Note the bold move, starting a new page titled "Finishing the Boat". I intend this to get myself into the mindset of actually, finally, finishing the boat.
May 11, 2024: I have done nothing on the boat since last summer, nothing. Instead, I foolishly returned to school. I started with one easy course, Intro to AI. No problem. So then, this past semester I took two courses, Machine Learning, and a grad seminar in cognitive psychology. Problem. That was a lot of work. A ton of reading for the grad seminar; and for the other course, a lot of math (mine is rusty), and getting used to a very different kind of programming. Anyway, that's done. So now I need to get back to the boat. Once again, I'm aiming to get the boat into the water this summer. The hull is done, so how hard could it be?
July 6, 2024: I did not get back to the boat, back in May, when I said "I need to get back to the boat" (paragraph directly above). Here are my excuses:
Anyway, I've been busy, and I'm just getting back to the boat now, finally. Actually, I started a few days ago, at which point I discovered that my resin pump was not working, and my backup pump was also not working. I ordered new supplies, and finally FINALLY got back to it today. I glued the mast together, and continued sanding/epoxying the rudder and centerboard. (You really don't need to see pictures, it looks just like many of the other pictures. I will strive for more original content in the coming days.)
The boat will not be ready when Julia arrives, in six days. Hopefully this summer. Otherwise it gets even more embarrassing for me. (I'm in year five of this project right now.)
July 7, 2024: More epoxy and sanding. And I started epoxying
the spars.
See? I could have just duplicated some earlier pictures and you wouldn't have noticed. Although, a truly alert reader would notice that a new part has made its debut. On the bottom of the first picture above is the yoke. The rectangular opening fits onto the top of the rudder assembly. (And yes, it actually does fit, after some sanding.)
In other boat news, (involving boats that have actually encountered water):
The propeller looked something like that, and unlike the T-1000, did not heal instantly.
Boats are fun! That must be why I'm building another one!
I glued the mast together, and bought my very own router to round the edges of the mast. I researched routers, picked one out, and bought it. I made sure that the bit I needed was not too wide for the router, to avoid a problem I've already encountered. I read the manual and set to work.
The routing started out just fine, I was getting a nice rounded
edge on the mast. Then I noticed that the router was cutting way too
deeply into the mast.
I have written to the forum to ask if I've destroyed my mast. I
have consulted the router manual, and found the one step that
I missed, causing the bit to operate like the slide of a trombone.
Laszlo responded on the forums. There is good news and bad news. The good news is that this is fixable. Restore the routed out pieces with wood flour and epoxy, and then wrap with fiberglass. Well within my capabilities.
The bad news: I used the wrong kind of epoxy to glue the mast pieces together. Plain epoxy instead of epoxy/silica. I will phone CLC tomorrow and order new mast pieces. Wow, this is a major screw up, even by my standards.
July 10, 2024: I called CLC support, and talked to Terry, the guy who helped me early on. Terry talked me off the ledge. The epoxy without silica is fine. Don't worry about the butchered mast, it will be strong enough. As Laszlo (helpful guy on the forum) said: It's just a Skerry, you don't need to worry about it standing up to the wind going around the Horn. Technically correct, but honestly that stings a little. Still, I'll be happy to move on after only a relatively small penalty for these two errors.
I mixed up some (organic) peanut butter consistency epoxy/wood
flour and filled in the gouges.
I also did more sanding and epoxying of the boom, yard, yoke, and now the tiller. Back to routing the mast tomorrow, now that I've debugged how to use this new router.
July 14, 2024: Catching up on a few days of work. First, I
finished repairing the mast, adjusted my router the right way,
and finally finished the mast.
Routing created a lot of sawdust. That's not extremely thick blond hair
on my left arm, that's sawdust.
Then I connected the rudder and yoke.
The metal bracket and duct tape are there to ensure I have a right angle while
the epoxy sets.
