Somewhere in my wandering around the web I saw someone mention using a handsaw blade to do fairing work. Well I have several old handsaws and a ton or two of fairing work to do, so I decided to try it. I hate buggering tools up, but this seemed harmless enough and I very rarely use any of the old handsaws anyway. I took the handle off an old saw, covered the teeth up with tape and I even thought about getting the cutting tool out and making the thing have a constant width, but I decided to try it first and then make modifications if they were warranted. Well they aren't. The thing works great as is. Because the narrow end is more bendy than the wide end you can use the section that best suits the compound radius you are working.

I started using a filler I had gotten from Fiberglast where I have gotten many of my glass supplies. It might be an ok filler for some application, but not this one. It was too dry and didn't want to fill in well. So I mixed up a batch of epoxy with 407 to just a bit thinner than mayonnaise and that worked perfectly.

Getting the filler on more evenly will greatly reduce the sanding effort. I do expect that this will take a couple of lifts/layers to get this as fair as I expect to ever get it. But this is a nice break through. I had the first layers on both sides of the bow in a little over an hours time. I'm now thinking that getting the entire bottom covered will take a couple of days work, followed by who knows how many sanding.

So if you have some fairing to do, go look out in the shop for an old unused handsaw and put it to good use. I don't think you could buy a better tool for this job.

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Last edited by Coastie; 05/14/18 04:09 PM.

Dave Graf