Sanding

I need a new hobby that involves less sanding. Today I finished up stripping Spark of all her hardware. When I was done she was a bare hull that I then rolled over on the trailer and got to work on sanding.

A pair of 2x4s screwed into the bunks provided plenty of support on my GP's mostly flat decks. Then it was time to break out the orbital sander and discs. A face mask was a necessity was the dust was thick as I went through dark green, light green, blue, and finally white primer to get to the mahogany ply beneath.

The wood was in surprisingly good shape beneath all that nasty groddy paint. I found no dark patches denoting rot, nothing was soft, and it was not even badly scratched or gouged. I will have to remove and replace all of the screws though. In the few I removed from the cockpit area, they had turned red from leaching all their zinc over the years. Once that happens they go from being a tough bronze to a brittle version of brass. Last thing I want to go is hit something or take a wave wrong and break a few screws that hold the bottom on.

With foul weather approaching it was back into storage until next time. I am a quarter done, so hopefully the stripping of paint will not take too long.