Basking In The Warmth Of The Summer Sun

 Now that the spring rains have passed, the warm sun of summer has emerged and we bask in it's glorious light.  At this point, I'm basked out. Basking is now baking. We cannot put a metal tool in the sun else we play "hot potato" with it. The flooding has closed the road in two directions, so a trip to the big city requires a rather lengthy detour (it is Texas, after all where everything is big). The patter of rain was replaced by the soft buzzing of insects going about their business, intent on removing every drop of blood from your circulatory system. The grasses, tall and majestic, swaying gently in the breeze, waft chiggers onto your clothing as you caress their tall fronds in passing. Chiggers love to eat your dead skin cells and, being basically absent minded, continue eating live skin cells until you have an itchy patch that you scratch until its worse.  Each morning we wake to a glorious day, go outside and walk square into a barn spider web stretched between two objects. What I cannot fathom is how these spiders know the exact height of the human face. I had another brief dialog with the official shop roadrunner the other day. He was about 10' away. I spoke in roadrunner this time, a low trill. He answered me back before proceeding on his way. He thinks I'm an idiot. I think he's a bird brain... both cranky in the heat.

Here.

Gone!
The summer is a bit cooler this year. You can see that it's only 96°! But look! The humidity is really really low! Oh yeah, this is in the shade of the shop. We are working directly in the sun. The secret of working is to slow down and plod along and drink a lot of water. a lot of water! Taking breaks in the air conditioning seems only to make it worse. You just have to go back out there. We plod on...........

And you wonder why I was cranky all week? So what did we really do?

Installed the final port. Here is the hole with the 52 mounting holes drilled. Now we have to coat those holes with epoxy. We tried Q-tips. They tend to catch and shred. We tried pipe cleaners. They tend to not get enough epoxy into the holes. We ended up with Ben's solution:

Cheap dental brushes, ten for a buck! Perfect! They hold enough epoxy, are stiff enough, and cleanable. This is your boatbuilding technique of the week.

We found them a lot less messy than anything else and deposit epoxy exactly where you need it.

So we put the port in. Me on the inside with the screwdriver......

Budge on the outside with the wrench

Maestro......the tedium! With the heat, the work days were short. The patience was short. The tempers were short. Ben fussed over extending the blocks on beam 3 so they could support the side pieces. I guess I'd better drift into the lengthy soliloquy on the fitment of the beams to the troughs. The beams are yay by yay. The troughs they sit in are yay by yay. Now these yays are not necessarily the same, so to make them fit, blocks and ptfe spacers take up the slack. Simple, yay minus yay minus the ptfe equals the size of block you need. There are eight of them, all different. This is for just beam 3. The other beams have their own set of 8 blocks.........yay!

Any you wonder why I was cranky all week!

But first, I made the pads relative level so the beams would be closer to sitting level than before, whatever that is. I used a chisel, sander, level to get them close. There is no "perfect". And you wonder why I was cranky all week.

Ben gluing his blocks. Remember, it's in the 90's. He was cranky!

Ben discovered that the aft beam was not quite centered properly (a direct result of too many boat builders, each thinking the other did something). So he whacked off (heh, heh) the locating blocks and re-centered them. And you wonder why he was cranky.

And re-glued them. Meanwhilst..............

I prepped the trough side walls to glue in the trough blocks.

And glued in the side blocks........

Gluing involved clamps, if we were lucky, and a nail gun with a cover block, and a prayer...................and a curse, but I was cranky all week. 

And you wonder ......................................................................why I was cranky all week?

Ben shaved down some thick ptfe to make spacers for the aft beam.

Each of the 4 pieces of ptfe had to be shaped individually. And you wonder why he was cranky all week.

Me screwing in the eight pieces of ptfe to the beams with the sun beating down. And you wonder why I was cranky all week.

Test fitting the beam in the trough. We did this several times! And you wonder why I was cranky all week.

Ta Da! We took it out again. And you wonder why I was cranky all week.

Ben,master of all he surveilles, which consists of this beam for 10 seconds. 

Flowers are all we have................................. the rest is just........................................ some insubstantial, wisp-of-smoke  concept of a lifestyle we deluded ourselves into thinking is the route to perfection and happiness. Life is grinding it out...................................

So tonight I write this blog listening exclusively to Dick Gaughan (last week's music). I must be in a mood (cranky)..................shut the world off, pour a scotch and listen to him. Give it time.

The Music ♫: Eagle Eye Cherry "Free"

Whatever "free" is..