Canoe Update
Apr. 30th, 2011 06:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
catsittingstillYesterday my back was quite a bit better. Which was good, because I spent six hours sanding the boat. By hand, because it's so deucedly easy to sand through the epoxy overcoat and into the actual fiberglass. The weather was perfect for it--sunny so I could roll the boat out of the shop and look over my epoxy job by daylight, but cool enough that sanding a boat while wearing glasses and a facemask was not a problem--so I really wanted to get as much done as possible, because I knew it was going to be about 10 degrees hotter today.
Today I did a little practicing, including a few scratch tracks for the album to test some of my ideas about arrangements, then bought some scotch-brite scrubby pads (*not* the non-scratch kind; scratching the epoxy finish in the low places the sanding block hadn't reached was the whole point) and set to work. I scrubbed the canoe all over, wiped it off with a wet cloth, and made sure there weren't any shiny spots.
Then I undid all the carriage bolts holding the stations to the strong back. I knew I wasn't going to be able to lift the hull off the stations, because of all that hot glue. I originally thought the stations for the bow and stern stems could stay fastened to the strongback, because I hadn't used any hot glue there--just screws which had been subsequently removed, and the screw holes drilled out and plugged with matching plugs. However the little bit of carpenter's glue that had squeezed out from between the planks, combined with the pinching effect of the planks coming together at the ends meant that I had to take those loose too. I had to go get a ratchet to do it, because none of my wrenches would reach under there. Fortunately the only socket I had was the one I needed.
Then I called Kip in to help me pick up hull-plus-stations, flip it over, and set it in the cradles (newly re-assembled for the occasion.) I took up my trusty birthday mallet and a piece of 1 x 1 1/2 true about a foot long (because there wasn't space to swing the mallet inside the hull with all the stations in here) and started whaling away at the bow station, trying to knock it toward the middle of the boat. Several good whacks on each side of the centerline, and it just popped loose.
They were pretty much all like that. There was much whacking and booming (I put earplugs in before I started because I knew it was going to be noisy) and one by one the stations came out. Once one station was out I had more room to swing the mallet and it got easier. Large unsightly blobs of hot glue were left on the interior of the hull but I think those will be easy enough to remove. The hot glue did remove some divots of wood, but they seem to be mostly minor. The outside of the hull has a few blemishes where cleats I hot glued on, or beads of hot glue I used to hold planks together pulled out divots so deep I didn't really dare sand the wood around them down until they disappeared, so I filled them with a dab of dookie schmutz. I'm not sure yet whether that will be necessary on the inside (aside from a few cracks, which is a different issue) but things are looking good so far.
And the bow and stern stations looked very intimidating when I first got a look at the underside--epoxy had flowed under them and glued the tip of the bow to the tip of its station and vice versa on the stern. But a little bit of wiggling side to side and up and down persuaded the carpenter's glue to release from the stations, and once that let go, the epoxy was just a thin film connecting the two undersides--it hadn't actually made any kind of good bond--so it just ripped away.
So the next three weeks are budgeted for smoothing out the inside and fiberglassing the inside. And since bending over for too long is bad for my back, I intend to spend part of the time making gunwales, decks and through-holes. And I should probably start on the seat soon too.
Today I did a little practicing, including a few scratch tracks for the album to test some of my ideas about arrangements, then bought some scotch-brite scrubby pads (*not* the non-scratch kind; scratching the epoxy finish in the low places the sanding block hadn't reached was the whole point) and set to work. I scrubbed the canoe all over, wiped it off with a wet cloth, and made sure there weren't any shiny spots.
Then I undid all the carriage bolts holding the stations to the strong back. I knew I wasn't going to be able to lift the hull off the stations, because of all that hot glue. I originally thought the stations for the bow and stern stems could stay fastened to the strongback, because I hadn't used any hot glue there--just screws which had been subsequently removed, and the screw holes drilled out and plugged with matching plugs. However the little bit of carpenter's glue that had squeezed out from between the planks, combined with the pinching effect of the planks coming together at the ends meant that I had to take those loose too. I had to go get a ratchet to do it, because none of my wrenches would reach under there. Fortunately the only socket I had was the one I needed.
Then I called Kip in to help me pick up hull-plus-stations, flip it over, and set it in the cradles (newly re-assembled for the occasion.) I took up my trusty birthday mallet and a piece of 1 x 1 1/2 true about a foot long (because there wasn't space to swing the mallet inside the hull with all the stations in here) and started whaling away at the bow station, trying to knock it toward the middle of the boat. Several good whacks on each side of the centerline, and it just popped loose.
They were pretty much all like that. There was much whacking and booming (I put earplugs in before I started because I knew it was going to be noisy) and one by one the stations came out. Once one station was out I had more room to swing the mallet and it got easier. Large unsightly blobs of hot glue were left on the interior of the hull but I think those will be easy enough to remove. The hot glue did remove some divots of wood, but they seem to be mostly minor. The outside of the hull has a few blemishes where cleats I hot glued on, or beads of hot glue I used to hold planks together pulled out divots so deep I didn't really dare sand the wood around them down until they disappeared, so I filled them with a dab of dookie schmutz. I'm not sure yet whether that will be necessary on the inside (aside from a few cracks, which is a different issue) but things are looking good so far.
And the bow and stern stations looked very intimidating when I first got a look at the underside--epoxy had flowed under them and glued the tip of the bow to the tip of its station and vice versa on the stern. But a little bit of wiggling side to side and up and down persuaded the carpenter's glue to release from the stations, and once that let go, the epoxy was just a thin film connecting the two undersides--it hadn't actually made any kind of good bond--so it just ripped away.
So the next three weeks are budgeted for smoothing out the inside and fiberglassing the inside. And since bending over for too long is bad for my back, I intend to spend part of the time making gunwales, decks and through-holes. And I should probably start on the seat soon too.
