![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Canoe going well.
Jul. 25th, 2010 03:00 pmSo you may recall, if you have been following The Saga Of The Canoe, that I put the whiskey plank in at the beginning of June. I went over the hull and pulled all the fishing line out (all of it I could reach, anyway), and removed the deck screws that had snugged the plank at the bottom edge, and all the planks at the stems, in tight to the plywood forms.
At this point I discovered (or rediscovered) that wood left in the sunlight gets a "suntan." My workshop (former garage, now retraining as a boatshop) has two windows on the west wall, and when I wheeled the canoe out into the morning sun (strong slanting light is good for seeing imperfections in shape; sanding outside is good for keeping the dust in the workshop low; keeping the dust low gives better results when epoxying and varnishing) I discovered that the side of the boat that had been nearest the windows was now orange and yellow, while the side away from the windows was cream and pink.
I sanded on the boat a little while, brought it back inside, covered it this time, and didn't have time to touch it until six weeks later when I had handled Preparations for the Family Visit, The Family Visit Itself, and The League Of Women Voters Candidates Forum. And recovered for a week.
My plan had been to use a 1/4 inch Forstner bit to drill out the holes left by the deck screws, and to cut wooden plugs of matching size from leftover scraps of white pine and butternut planks. Aside from the challenges of matching color and grain, this went swimmingly. I am considering using more deck screws (perhaps every fourth plank) on the middle forms to solve the problems I was having with the hull pulling away from the forms. Though I think using heavier fishing line for the first third of the planks and then switching to lighter line might also do the trick, and would require less fiddling.
Sanding the plugs down to the level of the planks was easy, and I've been working to finish the rough sanding of the boat. I only sand for an hour or two, because 1) I don't want to turn on the shop vac and the orbital sander in my driveway before 9:00am, because I'd like to stay friends with the neighbors and 2) I want the slanting morning light, and besides it's really hot here in the summer so I quit about 10:30 or 11:00 am, and cover the boat. The shop gets really hot (like 90) during the afternoon, so I try to stay out of it then.
Even so I expect to be done with the rough sanding by the end of next week, so it's time to think about epoxy and fiberglass. It looks like about 60$ of 4 oz fiberglass will do the job. If my epoxy from 4 years ago is still okay this will be a comparatively cheap boat. However the epoxy from 4 years ago is four years old and spent most of that time sitting in the carport at my old house and in the shop here. It has been subjected to temperatures over 90 degrees F and under 20 degrees F during that time. Martin (my woodshop-teacher boat-guru) assures me that epoxy doesn't go bad but I am a puling and weak, cowardly creature and plan to put mine to the test.
Killing two birds with one stone, I plan to test wood putty colors at the same time. The thing about wood putty is it's kind of unpredictable how its color will change when you put epoxy over the top of it. It will get darker and more colorful--that's pretty much a given. But how *much*? And in the meantime the wood is getting darker and more colorful too, and the changes won't necessarily be similar. So that board-of-planks I put together last month to test the plug cutter/Forstner bit combination also got four deep scratches down the front, each to be filled with a different color of wood putty before the whole thing is sanded and epoxied. I have puttied the scratches, and am thinking about doing a fifth scratch to test "sawdust mixed with wood glue."
We'll see how that goes.
At this point I discovered (or rediscovered) that wood left in the sunlight gets a "suntan." My workshop (former garage, now retraining as a boatshop) has two windows on the west wall, and when I wheeled the canoe out into the morning sun (strong slanting light is good for seeing imperfections in shape; sanding outside is good for keeping the dust in the workshop low; keeping the dust low gives better results when epoxying and varnishing) I discovered that the side of the boat that had been nearest the windows was now orange and yellow, while the side away from the windows was cream and pink.
I sanded on the boat a little while, brought it back inside, covered it this time, and didn't have time to touch it until six weeks later when I had handled Preparations for the Family Visit, The Family Visit Itself, and The League Of Women Voters Candidates Forum. And recovered for a week.
My plan had been to use a 1/4 inch Forstner bit to drill out the holes left by the deck screws, and to cut wooden plugs of matching size from leftover scraps of white pine and butternut planks. Aside from the challenges of matching color and grain, this went swimmingly. I am considering using more deck screws (perhaps every fourth plank) on the middle forms to solve the problems I was having with the hull pulling away from the forms. Though I think using heavier fishing line for the first third of the planks and then switching to lighter line might also do the trick, and would require less fiddling.
Sanding the plugs down to the level of the planks was easy, and I've been working to finish the rough sanding of the boat. I only sand for an hour or two, because 1) I don't want to turn on the shop vac and the orbital sander in my driveway before 9:00am, because I'd like to stay friends with the neighbors and 2) I want the slanting morning light, and besides it's really hot here in the summer so I quit about 10:30 or 11:00 am, and cover the boat. The shop gets really hot (like 90) during the afternoon, so I try to stay out of it then.
Even so I expect to be done with the rough sanding by the end of next week, so it's time to think about epoxy and fiberglass. It looks like about 60$ of 4 oz fiberglass will do the job. If my epoxy from 4 years ago is still okay this will be a comparatively cheap boat. However the epoxy from 4 years ago is four years old and spent most of that time sitting in the carport at my old house and in the shop here. It has been subjected to temperatures over 90 degrees F and under 20 degrees F during that time. Martin (my woodshop-teacher boat-guru) assures me that epoxy doesn't go bad but I am a puling and weak, cowardly creature and plan to put mine to the test.
Killing two birds with one stone, I plan to test wood putty colors at the same time. The thing about wood putty is it's kind of unpredictable how its color will change when you put epoxy over the top of it. It will get darker and more colorful--that's pretty much a given. But how *much*? And in the meantime the wood is getting darker and more colorful too, and the changes won't necessarily be similar. So that board-of-planks I put together last month to test the plug cutter/Forstner bit combination also got four deep scratches down the front, each to be filled with a different color of wood putty before the whole thing is sanded and epoxied. I have puttied the scratches, and am thinking about doing a fifth scratch to test "sawdust mixed with wood glue."
We'll see how that goes.
