Finishing the plug
What material is the plug made of you may ask. Well, a not so small part of it is made out of the material to the right --->.
As seen in part 1, i made the "raw" plug quite quickly in a not so sofisticated way. But i still want a good finish to the hull and therefore have to be quite careful with the rest of the work with the plug to get an accurate result.
This part took about a month, mainy because i have to keep the girls (9 and 32 years old) happy and try to finish the upperfloor in our house. It was'nt decorated when we moved in four years ago, but this summer it will be finished. The last month the walls has started to come up and the girls are starting to look for wallpaper. Of the expensive kind mainly. Back to the boatbuilding now..
Maybe i should have been more careful with the sections, especially those in the middle of the boat. It didnt look right there, so i had to redo that part a few times before i was satisfied.
When i mould the hull, i will make a flange to attach the deck to.
With the raised foredeck, the flange has to be at an angle on the forward part of the boat. I missed the point where that angled part should start and the flange vertical part will end with about ten centimeters (thats 4 inches for you poor non-metric still out there :-). Part of the cure is seen to the right.
Another small mistake linked with the flange is that i made it too narrow. You can se the traces of the widening of the flange on the picture below to the right.
<-- To finish of the finish,
two layers of sprayfiller was sprayed on the plug. Fine sandpaper made the surface smooth as silk
To get a hard surface on the plug i coated it with garage-floor varnish -->.
Why not coat ot with epoxy? Well i have used this technique a few times for plugs and smaller mouldings. It works very well. It's easy to get a good shiny finish with it and after waxing it the moulded hull is very easy to separate from the plug. It's a one-component varnish mainly used for floors with high strength. Extremely quick to work with and the result is very shiny (i have used it to varnish persimmon golfclubs too, that was before they invented "metal woods").
I varnished the boat i am saling right now, SWE 91, with floor varnish almost ten years ago. It's still in perfect condition.