NY_Rocking_Chairs

Rustoleum specifically calls out Acetone as a thinner. So check the label of the paint or manufacturer's web site. The first boat I did I measured it out, but couldn't remember the ratios I used so this last boat I just dumped some paint in an empty can, poured in a bit of acetone, mixed it and repeatedly added acetone until I was happy with the result. I found the acetone evaporated out of the paint by the time I got half the boat painted so plan on getting about half the boat painted and mixing a 2nd batch.

Yeah, except I am planning on ripping walnut. I do have a stack of those for the circular saw though, good back-up plan...also just ordered the plans for the Lanui (SUP by Dave Gentry). We gave my oldest son (almost 8) the choice between the tadpole and a SUP for an xmas present/project, sorry Jeff, he chose a SUP. They also do SUP Yoga in the wetlands near our bay, my wife is trying to convince me of doing that, I would be the only guy in the class (we saw the class Tuesday night during our kayak class).

Just got off the phone with Ridge Carbide who is fixing my TS blade; they had to replace 2 teeth, two others were bent and are doing a general sharpening grind on the rest of it, should have it back early next week. At this point I wonder how cost effective the repair was vs ordering a new blade...it is a Tenryu Gold Medal that I have had for 12 years so kinda attached to it.

We live about 1/4 mile south of Lake Ontario and we have an awesome bay in our town with camping areas on its shores. We support two kayak/canoe paddling centers who offer classes for all levels (level 3 spends the entire class falling out of the boats and learning to get back in them) as well as guided tours and trips. Trips can be anywhere from a couple hours to a couple days. The end of the bay is all protected wetlands so plenty of paddling with the wild-life. An hour to the south are the Finger Lakes with a few hundred wineries, breweries and distilleries. So not only are there chauffered wine tours, there are paddling wine tours. Also it is only a 4-hour drive to the Adirondaks where you can disappear for a few days on the thousands of ponds/lakes/trails...

Just got back from our level 1 kayaking class, took my Greenland paddle, the instructor was all over it, he loved it and wanted me to make him one too. Class was well worth learning basic stroke technique, spent 2 hours in the class and a little more than half of it on the water. Only one out of 6 students fell in doing a draw stroke (wasn't me).

I met someone who builds museum quality strip boats and he would do that: trailer a setup to a campground, setup for a week and do a build (not an entire strip boat, but would setup the strongback and start making the frames, etc). It was usually advertised in advance and stuff, that's how I met him, he was doing one such build in the Adirondaks at a campground, really nice guy. SOF boats would really lend itself do doing such demos, etc. I have been approached by several people after seeing my boats about doing a workshop or class, this is another great marketing/business idea to get more exposure.

Shots of the boat now that painting is 100% complete and flipped over so can see red against the wood, weighs in at 45lbs, which I attribute to the heavy floor that went in to this one (1/2" 5x5 sheet weighs 43 lbs, and ~9 sq ft of it went into the floor so around 15-16 lbs by my estimation):

The keeleasy didn't work out on the canoe, it was too tight of a radius to get it to bend and mold to the curve, even with copious amounts of heat gunning. So I reverted back to my original plan, which was aluminum strips (36" x 1/2" from Lowes were ~$2.50 each). I installed those with SS screws and looking at the space between the edge of the metal and the end of the canoe and holding a tube of paintable silicon in my hand, I thought hmmm, wonder how it will work out if I fillet those spaces with the silicon. So not only did the screw threads get siliconed, I went back with a plastic butter knife and filleted the little space between the edge of the metal band and the fabric of the canoe. Once it has cured I will lightly sand the silicon to remove any imperfections and paint it all with the Rustoleum to match the boat. Thoughts? I figured since even when cured the silicon will have a little flexibility it should be fine, main concern is drying out the moisture that gets in there, but I am confident in the water-proofiness between the skin and the interior wood...Also, I packed those gaps with as much silicon as I could squeeze in there so there is little or no air space in those areas anymore.

No idea how the red looks next to the breasthooks, waiting for the paint to dry 100% to flip it back over Wrist is good, full range of motion back, still a lump in the muscle, no idea if that will ever go away...

Here are the painted pics, waiting for the racing stripes to dry so can touch up the bleed-through spots...unfortunately I did find some broken teeth on the table saw blade from the kick-back incident so it was mailed out yesterday for repair. So no rub rails for this boat for a week or two...though I did get some keeleasy for the bow and stern so will apply that after all the painting is dried and done as well.

The thinner the tip the faster it will heat up (less material and more electrical current passing through a smaller surface area).

The description in the auction says 11 Ounce...end of debate

Thanks. Rockywoods is where I found all the coated fabrics so will keep an eye on them.

My cousin is asking me if I can do a camo SOF canoe for him. I figured my two options are to find a camo fabric or find someone to do a camo paint job. Anyone have any experience in tracking down a camo fabric suitable for this? I am running into the issue where all the camo fabrics are pre-treated/coated with water resistant or water-proofing materials. Jeff, any chance of getting the mill to do a small run of camo 11.9 ounce poly? (more in jest than serious, but ya never know, right?)

Thanks. I also ended up putting brass screws into all the floor boards where they intersected with the horizontal brackets. Where the ends met in the middle the glue joints were not holding (there was some damage when the floor fell out) so had to re-glue there and screw them in place to hold them. Since I liked the look of it and wanted consistency I went back and added all 54 screws, but most of them are cosmetic... Woodman, good point. I tried to cut the taper on the floor boards when they were still 5' x 6". If I had cut them down to the 2" width before trying to cut the taper the smaller pieces would have fit on the edge sander and could have done it all without the TS...I also think I chipped a tooth on the blade though I couldn't visually find any issue, the V isn't as clean as it was before the incident and the blade seems to be chipping rather than cutting, so off to the sharpening service...

