Days 2 and 3

DAY 2: SANDING
After having glued the joints together, the manual said that the next step would be to coat everything in two layers of epoxy.  As I was to discover, there was an evil Step 1.5 that I was blindsided by...

Having waited 24 hours for the epoxied joints to harden, I arrived at the shop around 6:30am hoping that I hadn't glued a stray strake to the floor by accident.  To my relief, the plastic sheets did their job and all was right with the world... sort of.  Upon inspecting my joints, I realized that there was a lot of ugly excess epoxy that had hardened outside of the joints.  The book mentioned a "slight sanding" to remove the excess glue, so I whipped out my handy sanding block and went to work, but after 10 minutes of struggling with a lump of epoxy on a single board, I found myself getting frustrated, as my sand paper was seemingly grinding down faster than the epoxy (and sand paper isn't exactly cheap!).

About that time, Gorman made his early morning appearance (something that is seemingly becoming a routine), and after a polite "good morning" he silently accessed the situation and came over to watch me pretend to know what I was doing.  After I minute or two, he chuckled under his breath and asked, "Have you ever used an electric sander before?"  I said no, and he went to his magical cabinet and manifested 3 electric hand tools I had never seen before.  After a brief tutorial on each one of them and a warning about not sanding through the veneer of the plywood, he turned to leave me to my work, but as usual, I had several more questions for him, the chief one being if there was a way of avoiding so much sanding in the future.  "No, you did fine," he said, "there's no real way around it... tedious work."  And with that, he vanished like Merlin after a cryptic lesson with Wart, and I was left alone to figure the rest out for myself.

The next 4 hours I spent sanding.  The electric sanders were great for taking off the first big lumps of epoxy, but to get all of it off, I had to use some elbow grease.  As Gorman said, the worst mistake you can make is to sand through the 1st veneer of the plywood; it looks terrible, and you can't fix it.  This is extremely easy to do because the epoxy comes off much slower than any wood that might be nearby, and I'll admit that at least twice I scraped a little too much off, but there's no use crying over spilled milk.

There are two reasons that you need to sand when working with epoxy.  First, in this particular instance leaving the epoxy as is would've created ugly bumps in the the finished hull which is no bueno.  Also (and this goes for every time you use epoxy), when the epoxy cures in creates a very smooth finish that those not adhere well to anything, including additional coats of epoxy.

Near the end of my sanding escapade, George, another neighbor of mine, came to pay a visit as well.  George is a friendly old yankee who also knows a good deal about sailing.  He also knows a lot about rocks (he is a retired geologist), and when I was young he taught me all kinds of cool things about rocks and fossils, which were, and still kind of are, a fascination of mine.  Anyway, he and Gorman are good friends, and he drops in every so often just to shoot the breeze.  After seeing the "fun" I was having, he said, "Yeah, Gorman hates sanding."  Well, at least we have that in common.

I slept like a baby that night.

Workhorse of the Day
Me


DAY 3: MORE FUN WITH EPOXY

Despite all my doomsday talk about epoxy, actually working with it is a lot of fun (aside from the sanding afterward, which sucks).  Mixing it is fun; the chemistry behind it is fascinating, but most of all, when you spread it over wood, it makes the wood shine. 

Up until now, the wood has looked rather drab.  Although I knew it was some of the best plywood possible for boatbuilding and even in spite of being able to look over at Gorman's beautiful sailboat, which has some of the same plywood on its deck (and looks AMAZING), the surfacy fact that my untreated plywood wasn't very pretty was disheartening.  That is, until I added my first coat of epoxy.

As usual, Gorman appeared shortly after I arrived at the shop with a few words of advice about how to avoid/remove any bubbles that might appear as I was spreading the epoxy.  Also, we had a very interesting conversation about epoxy, as Gorman used to work at a company where he actually designed and made epoxies, and his understanding of chemistry is awesome.  Then, as usual, he left as suddenly as he had came, and I got to work.

Applying the first stroke of epoxy on that bare wood was an ecstatic experience.  As the roller moved over the wood, the greyish, dusty color of the wood exploded into vibrant shades of amber and brown, and I was filled with hope that this thing I was working so hard could actually manifest into the dream I had in my mind.  Applying the epoxy didn't take long, 2 hours tops, and afterward I sat there planning the next steps.  Quickly I came to the unfortunate realization that I was going to need to sand down this beautiful coat of epoxy before I could apply the second coat, which would temporarily return the wood to a greyish color again (although still a bit nicer than before).  How like life.  At certain points in our journey we catch glimpses of the ultimately wonderful result of our hard work, which is just enough fuel to get us through the impending difficulties that inevitably manifest themselves along the way, but as long as we can hold on to that hope and fight the good fight, He takes care of us in the end.


Nautical Phase of the Day(s): Bamboozle 

The word Bamboozle is actually a throwback to the 17th century during the numerous naval conflicts between the English, Dutch and Spanish (okay, and French...I guess).  In several naval conflicts, the Spanish would get a little dirty and hoist up false flags to confuse their enemies.  This tactic came to be known as "bamboozling".