Rub Rails | Rounding Over & Masking Off

With the paintwork below the rub rails protected from scrapes and the mess created by wet sanding it was time to mask off the rails themselves.

I scraped away excess varnish which had dribbled down onto the upper surface when the boat was upside down, and sanded the rails smooth with a P80 grit.

Then I rounded over the upper edge to match the lower one, using a Shinto rasp before finishing with some P150 sandpaper. The ship's cat paid a visit to check on progress, as in this pic.

Finally I masked off the rails using 3M profiling tape on the seam where the rail is joined to the hull, and blue tape to cover the rest of the rail, as here.

You can see in the above pic that I have treated the toe rails on the cabin roof in the same way.

It's good to have the boat right way up again!