After the epoxy set:
And then it's been a lot of epoxying and sanding. On the CLC forums, I got some advice on my damaged mast. Among the comments, Laszlo said to apply epoxy very lightly. This finally got through to me. The usual procedure for epoxying something is:
I.e., increasingly fine sandpaper. The idea is to be left with a few layers of epoxy and a slightly rough surface for finishing with paint or varnish. But my attitude has always been "more epoxy more better", and "epoxy solves all problems". This works against the above recipe because there is so much epoxy that it runs, and then I have to sand very heavily to remove them, which ends up removing all the epoxy I applied. This has been particularly bad with the spars (mast, boom, yard — long thin wooden pieces that support the sail).
So I finally heard the advice, used a foam brush instead of bristle, and applied
epoxy very, very lightly, to two sides, and then set the pieces aside.
This worked really well! Almost no runs, and the runs that did occur were much smaller and thinner than usual, so they were easy to fix.
In other news, I've been trying to figure out whether to varnish the boat or paint it. Everyone (me, family) prefers varnish, so that the wood grain (and all my errors) are visible. But I'm getting the impression that that is less maintainable, and a lot more work. Still researching.
July 17, 2024: Could it be? I'm actually finished buying and applying epoxy? It may actually be true. I have epoxied the inside and outside of the boat, more than I should have. I have epoxied the rudder and centerboard and tiller. The mast, boom, and yard have three coats. There is nothing else to epoxy! Which is good, because I really don't like epoxy. (Of course, once I start varnishing, I may look back on my epoxying days with nostalgia.)
Now I need to sand everything with fine (220-grit) sandpaper, to get the surface uniformly rough in preparation for paint and varnish. This has been difficult all along, and explains the over-epoxying of the hull. I apply epoxy, sand it, it's uneven, so I repeat and it never really gets better. My last try will be to sand by hand (not an orbital sander), as that will hopefully provide finer control. Julia has foolishly offered to help with this.
So I've placed what I hope is my last order from CLC. Lots of sandpaper, lots of primer, paint, and varnish, lots of brushes and rollers, a mask for Julia, new mask filters for me.
After the sanding, I will need to do 3-5 coats of varnish, 2 coats of primer, 3 coats of paint. And then, I'll put on the hardware and rig the sail and then, I hope, get the boat in the water this summer.
July 23, 2024: I've started sanding. Sanding by hand. Here
is what I'm dealing with.
Before I can apply primer, paint, and varnish, the surface of the
boat needs to be uniformly sanded, to a greyish color. This part of
the rail is partially like that, but the epoxy was applied unevenly,
and that needs to be fixed. Sorry, that's a passive voice "mistakes
were made" formulation. Let me try again. I botched the epoxying and
sanding by being too heavy-handed with the epoxy, and repeated rounds
of epoxying, sanding, epoxying, sanding, never fixed the problem. So I
am putting away the random orbital sander, and sanding by hand.
Julia is at the lake for two weeks, and volunteered to help me with
the sanding! So she helped me with the rails today.
We did just the rail tops and sides, to make sure that this approach (sanding block, 220-grit sandpaper) would do the job. It seems to work pretty well. Julia describes this task as tedious but satisfying. Like alphabetizing the spice rack. I think that's right, although as she is brand new to this task, and I am five years into it, we might be thinking of different amounts of tedious and satisfying.
July 28, 2024 Julia and I got a lot done. The front and rear seats are in good shape. I did the rails before she arrived. I gave up on the fillets because sanding by hand wasn't working, so I did some research. I think I have a plan that will allow me to finish sanding. The orbital sander seems useful on flat surfaces. A block with sandpaper for other surfaces and for focused work. A dremel tool to sand the messy fillets. Possibly a very thin layer of epoxy to cover the fillets afterward, (Laszlo told me about a "cosmetic fillet" product). And then I can paint and varnish. And after all that, there are a few places where I think I sanded into the wood, so they will need touchup and more sanding.
So, a lot of sanding. This summer is, once again, looking unlikely for a launch. Maybe this fall?
August 8, 2024: I haven't been slacking off, but there is absolutely nothing interesting to say or show. Shiny and uneven surfaces are being sanded to be dull and uniform. Except near the fillets, I'll have to come back to those. I ordered the decal for the name of the boat. Does that count as interesting?