Stowaway

Notice that the a lot of the material is
pieces of 1708 biaxial fiberglass.  Must be
a strong birds nest. 

It's a bit hard to see, but if you look close, there is a Phoebe chick desperately trying to hide from me.  Over the past week or so I've noticed a bird spending a lot of time in the shed (including pooping on the deck) and just noticed yesterday why she was hanging out in there so much.  I thought she just liked my company.  I showed the kids and will try to steer clear of that area of the shed until the chick has fledged.

Despite my new shed mate I was able to get the outboard edge of the rails planed down and pretty much ready to fit the rubstrake.  I'll probably have a few areas to touch up as I dry fit everything, but for the most part it is done.  I ended up doing the vast majority with the power planer, it saved a ton of time but in the end it still took close to 4 hours over a few days.  My arms and shoulders are pretty sore today from holding the planer at eye level for so long and stretching into weird positions so I could see the underside of the caprail while working.





I'll probably drill the rest of the screw holes for the caprail next and then clean up the inboard edge.  I'll need to sand and put a slight radius on the bottom inboard edge of the caprail so it won't catch any unsuspecting toes with a sharp edge.

After that, I'll be bedding and screwing the whole caprail down for good.  I'm still not sure what bedding compound to use but I'm leaning toward a polysulfide like Boat-Calk or similar.  Once complete I can start on the rubstrake although I will probably try a few test pieces before I do much more of anything just to see how it looks.