Sewing Room Rehab Part Deux

So with the fiberglass put on the keel yesterday, today's task was to start the shelves for Part 2 of the sewing room rehab. I had the lumber store cut the plywood (cheaper construction grade) I ordered to width so all I had to do was round some corners and cut the lengths I wanted before sanding the edges in prep for paint.

There'll be 5 shelves on two walls joining in the corner. The left hand side will be 16" deep shelves and the right side 12" deep shelves. Style is similar to the ones I did above the sewing table but not as fancy.

Before:

Sorta after:

I apologize for the crappy cell phone pics. Forgot to bring my GoPro camera. Hadn't seen that corner of the room in awhile!  ;-)  Found a few petrified surprises left by one of the cats!  ;-(

This afternoon I assembled the shelf brackets. They'll get a sanding before I paint them tomorrow.

Managed to get a coat of battleship grey paint on the underside of the shelves before I called it quits for the day. Tomorrow they'll get a nice color similar to the shelves above the sewing table. Standby....

I new it would.........

I knew it would take me 2 1/2 hours and it did, exactly. Approx. 1 1/2 gallons of epoxy, 12 yds of 12 oz fabric, two roller sleeves and the very last layer (Yeah!) of structural fiberglass is on the keel.

It's been awhile since I crawled up on top (well actually the bottom) of the boat and did any fiberglass work. I've got a few sore muscles to show for my labor. You can see the blue patch where I was testing filler recipes. I forgot it was there and almost slipped off the boat! Not a big fall, six feet or so, but it probably would have put an end to my goo session for the day. It wasn't the prettiest or the neatest epoxy job I've done and there's quite a few drips that'll need to be sanded down before I lay out the 10 oz satin weave fabric for the sides. That'll come tomorrow if I don't have to go into Ottawa.

Thanks for looking in and standby.....

They called, I answered

I started my usual boat work routine on Thursday morning and all went fine till I got a call from an old buddy back at work (Coast Guard). They're looking for someone to work on a special project and he was wondering if I was interested. A few probing questions and the work seemed well within my realm of  experience. I left it up to my buddy to broker the deal with the manager and I got a call from him yesterday with more details. So it looks like I'll be back to work on a 45 day contract to do some specialized work for this project Zalinski oil recovery project.

I had thought about going back to work over the last year since I retired but it was probably the farthest thing from my mind as I sanded my big blue whale (yet again). I've seen plenty of my retired colleagues do go back to work on contract (double dipping) and often thought I could use a small infusion of cash (got my eye on a Garmin 12 in MFD & Radar). So my boat building project might slow down a little bit as I juggle time between work and boat again, at least for the next couple of months. I still think it'll be ready to flip in the spring. Standby....

So, you guessed it right

after all that hard work putting on all that nice blue goop it was time to sand most of it off! *lol*

That's my forearm covered in blue sanding dust! Yes I was wearing a dust mask and checked for blue goo boogers so I'm sure I wasn't breathing the stuff.

Got exciting news coming tomorrow. Standby....

Party Balloons and Boat Building

So what do party balloons and boat building have in common? Well it appears balloons can be useful tools!

So what we have here is a party balloon (or an alien egg) hatching from the bow thruster tube. Actually I was adding some fiberglass reinforcement to the thruster tube prior to final fairing on the bottom panels. I laid peel ply over the fresh epoxy and inflated the balloon to hold it all in place till it cured. I think I picked up this tip on one of the boat building forums.

The rest of the day was spent spreading blue goop over the hull to fill the weave on the 12 oz biax fiberglass that was laid on the sides. It left a pretty prominent weave and I experienced some bubbles when I did the transom. Filling the weave should help eliminate any bubbles on the sides.

The blue color helps me see that the weave has been filled and will act as a marker when I'm final fairing. If I hit blue I know I've sanded too far! The final color of the hull will be Royal Blue so I think it might help prevent some print-through of the weave. Not sure about that but it sure sounds good huh? Just a bit more blue goop to put on today then I'll hang the 10 oz satin weave glass on the sides and wait for a cooler day to epoxy that. Standby.