New Tools

Epoxy
After laying all the large fillets in the bilge I realized a need a better way to handle large batches of epoxy, both unthickened and thickened.

Sanding
I have a couple of ideas for sanding fillets that I want to try out.

Epoxy Dispensing & Mixing

Spigots
Thanks to Steve Sawtelle for pointing me to Wolverine Tuff. They sell water bottles and such and their spigots fit the 5 Gal MAS containers. This will make large batches much easier to dispense.

Dual Component Epoxy Pump
This pump will dispense resin and hardener at the same time at a 2:1 ratio. One pump yields 18cc so dispensing via spigot will be the way to go for large volumes but this pump will reduce number of pumps and eliminate the possibility of losing count of hardener/resin pumps. It’s expensive, but Terry from CLC assures me the amount of work needed with this build makes this pump worth it.

Mixing Large Batches of Thickened Epoxy
12oz of thickened epoxy is tough to mix by hand, I’m sick of it already. Doing a lot of these back to back is a chore and I’d even like to do larger batches. The first thing I’m going to try is a mixer stick as suggested by CLC.

Epoxy Station
These tweaks have also got me thinking about a better epoxy station. I am currently using a card table but I think I’ll build a small work table on rollers. The card table is wobbly and it would be nice to have a lower shelf to store excess filler material, etc. Mainly, this gives me an excuse for putting off sanding.

Sanding Tools for Fillets

Mentioned in a previous post, FEIN makes some adapters used with a multi-tool kit. Thanks to Terry Otis at CLC for turning me on to these.

The next two tools I made from a 2″ diameter large wooden dowel. It’s not a dowel really, just not sure what to call it. It’s a cylinder of wood.

Radius Hand Block
The pictures below should be self-explanatory. The resulting tool works great. I’ll probably build more out of different diameter ‘dowels’.

Rotary Drum Tool
This works better than I expected. Because of the bulk of the drill it can’t get into tight places but for long open fillets it’s nice. I simply cut a 2-3″ length of my ‘dowel’ and glued in a spare drill bit. I probably should make one with a length matching the width of my sandpaper so as not to waste paper.

I haven’t actually started sanding my bilge fillets in earnest so jury is still out on whether these are helpful at scale. But some initial use has been really promising.