More hands make light work

A couple weeks ago I put an ad on some Facebook pages. It went something like this.

"Do you have an able bodied teenager sitting in your basement playing video games all day and raiding your fridge?  I have need of one to help me with a project."

I got a response back within' 10 minutes. "You've described my kid to a Tee!" "When can he start?"

The deal was struck. The kid was conscripted into sanding service. A date was set and today was that day! Welcome Thomas my new boat shed helper.

I gave him a 5 minute intro into the fine art of sanding fairing compound and let him loose! He jumped right into it. A little awkward at first getting used to the ole' electric RO but he caught on pretty quick. There was no mercy. It was hot when we started and only got hotter. We did manage to work almost 5 hrs on the boat before it was too hot to spread more compound so we called it a day. He'll be back on Wednesday for more sandinsanity!

Standby...

I just couldn't do it

Just couldn't get up 'nuff gumption to work on the boat today. I tried. Lasted about an hour and I was done. Maybe 'cause I know I got help coming tomorrow or maybe because it's just hot outside, I dunno.

One thing I did was start a blog for my bestest buddy in the whole world. You've seen him here before, the Project Manager. Here's his story on how one day he was a scruffy ole' Tom Cat wandering the neighborhood and the next day my best friend.

http://bootstheoldtomcat.blogspot.ca/

Enjoy.

Now this really blows

Literally! So I'm sanding away yesterday and by noonish the temp in the shed reaches 85 F. Add another 10 degs up on top of the boat and that's pretty warm. So I thought to myself, it'd be nice to have a fan up here. I've done it before with the large shop fan but that was overkill. So online shopping I go at lunch time and Canadian Tire, Lowes, Home Depot etc. Found this lil' character and others exactly like it under different brand names.

They sell in the States for $50 USD at Lowes. We cross often so that's an option. Browsed over to Canadian Tire and they had them on sale for $63 Cdn. If you figure in the gas, bridge toll, NYS sales tax and exchange rate (plus you pay HST tax on it coming back across the border) the difference was negligible buying it at Canadian Tire so off I went.

I read all the online reviews. It rates pretty high in most cases. Good airflow. Quiet. Durable. After having used it in the shed while sanding on top of the boat today I'd say it's a good choice. You can tag it along behind you and it keeps you cool and blows the sanding dust away from you. We'll see how well it lasts in that environment but I think it'll work well.

The bottom panels have all been fill/faired once. I think one more go-ground with the Flexicats and that will be done and ready for primer. My lil' buddy shows up day after tomorrow to sand the keel. One step closer!

Standby....

Mystery Tool. Any ideas what it might be?

My Dad picked this up with a box of old woodworking tools. Absolutely no idea what it is or for. It says The "Gipe" Patent. Google turns up nothing. My only guess is maybe a swaging tool or something to do with rigging cables etc.

Of course none of us are likely old enough to have any idea what it was for! :-)  If I were to hazard a guess I'd say 1920's or 30's vintage.


Update: Mystery solved!  http://www.ids.u-net.com/cash/gipe.htm

Added a few features

I added a Wishlist for the boat the other day. Not everything on this list will be required before the boat goes in the water. Just some forward thinking and dreaming. We'll outfit the boat as we go and get what we need when we can afford it. I found a way to embed an online (Google Docs) spreadsheet in a blog page.

http://she-kon.blogspot.ca/p/shekon-wish-list.html

This got me thinking. I had a spreadsheet online for a couple of years before the company pulled the pin and was looking for a solution. I followed the same process as the wish list and was able to import my "Spent to Date" and publish it on the blog.

http://she-kon.blogspot.ca/p/spent-to-date.html

The 'Spent to Date' spreadsheet is more complex and has a number of tabs broken out by category. You can see the links for the tabs at the bottom of the spreadsheet. In a lot of instances these are estimates of what we spent. I never originally intended to keep a spreadsheet, it just sort of evolved that way. I do have all the receipts and import docs showing tax paid etc. but used a formula to calc average associated costs. There are also instances (many) where I entered costs in USD and then added the exchange rate later so the total cost is going to be somewhat lower than the figure indicated.

I'm sorry, the 'Spent to Date' spreadsheet isn't very pretty right now but I'll work on that.

Standby....