Day 5 - Sanding the keel and hull - starting on the veneer decking

Day 5 begins with sanding the keel. Now that the epoxy has set, its time to smooth out and shape the ballast and its transition to the keel. To make things easy to handle, I used two of the wood clamping blocks from the keel assembly step in my bench vise. As you can see below, my fill job with the epoxy was incomplete, or perhaps it shrunk back a bit. Either way, I will have to come back with some additional epoxy in the low spots:

Likewise on the sides, where the darker epoxy reveals some low spots. The transition between ballast and keel came out nice with the gently sloping fillet:

Next, I sanded the entire hull, paying particular attention to shaping up the bow, keeping the deck edge flat and square to receive my decking veneer, and rounding off the chine between the boat bottom and hull sides. I used 100 grit first, followed by 220. When I was done, I used a slightly damp rag to wipe down the hull and deck - this causes the grain to raise a bit, which helps in getting a real smooth finish - just hit the raised grain with 220 again:

In the photo below, sanding was still underway but this shot illustrates the fill I had applied to some of the deck edges and how it helped square the edge:

I also chose to rond off the transition from deck to transom:

Next up, applying the veneer to the deck. Just to be clear, I have and will deviate a fair amount from the standard instructions. The instructions call for this step a bit earlier. I liked the idea of getting the hull faired out and all sanding done before moving on to the decking. 

One thing I would do differently is to hold off on attaching the deck until AFTER the rudder post and keel have been attached. On other blogs, I have seen this technique done and it just makes things a bit easier compared to working through the deck openings.

Another substantial deviation from plan - I am adding a deck/toe rail all around the deck and down around the transom. As such, I will apply the decking first, then varnish the deck, then come back with the deck rail on top, then fill in any gaps and smooth off the side so the hull and rail form a continuous surface. The hull and the rail will be painted.

In the two photos below I am planning out the positioning of the rail and its effect on where the bow plate will sit, and how the bow plate will be shaped:

I then transferred the shape of the bow plate to the deck, this will serve as a guide for how I trim the veneer strips, which I want to match up with the bow plate:

As others have done, I want the veneer strips to form a nice boundary around and trim out the deck openings. This would be more easily accomplished with wider veneer than what comes in the veneer kit particularly because of the radius of the corners of the companionway. I opted to align the pieces along the edge, cut a 45° cut through both pieces at the same time to create the corner miters and plan to fill in the inside corners with an appropriately shaped piece:

I then rounded off the outside corners. Note that nothing is being epoxied in place at this stage. I will plan and cut all parts, pin them in place, and once happy with the design, remove it all and reposition with epoxy to set in place permenently:

At this point, I should mention that I will be placing the veneer strips with a slight gap between them, which will be filled with a dark wood filler to simulate the joint sealer between planks on real decks. More to follow on that technique (which I am doing based on my own assumptions and have no idea if it will work well or not). 

To get things started on the veneer, and shown in the three photos that follow, I began with the king plank (the center most board on the deck). In my case, I don't really have a king plank per se. Usually a king plank is wider, or of a shape to accommodate the primary deck pattern, or a different material. Mine is none of those - just the center veneer strip. I used one whole piece from front to back, laid over the deck opening pieces I applied earlier. I used straight pins to pushed all the way through to mark holes that lie on the centerline and will need to be redrilled once the veneer is in place. I also drew a circle and an x where the mast hole is. 

By using the pins and pulling this strip tight, I was able to get nice straight alignment of the king plank from bow to stern - very important! I then pinned it in place (note, the second piece lying alongside the king plank is there only because I forgot to take the photos until I had that in place):

In the photo below you will see that I have pinned down a piece of wood as a guide across the deck just forward of where the transom rounds off to the deck surface. I intend to have the transom veneer piece mate up to the deck veneer in a straight line across the area marked by the wood guide. This allows me to just but the deck pieces up against the guide to assure a nice straight edge:

From here, I just started adding the rest of the pieces, fitting them around the deck opening trim and pinning everything in place. The two push pins you see are there to establish the amount of gap I wanted. I had intended to use push pins between each piece but opted to eyeball the spacing instead:

Some of the pieces around the deck opening were not very cleanly cut. I went back and redid some of these a bit later:

After filling in the few remaining pieces at the transom, I called it quits for the day. The process is a bit tedious. Be sure to use needle nose pliers to insert the straight pins, its almost impossible with your fingers, the wood is just to hard.