The "Casa
Cat" folding
and trailerable cat for the home builder.
Filling, Fairing and
Non-skid
A tedious and laborious job made much
easier by rolling the hull over and working on horizontal surfaces
at a convenient height. I won't go into details of fairing here,
so I'll just include a few tips. A little dish washing liquid
added to water can prevent wet and dry paper clogging when sanding
epoxy. I use Q Cells as a filler for fairing above the waterline.
It's low in strength compared to Cabosil but easy to sand. Adding
a little Cabosil to the Q cell mix stops it slumping on vertical
surfaces.
The hull is faired and the hi build
sanded and it's looking good but there's another steps well worth
doing. Apply a guide coat of any dark coloured paint you have
lying around and leave it to dry. If you use water based paint
leave it plenty of time to harden.
Then sand it off with fine paper.
Any small voids that require further fairing will be obvious
as the dark guide coat will remain in these spots.
Apply non skid.
It's important to work wet on wet, you
can't sand between coats as the surface is deliberately rough.
Mask off the edges of the non skid area. Apply a liberal coat
of epoxy, sprinkle the non skid on and when the resin is still
just tacky use your compressor to blow the loose non skid off.
Roll another coat of epoxy over the
area and when this tacks off, roll on a coat of 2 pack polyurethane.
Remove the masking tape.
Out with the spray gun. Note that each
hull side is painted while it's laid over, much easier for the
amateur painter. Mask off areas you don't want any overspray
on. After a day or 2 roll the hull onto the other side and spray
away after masking the previously painted surfaces.
