Blue Peter Dinghy - Touch up of outer hull
Yesterday I applied my final touch up gelcoat to minor imperfections on the hull. Also to one area that either I had inadvertently dished (sanded into a concave curve), or has a mild dishing due to the original damage.
Overall, I'm quite pleased with the overall result. It looks nice and blue and from a distance, the repairs are not obvious.
I've yet to attack under the gunwale - that will be tricky to sand back I think, though I've been given a few pointers by my father in law.
Sadly, this morning, I've discovered a whole tranche of little fixes had not set - I don't know why for sure, but my current thinking is that it's substantially cooler and I continued to use the same hardener quantity as before. Oops! 30 minutes and some acetone later and I'm back to a clean hull. Thankfully most of the fixes did set (3 batches), so I'm not back to the start of the day, but I will be adding more hardener in my next batch to make sure the accident isn't repeated.
I've now decided to park work on the outside and focus on getting the top half to the same quality. Then I'll come back to the bottom, sand the gunwale and patch any remaining imperfections. Unfortunately, the noise of the multi tool as it sands is really quite loud, not the tool itself, but the noise seems to echo inside the hull and amplify it substantially. I've found that reducing the speed of the tool to slowest minimises this effect, but, it also slows things down. I'm not sure which the neighbours would prefer.