A new sherriff in town

Following the demise of my 6" air powered RO sander my only fall back was a 5 1/4" electric Black & Decker sander. This mornings task was to feather the fabric edges of the 12 oz fiberglass I put on the keel the other day. After an hour of grinding away at the edges with the small electric sander I got about 10' of keel/bottom join done. Boy was I missing my 6" RO air sander! :-(

I've been reluctant to pull out my 7" Simoniz sander/polisher (on the left) because I do use it to polish the car etc. and I don't really want to screw it up. Biting the bullet I decided to give it a try. I don't have any 7" discs but stuck a 6" on there to see how it worked! Wow! Yet another weapon of mass destruction! This puppy removes material like crazy!

I ripped through the remaining 40 or so feet of fabric edge to be feathered out in about an hour! There was dust flying everywhere! ;-) It's a bit of a handful to manage. Takes a lot more muscle to control it, muscles I haven't used in a long time. "Honey, where's the advil?"  ;-)

Speaking of dust I noticed these patterns forming along the hull.

I think I'll call them 'Dust Fractals'. I don't know how they form, maybe static electricity along the surface of the hull or something.The air gun or dust broom gets rid of them pretty easily! :-)

I have a set of instructions for my old 6" RO air sander. There's even an exploded diagram of parts but for the life of me I can't figure out how to get it apart. Usually there's a way to get the pad off but even that's stumped me. Anyone got any ideas?

On another note Momma cat has discovered the 'Kitty Porch' I built for her.

I'm so happy she's using it. If she wasn't so stubborn and refuse to come inside she could go out with the others. Last time we let her out she stayed out for two weeks and we had to trap her to get her back in. We don't like to leave any of our cats out overnight but she's a fair size cat and can likely defend herself against the racoons who occasionally invade our neighborhood.

Tomorrow's task is to finish up a light sanding on the keel and lay down the next layer of fabric, 1208 45/45. Once that's done it'll be onto the bottom and side panels with the 1208 & 10 oz satin weave. Slow but steady progress. Standby.