Why Me?

It's a blustery day here today: currently 44 degrees, with a wind chill of 35. Our old maple tree in the back has shed thousands and thousands of seed pods, so the boys are out back raking. It feels like fall.

I got a good start this morning, had a warm breakfast and went out to cut the diagonal ends of the sideboards to attach to the stems: It was to look like a boat today.

But, guess what?

ONE OF THE @#%$ING SIDEBOARD JOINTS CRACKED.

WHY?
Isn't fiberglass supposed to be durable? Isn't this epoxy supposed to be stronger than the underlying material it's holding together? Why do I have to treat it like an antique glass egg?



Clearly, it's my fault. I've mixed it incorrectly. A blind man could see that.
But that doesn't lessen my frustration.

I can't glass them today: it's far too cold out for it to set properly. Tomorrow should get to the mid-60s, so perhaps I will fiberglass them -- AGAIN -- tomorrow. (I'm going to run out of fiberglass before I even get to the bottom of the damn boat.)

Leave to cure . . . then I guess I try to join them NEXT weekend.

This thing is never going to be done.

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PS: For your ghouls out there who asked for it, here's a picture of the shard of wood that went into my hand:

This went straight into my palm, so all that was sticking out was the square edge. I couldn't believe how long it was when I pulled it out. (I had to use pliers to pull it out.)

Blood and Bad Words

NOTE: If you are squeamish or my mother, it might be best if you don't read this one.

Tonight was a most unsatisfactory night for boat building.

The day after I fiberglassed for the first time, I came out to find that in my mixing bucket, where I had left the stirring stick, I had created a faux amber: it was a hard, glassy substance with bits of detritus frozen in it. When I pulled the stirring stick out, the "amber" came out in a solid chunk.

So the second time I fiberglassed, Henry and I stuck several things in my unused epoxy: a dead fly, a fern frond, a little flower . . . I thought it might make a nice paperweight.

But evidently when you let the epoxy cure completely (for a couple of days), it doesn't come out so easily. I broke the wooden stirring stick off in the bottom of the mixing cup. So then I tried to pull out the remaining little chunk of stirring stick with a pair of pliers so that I could mix more epoxy tonight.

I braced the cup tightly in one hand and pulled with the pliers in my other hand.
The wood came out.
Well, part of the wood came out. The stirrer broke into a jagged shard, and part of it came out and lodged itself deep into the heel of my left hand.

It's not a very dramatic looking wound for the violence that went into it. (I mopped it up and went to the dinner table, where Charlie asked why I had blood splattered on my forehead. And my shirt)

The plus side of this, of course, is that it shows the epoxy REALLY set well. That's great news. I unstacked the sideboards and bottom piece and checked them out.

Now, Fred had told me that when he does fiberglassing projects, he will sometimes put a layer of waxed paper on top of the finished glasswork to keep it dust-free and smooth. I've done that, but I just end up shredding the waxed paper, which does not peel nicely off of the cured resin. Anyway, I sanded down both sides of the sideboards, and they seemed really good. Really strong. SO strong, in fact, that I mocked up the boat again (without clamping the sideboards together), and took this picture:Look, Ma! No clamps!

So far, so good. It's supposed to rain the next couple of days, so I thought I'd stick the joined pieces in the garage for safekeeping. I stacked the sideboards and laid them in the garage. It fit perfectly.
Then I went to pick up the bottom piece and (you guessed it): CRACK.

The seam split.

This is when I said a LOT of bad words.
Well, check that: I said one bad word, a lot of times. Many, MANY times. An incalculable number of times.
I stormed around, my palm throbbing a bit, and re-covered the bottom piece with the plastic sheeting and came inside.

It's not the end of the world: I can still join the sideboards to the stems this weekend. And I'll re-glass the bottom piece AGAIN this weekend, and so it should be ready to attach the following weekend. I guess I rushed it tonight.

Frustrating, but not fatal.

Unless, of course, my puncture wound gets some kind of staph infection.
Maybe this boat is going to kill me.

