Those Troublesome Skegs Bolt Holes and Finish

Here we drill all sorts of holes in our newly made skegs and finish them.

You know, it really helps to have the right tools. And you know what helps having the right tools? Money. I dont got none of that, so I have to make do with the tools I have. And sometimes that is a ridiculous process.

Here I am trying to level my handheld power drill in a slightly broken garage sale drill press with a bit that isnt quite long enough to go through the piece.

I have to drill bolt holes in the skegs. Then I have to drill through the newly fiberglassed and sealed hull to insert the bolts through structural members in the frame.

First I drilled a countersink to hide the head of the carriage bolts, then a hole through the skeg.

I placed the skegs in position on the hull, and then used a long bit to drill through the skeg into the hull and into the structural member of the boat.

Then I went under the boat and countersunk all the receiving ends of the bolt holes.

Actually, Im lying. But thats probably how I would do it now if I did it again. I doubted the accuracy of drilling down into the hull from above, so I marked the desired hole locations under the boat and drilled up. Then I marked the locations of the actual holes on the skegs. Then I took the skegs into the barn and used my sketchy drill press to drill the bolt holes in the skegs.

After all this stressful drilling, I finished the skegs with stain and a couple of coats of UV blocking polyurethane.

Next we install the skegs in the hull. Not once, but twice. Ahem.

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Fiberglass Finish Coats

After the fill coat, the texture of the fiberglass cloth was still visible, so we embarked on a series of finish coats. 

I think we finally put three more coats on after the fill coat.  The Finish Coat, the Arent We Done Yet Coat, and the Good Lord Please Let This Be The Last Coat. 

I took a moment to pose proudly with my dense foam roller in my work clothes now almost completely rigid from layers of spilled epoxy.

Between layers, we attacked the bumps, bubbles, drips, and encapsulated bugs with an orbital sander and sandpaper.

And each layer was smoother and more handsome than the last.

Until finally...

 We had something that looked purdy fancy and shiny.

 Whew.  Finally.

And so we could set aside the epoxy for a while.  We thought we wouldnt need it again until we do the upper decks after the boat is flipped.  (However, we needed epoxy to do a "scarf joint" on the skegs, so stay tuned for that.)

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