Cowling spacer installed and hatches cut on Pinguino 145

It's been a couple weeks since my last post. Haven't had too much time to work on the Pinguino. But this weekend I made up some ground.

So far I've added a third coat of epoxy to the entire outside of the boat, and have sanded parts of the deck where the hatches and cockpit cowling will go. The hull I will let cure until the boat is done and I'm about to varnish.

Yesterday I cut the hatches.

Today I installed the spacer pieces for the hatches and the lower spacer pieces for the cowling.

I then ran a bead of thickened epoxy around the outside of the cowling. It adds a nice touch and feels good on your fingers when you attach your spray skirt.

Here's how it looks now...

Yes, I have a lot of clamps. No, you can never have enough. :-P

Over the years of making RC sailboats and other hobbies, I've amassed several boxes of clamps. Most are spring loaded which I prefer to screw-down C-clamps. I use C-clamps when I really need to get some pressure down, or when I need to twist a piece into shape. You can see a number of them on the forward part of the cockpit and elsewhere. But for the most part I use spring loaded clamps.

I have several other boxes of spring clamps, but they're really too strong. You don't want to squeeze out all the epoxy, so make sure the parts are completely touching and that you have some pressure, but just not tooooo much.

I like running some thickened epoxy around the outside of the cowling. When sanded and varnished it really looks nice and feels nice.

I used phenolic powder to thicken this part just for looks.

If you use a large tongue depressor and run it around the corner, you can get a really nice curved bead. Then scrape it a second time with good pressure down onto the deck and it will scrape up any excess. If there's still some after curing it will easily sand off.

Lots of little fiddely fiberglassing stuff to do next which I find tedious... but it has to be done.

More later!

Cheers!

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