Yesterday I installed the seacocks - a careful and deliberate process since we are dealing with below the water line :-), but all was successfully executed. Today, I now turned my attention to installing the skin fittings, or thru hulls. The hopeful outcome was a simple screw in dry-fit, but alas we are working on boats, right!? The dry-fit was not producing the results I had hoped for. The issue? Alignment, in one word. Once the seacocks were in and tightly fit to their baseplates, the thru hull threads were being pushed into misalignment by the new thickness of the hull + baseplates. That misalignment was enough to nearly put me into a spiral of unconsolable grief....yeah right! What I did manage to do was slow down to a near crawl, put a light and my readers (old eyes) on the subject, and countless trips to the shop for needed reinforcements (finger sander, loose sand paper, a dental pick, bristle brush, acetone and rags). A statesman approach to conflict ensued...

I worked the thru hull holes with the finger sander and loose paper as needed to fine tune things, until I managed to gain the proper alignment for the thru hulls to match up with the female threads of the seacocks. Acetone and the dental pick served to frustrate the antagonists, but in the end the thru hulls were seated fully into their openings. Once I fully seated the thru hulls, I was able to obtain a clear picture of where the hull's surface was irregular around the circumference of the base of the thru hull. Not a significant "irregular fit", but enough to bring out the thickened epoxy to create a custom perfect git. I had a gap on both thru hulls of roughly a 1/16" of an inch by roughly a half on an inch, and so I would work to fill those gaps. Prior to mixing epoxy however, I sanded the surrounding surface of the thru hull, taking down to the epoxy barrier coat and creating a good surface prepped for a mechanical bond for additional epoxy work.

I thoroughly vacuumed the surface and followed that with an acetone wipe down. Next, I wrapped the base threads of the thru hull fittings with tape, as well as the base of the thru hulls. The tape extended out from the base of the thru hulls a bit to allow for a smoothing effect of the thickened epoxy as I tightened them into position. Biscuit's hull was prepped and the thru hulls were prepped, so I headed back to the shop to mix a pot of thickened epoxy - 406 colloidal silica and 407 light fairing compound. I was heavier on the 407 fairing compound to allow for an easier shaping process. In the dry-fitting process, I marked the location of needed fairing filler on the hull with pencil and then applied the thickened mixture to the starboard hull first. I then used a thru-hull tool to. tighten the thru hull into place; at the same time, I used a squeegee to skim coat the recessed machine screw heads. I then repeated this process for then port thru hull.

The next session on Biscuit will be to remove the thru hulls, sand to fair, install the thru hulls and paint the hull with anti-foul paint. The thru hulls are nearly done.

Total Hrs: 3