Fairing A Carvel Boat

[Matt Lingley]

Cracking on with the Dragon project, I'm getting to the point where its time to make the boat look tidy again. What do people recommend for fairing a carvel boat? I've had red or white lead putty suggested, and read about using epoxy and microbaloons and at the other end of the cost scale window glazer's putty.
Now I can seen the epoxy and microballons being ok as long as its not near seams, but have seen pictures in wooden boat mag of people apparently trowling the stuff all over the bottom of a carvel boat. How'd they do that and get away with it!?
Cant see myself getting a good finish with oil based putties either... apparntly not being able to sand them very well seems too much of a downside.
Can anyone recommend anything?

[alan white]

Long-boarding is the way to go, and experimenting with different lengths, grits, and board thicknesses is a good idea. Adding thickness back, you'd need to use a good fairing filler like microlight with epoxy. I've heard of using a notched tile cement tool to add initially, which makes longboarding a breeze, after which you fill in the grooves. I don't hear much about adding thickness to carvel hulls, but you want to avoid getting anything in the seams.
If you caulk the seams before you add thickness to the planks, however, you only have to rout out the seam to the depth of the epoxy coat, which should be quite thin.
Is it really necessary to add anything in order to fair the hull? Generally, fairing compound is only used on plywood, strip-built, or cold-molded wood hulls, except where gouges won't hide behind paint on a carvel hull.
As far as filling fastener holes goes, there are experts out there recommending all kinds of things, all of which work, including white lead. We are currently working on a fifty-four year old Chris Craft, and the original white lead filler, while no fun to dig through, is still intact.

A.