More Setbacks

10-day forecast:
Friday: afternoon/overnight rain
Saturday: scattered thunderstorms
Sunday: rain
Monday: rain clearing
Tuesady: sunny
Wednesday: sunny
Thursday: sunny
Friday: scattered evening thunderstorms
Saturday: showers
Sunday: showers

So . . . no boat action.

Setback, part II

Well, both rub rail joints failed.
Perhaps predictable, but nonetheless slightly disheartening. Of course, some words of encouragement from Fred:

Don't worry. It need not be fatal. And if you are too ill-at-ease, you can always repeat that step with new material.

"It need not be fatal." Implication: it probably will be.

That's exactly what I'm going to do: start again with new cuts. 6" on either side of the joint. Then I'm going to set them and leave them for several days.

Just when I'm getting discouraged, Fred comes through with a beautifully-written paragraph on the mitre cut:

Once, long ago, when I was working for Pierre Cayard, the longtime head of the SF Opera Scene Shop (originally called the Cayard-Kotcher studios), the father of Paul Cayard, the renowned blue water sailor, and a fine sailor and craftsman himself, he gently criticized me for repeatedly walking over to the chop saw to cut 45deg mitres. "Why," he said in his thick French accent, "do you not use the reflection cut?" He demonstrated: with the hand saw poised to cut, align the blade so that the board and its reflection on the steel form a 90deg angle. Voila. I began to suggest that the time it took to walk the few steps to the chop saw were mitigated by the infinitely repeatable accuracy and cleanliness of the machine cuts; I stopped. I embraced, at least for that day, the reflection cut.

It will all be okay. I've lost about 6" in total linear length so far. So my 16' rails are down to 15'6". I will lose another 6" in this new scarf joint, but that will be okay - that will leave me with 15' rails for a 14'6" pirogue.

All good.

On the plus side: all of the fiberglassing materials arrived today. I have a long roll of glass, and the various epoxies and other ancillary supplies. (I haven't yet opened the box. A glass of Connemara Irish single malt got in the way.)

The plans look so easy. But I have no real clue how I'm going to complete the next step: cutting 10" sideboards from the 4x8 sheets. I have some sawhorses . . . I clamp down the plywood and measure out my sides . . . But I'm cutting with a handsaw. I predict more frustration in my future. (So much so that I have added a sub-section to this Log: "Setbacks".)

But I am going to have a boat. This summer. Before September, I will be on the DuPage river in a boat of my own making.

Mark. My. Words.

Setback, or the Fancy Butt Joint

Well, I did exactly what I said I wasn't going to do; I rushed and made a mess of things. I was so excited about the rubrails that I decided to test the joint before it had had time to set. Of course, one split. So I did my best to sand away all of the glue residue and tried to re-glue the fresh ends, but I don't think it's going to work. I decided I'd probably have to re-cut both sides of that joint and re-glue next weekend.

Then I got this from Fred:

There may be a slight problem with your scarf joint. Usually the angle is very extreme, to maximize the gluing surface and contact area between the two pieces to be joined. In material of that thickness, one might expect the scarf cut to run four to six inches along its length. Your picture, unless I am misinterpreting it, shows what essentially amounts to a fancy butt joint. It may need reinforcement, which can probably be accomplished when you attach them to the rest of the structure.

I had thought about this before making the joint, but as I have a cheap mitre box, I decided to risk the 45 degree angle. I was very discouraged last night, as I received Fred's well-intended criticism of my joint immediately after one failed. But I consoled myself with the thought that the fiberglassing kit should arrive today, and I can simply reinforce the scarf fancy butt joints with a thickness of fiberglass and carry on.

This was never going to be the most perfect and beautiful boat. All I ask is seaworthiness.

My fourth rib is on its way to me, and I'm pleased about my decision to increase the displacement. I'm a bit concerned about how heavy the finished boat will be, and how I'll get it onto the car for transporting to the mighty DuPage river. But that is presupposing I will actually end up this project with a finished boat, which is far from guaranteed. So I'll have to leave my concerns about the weight for another time.