Sanding was completed yesterday, so today was for paint. Another long day, cool morning allowed lots of painting. I did the copper bronze and my dad put on an expert coat of dark blue (looks almost black in some light, but it will look stunning once we cut in the white waterline stripe again.
Looks like a full moon out there tonight, we worked late, and here are a few photos we took too late to get good ones.
The painting was a non event, lots of work, but it went according to plan. What did not go according to plan was the discovery that one of the shaft hubs apparently had a twisted off set screw in the "full on" position. It was twisted off flush with the body of the hub.
After quite a few attempts that lead nowhere, we finally put an automotive harmonic balance puller onto the hub, secured it, and just muscled the darn thing one small turn at a time. Once things broke loose and started to move, we took a large pipe wrench to the shaft and just lodged a box end wrench onto the bottom of the hull and did the turning with the pipe wrench (shafts are being replaced).
We didn't realize WHY the thing was putting up such a fight, until we looked inside the bore of the finally freed hub and saw the tip of the set screw protrucing ever so slightly. That ever so slightly was enough to make this job last over 1-1/2 hours.
The old shaft goes to the machine shop tomorrow, they'll make two new ones just like it. I'm going to have them clean up the hubs too and pre-fit them to the shafts (a GREAT tip from Todd Heinrich).
Tomorrow eve I'll work on that other hub, remove the packing and get ready for new packing (no dripless, just traditional). I'll also work on the new transducer.
We'll put on another coat of the copper bronze and eventually do the white stripe after things are cured up.
A tip about the waterline. In order to get a good job we had to overlap the dark blue over the old 1-1/2" white waterline, and we also had to overlap some of the copper bronze too. That makes for a squiggley looking waterline in the photos.
In order to get the non stick tape properly installed, before we painted we came down 1" from the top of the waterline and put a reference mark. That way we'll know exactly where to position the non stick tape on the top side and bottm when it comes time to put on the finishing touches.
The copper bottom, white stripe and very dark blue accent is going to look good.
Regards, Paul