To flip or not to flip

Builder's Forum
1

Following the letter of the manual, I should be fliping the boat and 'glassing the outside hull after few more jobs (hatches, interior trim). I kind of want to install the rails prior to flipping. I do plan on spacred inwhales as well, but those I would likely install after the next flip.

For that matter, when I do flip the boat to sand and fiberglass the bottom, is there a good reason to not go ahead an finish sand and paint the bottom before flipping it back for the rest of the interior and rig installation and finishing?

I guess I’m just trying to minimize the number of times I have to turn the boat. Maybe it isn’t worth the effort, and I should just get good at recruiting people to turn it, or build the gantry I’ve been mulling for a couple months now. Up to know I’ve been able to turn it alone with some simple slings, but it is getting to be pretty heavy these days.

2

Getting people together to flip my boat was a big production. For this reason I also tried to minimize the number of flips I did. I am not clear what the consequences will be for you but there definitely were some for my build. For instance, I did the finish paint on my hull but did not consider that I would later have to bond the deck to the hull with 3" fiberglass tape. I had to remove a 2" strip of paint from the hull to do the tape. If I had thought about it more clearly I would have masked and left that strip bare while painting. I would say as long as you think things through you can modify the suggested schedule. Just think it through.

3

Sound advice, thanks. I did modify the flipping schedule when I built the deck and I ended up wishing I hadn’t.