Back from Atlanta

I had a lovely time at Alice's house, with a fun housefilk (though I wouldn't have minded more filk, but I think we didn't have a critical mass of performers to keep things rolling) and a lovely day with Mary Crowell on Sunday, where we talked about music theory and worked on some of my songs.  I have several new things to think about regarding chord progressions, and plans to get together with Mary at the end of August for further collaborations, which I'm looking forward to very much.

And Alice is coming to visit me next weekend--and maybe I'll even have Moxie done by then.  To be fair, she's done enough to use now--or will be when the epoxy I used to attach the seat rails cures in a few hours.  However it would be nice to have little touches like a hull that is varnished instead of sanding-dull, and a seat that has been varnished and caned rather than a slab of plywood as a substitute.

In canoe news, I ordered my cane (I have some, but I think it may not be enough for a whole seat) before noon, Wednesday of last week.  Since the website of the company in question said they tried to ship the following day, and they were sending my order Priority Mail, I figured this would be in good time for me to have the cane by Wednesday of this week to begin caning the seat that, after all, I still had to varnish Monday and Tuesday.  And caning would take Wednesday and Thursday (because it takes a full day and a half of work for me to cane a seat) and the seat would be ready to install Thursday night or Friday morning, in good time for the varnish on the inside of the boat to dry first.  (This is rather tightly scheduled, I agree.)

Alas for my careful plans, the caning place I ordered from got back to me today to tell me they didn't have the plastic cane I needed, and would I like natural cane or would I like to cancel my order.   After pacing about the house shouting to myself for a bit, I cancelled the order and suggested that while everyone deserves a holiday, they might consider mentioning it on their website if they were going to be out of the office for several days, and furthermore if there was a convenient way to post to their website which of their offerings is out of stock, that would be information their customers would find helpful.

Then I called a different cane company and they had it in stock--after a momentary confusion because they called it "common" instead of medium, but the nice fellow on the phone measured some of it for me and I measured mine and converted from mils (thousandths of an inch) to sixty-fourths and it was the right stuff.  And since he assured me he had a hank of it right there in front of him, I ordered 500 feet to come by priority mail and I should have it by Thursday or maybe Friday which is probably okay since I can start caning with what I have Wednesday.  And if necessary I can use a piece of plywood to take it out this weekend; I have one that is exactly the right size and shape left over from the water test.  I even beveled the edges to match the slant of the canoe bottom.

But I would much rather use the Real Seat.

Canoe Update

I epoxied in the seat rails.  I also coated the outsides of the rails with epoxy so the varnish coats would build up faster.  Doing both of these in one operation didn't work out as well as I expected.  Yes, the bags of rice I used as weight were plastic bags, and did eventually come off the epoxied rails (epoxy doesn't stick to flexible plastic well.)  However the colored design on the bag ended up on the rails when the two parted company and I had to sand it off.  In the process I sanded off one of the subtle pencil marks that showed where the back of the seat would go.  This is not an insurmountable problem, but it is inconvenient.

Once the epoxy was mostly cured (enough that I was confident the seat rails wouldn't fall out)  I turned the boat upside down, and varnished the seat, the thwarts and the outside of the hull.  I pretended I did not have enough varnish and scraped and scrubbed it out as thin as I could, because this produced the best varnish job I have ever done when I did it on Constance.

Unfortunately my hands are now all over sticky and I don't dare touch my instruments until the varnish dries.  (Yes, I'm touching the keyboard.  No, I just don't love my keyboard the way I love my instruments.  That's just how it is.) 

I think I will need to practice *before* I varnish.

I suppose I could look at my music papers and translate chords to roman numerals and see if I can figure out what cadences I've been using and ways I might try to change things up in the future, though.

Varnish Coats:

Outside of Hull 1
Inside of Hull    0
Seat                 1
Thwarts            1
Gunwales        0