A bit more progress on the canoe
Aug. 12th, 2010 02:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
catsittingstillI have kind of been stalling. Because a big important step is coming up and I'm worried about it and thus dragging my feet on other stuff, I think.
The big important step, since I'm pretty sure you would want to know, is fiberglassing the outside. This involves fiberglass cloth and epoxy and a beautiful, sanded, puttied, faired, sanded to a fare-thee-well canoe with a lot of labor already in it. You get one chance to get it right, and how long that chance lasts depends on how long it takes the epoxy to solidify.
And epoxy solidifies faster the hotter it is.
It is August. In Tennessee. It routinely hits 90 Farenheit in my shop in the afternoons. With luck I can get it down below 80 first thing in the morning (open windows with fans all night.)
And--it is recommended that you epoxy when the temperature is falling rather than when the temperature is rising. If you epoxy when the temperature is rising, small air bubbles trapped in the pores of the wood will tend to expand and rise into the epoxy, leaving bubbles visible in the coating of the boat.
Sooo.
Now on the one hand I'd really like to be done by mid-October so I can get some canoeing in in the beautiful beautiful fall. On the other hand this little problem with the temperature is realistically not going away until mid-September at the very earliest. So at some point I'm going to have to decide whether to go for it and epoxy in the hot, or wait until fall and not use the canoe until May.
Decisions, decisions.
So, anyway, I've been waiting for the fumed silica and the phenolic microballoons to arrive. I have some holes in the hull that I need to putty and I'm told these additives make a difference. While I was waiting I thought of something I could make early, so as to have it ready when I need it. I can't really make decks or thwarts until I can measure the shape of the inside of the canoe, which won't be until the outside is fiberglassed. But I know I want through-holes like I made for Patience--and that starts out with using the hole saw to cut circles of wood, gluing them together in two stacks, and drilling a hole vertically through each stack. The steps are small and not intimidating, so why not?
I drilled circles (tip for next time--drill almost all the way through, stop for a half hour or so to let the drill bit cool, then finish the cut--the wood sticks less if the drill bit is cool). I tried Randwolf's suggestion of using syringes to measure small quantities of resin and hardener for the epoxy and it worked great--thanks Randwolf! I added sawdust until the mix was peanut-butter-like in consistency, frosted the circles with it, and stacked them on a heavy wire, then put one clamp on each side of the wire--gently, so as not to squeeze out all the epoxy and "starve" the joint.
They are now curing on a piece of wax paper on my Shopsmith table. The Shopsmith makes a great drill press, by the way. And I really like it as a sanding wheel also.
Once the epoxy cures I will drill out the small central hole that the hole saw leaves and make it 3/4 inch or so. Then it will be ready to go when the time is right for it.
But all the while I was standing around in gloves and apron, measuring and mixing epoxy, the sweat was just running down my temples. I'm just glad it never got into my eyes.
And the additives have got here so really I should run a few experiments with them tomorrow and hopefully start puttying the next day.
The big important step, since I'm pretty sure you would want to know, is fiberglassing the outside. This involves fiberglass cloth and epoxy and a beautiful, sanded, puttied, faired, sanded to a fare-thee-well canoe with a lot of labor already in it. You get one chance to get it right, and how long that chance lasts depends on how long it takes the epoxy to solidify.
And epoxy solidifies faster the hotter it is.
It is August. In Tennessee. It routinely hits 90 Farenheit in my shop in the afternoons. With luck I can get it down below 80 first thing in the morning (open windows with fans all night.)
And--it is recommended that you epoxy when the temperature is falling rather than when the temperature is rising. If you epoxy when the temperature is rising, small air bubbles trapped in the pores of the wood will tend to expand and rise into the epoxy, leaving bubbles visible in the coating of the boat.
Sooo.
Now on the one hand I'd really like to be done by mid-October so I can get some canoeing in in the beautiful beautiful fall. On the other hand this little problem with the temperature is realistically not going away until mid-September at the very earliest. So at some point I'm going to have to decide whether to go for it and epoxy in the hot, or wait until fall and not use the canoe until May.
Decisions, decisions.
So, anyway, I've been waiting for the fumed silica and the phenolic microballoons to arrive. I have some holes in the hull that I need to putty and I'm told these additives make a difference. While I was waiting I thought of something I could make early, so as to have it ready when I need it. I can't really make decks or thwarts until I can measure the shape of the inside of the canoe, which won't be until the outside is fiberglassed. But I know I want through-holes like I made for Patience--and that starts out with using the hole saw to cut circles of wood, gluing them together in two stacks, and drilling a hole vertically through each stack. The steps are small and not intimidating, so why not?
I drilled circles (tip for next time--drill almost all the way through, stop for a half hour or so to let the drill bit cool, then finish the cut--the wood sticks less if the drill bit is cool). I tried Randwolf's suggestion of using syringes to measure small quantities of resin and hardener for the epoxy and it worked great--thanks Randwolf! I added sawdust until the mix was peanut-butter-like in consistency, frosted the circles with it, and stacked them on a heavy wire, then put one clamp on each side of the wire--gently, so as not to squeeze out all the epoxy and "starve" the joint.
They are now curing on a piece of wax paper on my Shopsmith table. The Shopsmith makes a great drill press, by the way. And I really like it as a sanding wheel also.
Once the epoxy cures I will drill out the small central hole that the hole saw leaves and make it 3/4 inch or so. Then it will be ready to go when the time is right for it.
But all the while I was standing around in gloves and apron, measuring and mixing epoxy, the sweat was just running down my temples. I'm just glad it never got into my eyes.
And the additives have got here so really I should run a few experiments with them tomorrow and hopefully start puttying the next day.
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no subject
Date: 2010-08-12 07:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-08-13 01:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-08-12 08:56 pm (UTC)I just saw a show called Doing DaVinci, where a build team makes some of DaVinci's machines. In one, they had to epoxy laminate a giant warbow together. In the heat, they had just thirty minutes to do the entire thing before the epoxy set. Watching a whole team blaze away on the wood was pretty messy, but they did get it done.
no subject
Date: 2010-08-13 01:39 pm (UTC)Doing DaVinci sounds like a neat show.
Epoxy and Fiberglass
Date: 2010-08-12 10:35 pm (UTC)Re: Epoxy and Fiberglass
Date: 2010-08-13 01:39 pm (UTC)