All these other boatbuilding sites feature the Happy Boatbuilder. They say things like "I glued on the hull panels today, tra-la, tra-la". Or "I made a mistake and had to fix it. tra-la, tra-la". We are not like that. We are cursing, sweating, grunting, belching and farting as we wrestle a recalcitrant piece into place wearing rubber Bozo-the-clown nitrile gloves with sweat dripping out of them and off our noses in 100 degree heat and supressing our anger. We invoke the name of God using his middle initial (Harold??, Horatio??) We never "tra-la", not in the least. I hate epoxy. It's sticky and, as soon as you mix it, the clock starts and I'm working an under an accentuated sense of urgency (I don't like pressure). No matter how careful you are, the epoxy gets in your hair and in your clothes. I hate sticky. Your hands are covered (you're wearing the Bozo gloves), but they stop at your wrists. You discover later that it's on your elbow! Epoxy is just great boatbuilding stuff. That won't make me like it. It's not my medium, I just have to use it. So, tirade over, we move on to what we did this week. We were pretty productive in spite of the heat (I measured the temperature of the tap water today (105°) it drops to the lower 90"s when you run it a while. Budgetboater and Ben (B&B) worked on glassing the tumblehomes of the starboard hull.
Laying the cut piece of biaxial glass in the tray.
Wetted the glass with mixed epoxy.
Rolling up the wetted glass to wet the next section. This stuff drinks epoxy!
Applying the wetted glass to the tumblehomes.
Budgetboater's Butt. Oh yeah and smoothing out the glass.
Pet the boat. Nice boat, good boat.............
Just a bit more smoothing, then waiting for the epoxy to cure to a not-quite-hard state so we could.........
Trim off the excess with a knife. If you wait too long, it becomes rock hard. Ask Budge about his adventures with a grinder! All in all they applied about ten pieces:
Beam troughs. After everything cured, they coated the fabric with thickened epoxy.
Sanding next......... Ben, I and Mrs. Boater glued on the trapezoids under the beam troughs.
No, no pictures of Mrs. Boaters butt- get your mind out of the gutter! We were too busy to get pictures of the process, so I'll describe it for you (yawn........) We had the trapezoids coated and glassed.
We glued, nailed and filleted each one into position. These help support the beams and are a mite critical to the operation of the boat.
Did I mention that it was hot this week???
Besides working on the big boat, I progressed on the dinghy. Budge said I should provide a surface for gluing the bottom. I cut some profiles on some lumber.
We filleted the dinghy with the excess epoxy from the big boat.
I cut out a couple of scuppers/ handholds in the transom.
That is one handsome transom. We glued in (most of) the bottom support pieces.
Even little repairs require a lot of clamps.
This is a hull stiffener (inside bottom of boat). Overall, we did a lot of reinforcing of the 37 year old plywood.
Clamping and weighing down some ply reinforcement beneath the deck. Oh yeah, Ben sanded something. I don't know what it was.
The Music♫: Tom Waits Again.
The work song from Disney's "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs". I think Disney tried to sue him over it. But a good work song, because we worked this week hard Heigh Ho! We're so happy.......................
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