13 Foot River Runner Update
By Cecil Severs - Sante Fe, New Mexico - USA
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Work has resumed and it actually looks like a boat.

Here are a couple of pics of my very slow progress on this boat.

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Bottoms up for finishing work on the hull.

The hull exterior is done. Three coats of graphite epoxy on the bottom and five coats of exterior latex over two coats of primer. The gunwales will be left bright with a epoxy seal coat and however many coats of spar varnish it takes to look done.

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This is my first attempt at using the graphite epoxy coating or any epoxy coating for that matter.

As you can see it is coming together. It will not be ready for the Lake Powell Messabout but I do still hope to launch sometime this year.

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Makes a great hard slick surface and is very messy, drippy stuff to work with.

I turned the hull over to begin the finishing of the interior. Hopefully this will go pretty quickly since I’m not being nearly as fussy as I was on the hull exterior. Even there I just managed a passable work boat finish.

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Spent some time on Christmas day prepping for paint. The bow and stern seats are watertight for floatation

The good thing about New Mexico is that the lower elevation lakes will be pretty pleasant places to go through much of the winter. And there’s always the San Juan, though the flows will be pretty low till the annual spring release.

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Closeup of floor slats. They are mostly decorative but hopefully provide some traction for casting. The lights in the pics are for warmth in my chilly garage shop. Hopefully this will help the glue that I used on the deck slats to cure.

The glue used to hold down the decking slats is Titebond III. It's
what I used for most of this boat. Since these slats are purely
decorative I'm willing to chance the temps. As a plus the daytime high today will be above 50. The next big snow storm is scheduled to arrive on Wednesday so it's nice to be reminded that spring is on it's way however slowly.

The next really big hurdle will be registration. I hope that I can find a friendly DMV person. Maybe I'll try the little office in Pecos.

I fully intend that the next set of photos will be final finishing and launch photos.

Keeping busy in Santa Fe.

Cecil

More about River Runner

SAILS

EPOXY

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