catsittingstill | (no subject)

The canoe is up to 11 strips on each side. Steve wasn't available to help today but I still got six strips on.

Some thoughts:

1) the hot glue appears to be working so far. The process involves putting a dab of hot glue on each crosswise station and gluing the strips to them, and then putting a dab of hot glue across the outside of the joint between two strips *between* stations. (so the first set of glue dabs ends up on what will be the inside of the boat and the second set of glue dabs ends up on what will be the outside of the boat.) Since the outside is easy to get to at this stage (unlike the inside) I have been experimenting with removing the hot glue dabs once the carpenter's glue between the strips has cured.

I think removing the hot glue dabs is going to be a bit more of a pain than removing the staples or the fishing line. I need to go back and re-read the web page about how to deal with them--maybe I'm not doing it right. However the way I'm doing it does work--it's just that it's kind of time consuming and it often ends up scarring the wood underneath a little bit.

2) I'm now approaching that point in the hull where the strips lie almost flat near the center of the boat and almost vertical near the ends. It's always hard to get the strips to twist that much. The same set of web pages recommended using a heat gun to pre-twist the strips. Steve kindly loaned me his heat gun so I didn't have to buy one to test the concept. I'm still getting the hang of it (and I scorched one of the strips a little) but I think this is going to work.

3) Between the hot glue gun and the heat gun I'm working with a lot of things that generate heat. I've been careful to unplug everything when I'm not going to use it (in the case of the hot glue gun it takes long enough to warm up that I unplug it if I won't be using it for a while.) However I need to keep on that. I don't want to cause a fire, and the cardboard on the floor under the boat adds a certain frisson to having to set the hot glue gun on the floor to have two hands to deal with strips and clamps at each station in the handful of seconds before the hot glue sets up. It would be nice to have some sort of shelf at waist level because both the hot-glue gun and the bar clamps end up on the floor under the boat for lack of anywhere else to put them which means a lot of high speed stooping.

Album.

I have been practicing faithfully and am thinking about scaling up from an hour a day to an hour and a half. I usually end up doing concentrated practice on one or two songs and need the extra time to run through the others so I don't lose the progress I've made on them.

I had another idea for a song yesterday but am having trouble making it come out as cute and funny as it is when it is swanning vaguely around in my head. I feel like I shouldn't count songwriting as part of practice time but I am running out of hours in the day. Also--need to do more melodic entry in PrintMusic.

General--if you pay attention to timestamps you will note it is ridiculously early in the day. To the point where I'm not sure it can be considered "day." Kip and I woke up at 5 am. Allergy season. Sigh.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

You can cons up a bench out of three pieces of 1x12 (with a 1x2 under the seat for stiffening). I make stools like this all the time, held together with deck screws. Ugly but very sturdy and quick.

Three pieces? Leg, leg, top? No apron?

Hmm. Let me think about this.

Rather than an apron, all you need is a single 1x2 (or wider; maybe a 1x6) across the middle. The top sits on the legs for strength.

You can also just sit a plank across two sawhorses.

I recall reading long ago a method for easing the removal of hot glue from a surface. It involves chilling the glue by applying ice (in a zip-lock bag) to the glue, then apply a sharp chisel to the interface between the glue and the surface. The cold supposedly makes the glue brittle, enhancing its pop-off-ability (is that a word?). I have not tried this, so YMMV. It would no doubt slow down what is already a slow process, but if it eliminates the wood scarring, it could be worthwhile.

I solved my waist-level shelf problem by buying a rolling table from an industrial supply firm. It measures about two by three feet and is almost exactly waist-high (my waist, it would be a bit low for you). It was quite useful for holding small items close at hand, and could be readily pushed out of the way when necessary. I should get another one, since I have converted it to a welding table by covering the top with firebrick,which has made it too heavy to easily roll around.

It's a shame we don't live near one another; there are times when having a second set of hands can be really 'handy'! My wife is willing to help out once in a while, but she loses interest fast if something takes longer than fifteen minutes.

What

boywizard said about hot glue is how I got hot glue off of wooden student desks at school from projects. If you have those gel freezer packs, they work, too.

I'd put the gel pack on the glue glob and leave it for about five minutes, and then could generally pop off the glob fairly easily from the flat surface.