June 2016
Having completed the rear deck and plugged all the screw holes it was time to move onto the front deck.
Starting on the Starboard side I routered the 6mm sealant groove in the end of the deck boards and bonded on up to the hatch opening.
Unfortunately the boards have appeared to get wider with the passage of time so some minor rework was required...
Then I switched to the Port side.
I applied the Sikaflex 290 filling the grooves then smoothing flat. It's messy...
I also did a test piece using tape, left hand side and with and without epoxy, upper half.
The tape side is cleanest and requires little sanding of the caulking.
The non taped side requires a lot of sanding even when the excess Sikaflex is cut off with a blade scraper.
To the point where you soon break through the epoxy.
Now you get a change of shading that isn't fixed with a second coat of epoxy. Also the epoxy doesnt dry floated over the Sikaflex but forms droplets. Not good.
My thinking is epoxy the deck, tape over the wood, Caulk with Sikaflex, remove tape sand as required, varnish.
I used a scraper to remove the excess Sikaflex. As you can see the epoxy had been sanded through.
Having lightly sanded the epoxy I gave it one coat of Epifanes varnish and it looks quite good.
You can still make out the droplets of epoxy on the Sikaflex that I didn't completely sand out for fear of removing more epoxy.
When the glass top goes on I'm sure it will look fine. After all this was a test piece...