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Sep. 2nd, 2010
Canoe in the sun
Sep. 2nd, 2010 06:16 pmStill working on the inside of the canoe. Every time I think I'm nearly done I look at it again and see I'm not.
This morning I moved it out into the sun to work. Back when I was putting my workshop together, I started with one incandescent bulb and one rack of 2 fluorescent lights. A reasonable amount for a garage, but completely inadequate for a workshop. I had the contractor put in seven more racks of fluorescents, which I thought would be plenty.
But it's nothing like sunlight. So this morning I had the shop doors open, trying to cool it down, and I looked outside and thought that the glue I was having a hard time spotting under the shop lights (it dries kind of yellow, and the white pine is kind of pale, so I had to get my nose right down into the boat to see it) might be more visible in the sun.
The shell of the hull is so light that I just picked it up, carried it outside, put it down in the grass, brought my cradles outside and set them in the driveway, then picked the hull back up and set it in the cradles. I couldn't have done it if there was any wind to speak of, because such a light, large thing would have been unmanageable--but we haven't had any high winds lately
And sure enough, the sunlight made the flaws much easier to spot.
So since there was so much more glue than I thought, I went back to working with the scraper. It leaves a shining surface on the wood, which makes it easy to see where I've been. And dull spots were glue, or depressions in the planks that were still rough from the tablesaw. I went over almost half the boat, including working on the butternut stripes that I'd been putting off (I found the butternut a bit too hard to sand easily-the scraper works well on it, but I have to keep changing directions because the butternut has a lot of tearout if I go against the grain.) Having the height adjustable was very handy.
After about three hours my hands were starting to hurt, so I covered the hull and left it outside, leaving me plenty of room to arrange the gunwale strips along my former strongback, now pressed into service as an extra long workbench for precisely this sort of job. I couldn't find any fourteen foot walnut boards (and the walnut I bought had knots and other imperfections) so I had to put each outwale together out of two pieces, which I did using angled cuts Martin helped me make yesterday, and epoxy thickened with sawdust and phenolic microballoons.
Then I moved the hull back inside and spent some time staring and measuring and pacing. I would like to make a clamp-in removable yoke, like the ones I made for Patience and Gussie, but I'm hoping this one will be better. It would be particularly cool if it could clamp to a different site to make a backrest for the seat, but I'm still trying to think how I can swing that.
However I'm glad to get started on the trim, even with these baby steps. This way I can put more hours in now, and maybe have the boat finished sooner.
This morning I moved it out into the sun to work. Back when I was putting my workshop together, I started with one incandescent bulb and one rack of 2 fluorescent lights. A reasonable amount for a garage, but completely inadequate for a workshop. I had the contractor put in seven more racks of fluorescents, which I thought would be plenty.
But it's nothing like sunlight. So this morning I had the shop doors open, trying to cool it down, and I looked outside and thought that the glue I was having a hard time spotting under the shop lights (it dries kind of yellow, and the white pine is kind of pale, so I had to get my nose right down into the boat to see it) might be more visible in the sun.
The shell of the hull is so light that I just picked it up, carried it outside, put it down in the grass, brought my cradles outside and set them in the driveway, then picked the hull back up and set it in the cradles. I couldn't have done it if there was any wind to speak of, because such a light, large thing would have been unmanageable--but we haven't had any high winds lately
And sure enough, the sunlight made the flaws much easier to spot.
So since there was so much more glue than I thought, I went back to working with the scraper. It leaves a shining surface on the wood, which makes it easy to see where I've been. And dull spots were glue, or depressions in the planks that were still rough from the tablesaw. I went over almost half the boat, including working on the butternut stripes that I'd been putting off (I found the butternut a bit too hard to sand easily-the scraper works well on it, but I have to keep changing directions because the butternut has a lot of tearout if I go against the grain.) Having the height adjustable was very handy.
After about three hours my hands were starting to hurt, so I covered the hull and left it outside, leaving me plenty of room to arrange the gunwale strips along my former strongback, now pressed into service as an extra long workbench for precisely this sort of job. I couldn't find any fourteen foot walnut boards (and the walnut I bought had knots and other imperfections) so I had to put each outwale together out of two pieces, which I did using angled cuts Martin helped me make yesterday, and epoxy thickened with sawdust and phenolic microballoons.
Then I moved the hull back inside and spent some time staring and measuring and pacing. I would like to make a clamp-in removable yoke, like the ones I made for Patience and Gussie, but I'm hoping this one will be better. It would be particularly cool if it could clamp to a different site to make a backrest for the seat, but I'm still trying to think how I can swing that.
However I'm glad to get started on the trim, even with these baby steps. This way I can put more hours in now, and maybe have the boat finished sooner.