I am seeing just the dimmest glimmer of light down there at the end of the epoxy-coating-and-sanding tunnel. Of course there's a lot of that sort of work all through the project, but soon I'll get to take a break from it and do some actual assembly. Once all the major hull parts -- strakes, transoms, bulkheads, seats -- have been treated to two epoxy coats and six hundred-odd hours of sanding, I get to try and stitch the hull together.
So, just when I'm not feeling like a complete idiot with my current task, I'll be moving on to a new one. But that's the joy of it, no? Yes.
Saturday was a day for sanding and routing -- smoothing the first coat of epoxy here and there, and making curved edges there and here on the transoms. The 'hole' in the pic below is a handle, in case I ever want to grab hold of, or carry, or do anything other than lightly caress the PMD after it's built. Behold the comfy rounded edge, courtesy of a 1/4" roundover router bit.
Today I tried to suck all the sawdust (epoxy dust, most of it) into the shop vac and wiped up the rest with tack cloth -- which I'm now out of, hence my imminent excursion to Home Depot with the boys. (The boys love Home Depot: the associates give them cookies, and they can walk around sans raindrops.)
After the cleanup I coated the six strakes, two seats, three bulkheads and both transoms with epoxy. Many of these were second coats. With luck I'll be all finished with coating and sanding a week from now -- sooner, I hope.
I went back out to check on things ... and take pictures ... and found a grievous error:
Fortunately, the epoxy hadn't cured yet, so I fixed it. Okay, boys, let's find your leashes!
