A Big Ice Cream Cake.

So on Sunday, after procrastinating for a couple hours, I glassed the bottom of the Mirror. I first rolled on a coat of e-pox-e to one side and had 2 sheets of glass cut to lay on that half. The roller did not apply the resin thick enough so the glass barely stuck. The gentle breezes did not aid in this matter. I switched to troweling it on. Sloppier. I fought the glass on and tried to apply the saturation coat with a roller. It rolled it down with the front of the roller and picked it back up off the back of the roller. Back to the trowel. Temperature: hot. While smoothing it down nicely you say "What's that black spot?' Bug under the glass. You peel it up and scrape it out, muttering. After doing this a couple times, you finally give up and leave the last couple in like the Titanic legend of the worker that fell and died between the hulls and was just left there. I finally got the glass on both sides. I had to take a half hour walk to get over the trauma of the experience. Me and epoxy............................................................... When he works epoxy, Ben enters a Zen state. Me, I wish I were in another state.

The joys of working outside. Sun, bugs landing on wet epoxy, sun, wind blowing the edge of the cloth lifting it up if it isn't well saturated, sun, wiping the sweat from your brow- oh, no epoxy in the hair again......................

Glass ready to go

Transom glassed.

This week I'm writing this haphazardly. Wait, don't I always??? Let me rephrase. Normallaly (another "l"??), I take a bunch of photos during the week and then try to  make sense of them on Saturday. This week I am writing this in spurts with first impressions, and will try to match pictures at the end of the week. Variety is the spice of life as they say. Monday I finished the glassing the Mirror front and rear transoms. Then I went back to woodworking and cut out the rest of the trim. I decided to cut/drill holes in the top molding in the galley.

Tuesday I sanded the trim pieces and the Mirror hull. This sanding............................. In the afternoon I applied another fairing coat (sheesh, is this all I do??).  The Mirror looked like a big vanilla ice cream cake.

...........................Until the bugs showed up. Now, Ya gots yer two basic bug suicides: the ones that land early while the epoxy is still more viscous and the ones that land late when the epoxy is pretty sticky.  Now the early arrivals struggle valiantly and fight on dragging a bug trail through the epoxy forever commemorating their final struggle. The late arrivals just stick there and can't move. If you try to remove them, you just leave a divot bigger than the bug would make. Oh boy, another fairing coat..................

Bugs in epoxy, Peaches en Regalia............

Budgetboater worked on gluing in the hatch coamings.

What is this clamp thing we got going all the time??? Something about the syntax there........

Budge then came up with an aid to sanding the Mirror. He lightly sprayed the boat with some spray paint, a guide coat.

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Then we sanded it off to show the high and low spots

I sanded by hand until I entered the "Hell with that!" mode

Now the boat looks like a big strawberry ice cream cake!

I spread on some filler and hopefully I won't need more. White spots high, red spots low. Oh yeah. After digging sawdust out of the epoxy, I moved and modified my bench so that there is a separate epoxy station that may be cleaner.

Functional: yes, pretty: no.

I got a coat of epoxy on the trim pieces.

There's a nip of fall in the air. Temperatures in the middle 80's. There is a fall flower blooming now: a 6 petal white bloom on the end of an 8" stalk. It's quite lovely and fragile.

I saw a solo roadrunner chick this week. I guess they're on their own now. I've seen the full cycle this summer. First spotting the wary male from a distance. Then seeing the female running hell bent for leather across the yard with the male in hot pursuit. Next the Roadrunner family catching grasshoppers in the yard, and finally this lone chick.

The Music ♫: Greg Brown "Jesus and Elvis"

Continuing with the religious themes. Greg was/is married to Iris Dement and has a good version of "Let the Mystery Be" Now we've covered Faith with the Joel Mabus track, theology with the Iris DeMent track Now a bit of comparative religion...................... Religion is great, as long as you keep humans away from it. They screw up everything!