All skinned out and ready for paint. Took Jeff's advice and picked up a pair of canvar pliers. Those worked awesome, the skin was drum tight before I ironed it. Very impressed...(sometimes I even amaze myself). Used a soldering iron to hot cut the fabric, worked well, but VERY slow...

Here is both halves of the floor installed. I tried gluing the brackets to the keel, but there wasn't enough surface area to support the weight and as soon as I flipped the boat upside down the floor fell down, or is it up?. So I drilled some holes in the brackets and lashed it to the keel, that sucker isn't going anywhere now...there is still a caul in the middle where the two halves meet, the floor boards are glued to the horizontal brace/bracket assemlies.

Thanks Woodman, I don't think this would have worked in this case as the taper started 34" from the end of the board so the angle gauge would have had to be off the table. Will keep this in mind for future cuts though!

Yeah, pretty close to the pic woodman. Though the angle gauge was about an inch away from the blade line so it wasn't going to pass over the blade. Just curious why you say no wonder, made plenty of these kinds of cuts before without incident, is there a better way to do it?

Hello, my name is Rich and it's been 9 days since my last table saw accident...so my wrist is back to about 95%. I can move it around without pain but I don't have full range of motion yet. Can also still feel a mass under the skin where the muscle was crushed/bruised. Not getting back to push-ups and pull-ups this week either. So I got back in the shop today and put together the floor for the front half of the boat. This is the floor upside down, those brackets will rest on top of the keel. I keep debating whether to glue, screw or lash them to the keel. The brackets are sized so that the edges of the floor will rest on the frames so still have plenty of outer edge contact and support. This will give me a level floor in the boat. My only concern is forward/backwards lateral strength, but since it will have 9 of those brackets over 10' of floor, it will take a lot of force to break all those glue joints at once.

I have no problem running the board across the blade, so long as you only raise it a little bit each time, never had a problem. It's the whole wedging an angle gauge between the fence and blade while trying to push everything through parallel at the same time that makes me go hmmmm and this time it got me. My best friend did take the tip of his middle finger off on his table saw and my father-in-law cut through his thumb on his. An old cabinet maker friend of mine went 40 years accident free before losing a finger. When I used to shop at the Rockler store in Buffalo I don't think any of the employees had all their digits...

I dunno what happened, but looking at the cut-off piece it does look like it got on top of the blade on the edge, the corner is all mangled and the layers are split. My only other accident involved a Lancelot carving disc which is literally a chain-saw blade on a 3" wheel that goes on right-angle grinder. I was carving a chair seat when it kicked, cut through the leather gloves I was wearing and cut into my pinky, mangled that one up pretty good too. I switched to a safer carving disc after that. Needless to say, the other 3 pieces of plywood I marked, rough-cut on the bandsaw and will use an edging bit with roller guide on the router to flush cut the edges to the first piece...still have to go back on the TS to cut them down to strips but straight cuts seem safer than angle cuts

I started cutting the floor boards Thursday evening. To get the BB ply home in the new mini-van I had to have the lumber place rip the 5'x5' sheets down to 5'x4', which left me two piece of 1'x5'. These I cut in half and then decided to cut a taper on so they could be placed side-by-side and I would get a 10' long floor in the boat. So I calculated the taper, set my angle gauge and pushed the 1st piece through the saw, just as it was nearing the end of the cut there was a loud bang, I was left holding the main piece of the floor in my left hand and my right arm was in serious pain. I shut the saw down and looked at my right arm, at the wrist there was copious amounts of red fluid running down my hand and the wrist had a big distortion in it. I am a part-time EMT for a local ski patrol so I am used to these kinds of things (just not necessarily on me). So I wrapped the arm up in a towel and scrap piece of wood for a splint, called my wife who had just left to do errands to come back and pick me up, shut down the rest of the equipment, found the angle gauge had shot 30' back to the far wall of the shop, the piece of ply that had gotten wedged between the blade and angle gauge has bounced off the front of the canoe and shot off to the side and embedded itself in a spare piece of drywall sheeting. The canoe is fine, I had clamped a piece of metal to the bow frame to pre-bend it so that acted as armor when it got hit. Sent the kids across the street to play and we went to immediate care for x-rays. Fortunately nothing was broken and no foreign material was in there, just a really deep and bad bruise with a puncture wound and a hematoma (large pooling of blood between the muscle and skin). They flushed it and wrapped it up and gave me a wrist brace. It has been 36 hours, large amounts of Advil and ice, and I am just now regaining limited use of my hand with small twinges of pain, expect to be 2-3 weeks before I have full strength and range of motion back.. Here is the angle gauge, you can see the two cuts where it hit the blade, note the one is on TOP of the gauge so somehow this thing twisted, hit the blade on the side and then continued to twist 180 degrees so the blade caught it on the top as well and drove it back into my arm. I still have not found the metal stop that was screwed into the rail to hold the piece of wood in place. Lessons for me, no more metal gauges on the saw except where these is no choice. I was paying 100% attention to the cut and still this accident happened so never take things for granted, even though I have been using table saws for 20+ years and made thousands of cuts, it only takes one to give you a bad day.

Jeff, I read in the book about putting sealant behind the rub rails to keep water out of the screw holes in the gunwales, etc. What about when attaching the bow and stern rub strips, have you been sealing those screw holes as well?

Awesome! I love the color. When I build a tadpole for son #2 I am sure it will be 100% purple as well.