compound and found dirt, grass, and anything else floating around which had found its way into the wet compound.

Unfortunately this means I won't be making my September splash date but it does mean I won't have to rush to complete it anymore. I'm currently in the process of finding a different place to work on it hopefully I'll be posting soon with some good news!

EDIT: Here's my working space. The picture is before the flip but you can still get an idea. You can see the wine cabinet on the very right side of the photo.