Canoe. And Stuff.

[catsittingstill]

Today I carefully, carefully cut the little "bowsprits" of walnut that I glued on the hull yesterday, to match the angle of the hull.  I got pretty close with the douzouki, and did the finishing touches with the random orbital sander.  Then I clamped up the port outwale (which involves, as Van Leuven puts it in her book "rounding up every clamp on the claim), and verified that it fitted the hull and everything, and laid nicely along the "bowsprits."  I put on the Blue Masking Tape, removed the inwale and laid it out on the strongback, with all the clamps laid out in order.  I put on a lower layer of blue masking tape, holding a wax paper "skirt" along the full length of the hull, because sanding dookie schmutz off is a pain in the neck.

I made epoxy, painted the outwale with it, turned the remainder into dookie schmutz and spread the dookie schmutz on the outwale, like peanut-buttering the longest carrot stick you ever saw.

Then I passed the dookie-schmutzed outwale over my head (this part always makes me wonder if I'm going to need to get my hair cut really short in the afternoon), slapped it up against the middle of the outside of the canoe, and started clamping like a mad thing.  As the canoe got heavier and heavier on one side with the addition of all those clamps it sagged in the sling so that it appeared to be tacking out of the garage, with the wind off the starboard bow.  I adjusted the outwale's height (I wanted it 1 / 16th of an inch from the sheer) by pulling up or down on the free length of outwale while fastening each clamp.  The last clamp went on as close to the bow or stern as I could get the little C-clamp to go, and held the end of the gunwale against the hull and the "bowsprit;" I made sure to align the outwale with the bowsprit as well as I could.

Then came the wiping.  Wiping up after dookie schmutz is infinitely worth doing--five minutes of wiping can save you an hour of sanding.  But I probably spent half an hour wiping dookie schmutz squeezeout from under the outwale and the top of the outwale, and my clamps, and the strongback and the floor.  I used like a quarter of a roll of toilet paper.

Then I washed up (for a wonder, I hadn't gotten any of that extravagance of dookie schmutz on me) and hung out the laundry, puttied another crack in the driveway (my hands are only strong enough to do one a day) and printed up some posters and invitations for the Candidates' Forum and went to Carson Newman.

I gave away six or eight invitations and posted three posters.  I did not make it to the Election Commission before they closed, though.  I'll do that tomorrow.  Oh, and City Hall--I should put a poster up there.

After dinner--second outwale?  We shall see.

Comments

[peteralway.livejournal.com]

I can't think of them as bowsprits. Not without a line coming down from the foremast to hold a jib sail. Head timbers maybe? Naw...Actually, I think of them as beaks or rams...which gets me thinking of ironclad canoes duking it out at Hampton Roads.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

:-) at one point I did growl "ramming speed!" But I would never use my delicate Constance that way.

[msminlr.livejournal.com]

What is involved in puttying cracks in the driveway? If you've already described this, I missed that post.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

It is a bit like putting silicone sealant around cracks in the shower--cylindrical goop container with nozzle fits into "gun" with a piston that presses on the hind end of the cylinder when you pull the trigger, advancing a little each time. That increases the pressure in the cylinder and the goop squirts out the nozzle. The only problem is that the concrete puttying compound seems to be more viscous and harder to force out the nozzle of its cylindrical container and the driveway cracks are longer, so my hands don't stand up to it as well.

I did discover that when the directions say the cracks must be clean, they mean it. The slightest layer of dust interferes with the process because the sealant picks up the dust and then won't stick to anything. So before using the sealant I have to scrub out the crack.

I've been using a whisk broom to get the dust and straw out and that helps a bit but I think I need to start scrubbing with water. The problem is then it needs longer, because it has to dry.

[msminlr.livejournal.com]

Were it my driveway, I'd go looking for an extension cord long enough to run my biggest vacuum cleaner out to the driveway cracks.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

Hmmm...

If it's dry tomorrow, I'll give that a try.