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Any interest in a Catspaw build? Also featuring rabbits.


cracked_ribs

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There's not too much to show these days (or at least it feels that way to me) because the progress is incremental and sometimes I'm just gluing down stuff I had previously mocked up anyway.

But I'm plugging away. I wanted to start fairing the hull so I made a fairing board; it's a scrap of 6mm ply with a backer of foam track pad. Track pads are used in skytrain and other light rail construction: I have a few of them left from back when I used to work on that kind of stuff (although I threw a lot out, which now makes me a little sad. Great backing for sandpaper). I cut it to 4.5"x22", so I can cut a sheet of sandpaper in half and stick it on lengthwise, works great.

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I just stick paper on with elmer's spray glue and peel it off when it's used up. The bottom is pretty fair now, so when I get back from Easter I'll put on a few coats of 25% graphite/epoxy mix which should make the bottom really resistant to gouges etc.

Right now the centre seat/daggerboard trunk is gluing in, and the bow and stern seats as well. I'm really starting to struggle with the idea of painting over all this rich wood colour...very nice to look at. But the UV will destroy it, sitting in my bay for half the year or more. I'll never keep up with the necessary varnish schedule.

At any rate here's the current state:

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Try to ignore the state of the place, I know it's a total disaster. I went out for coffee this morning and ended up insuring my bike and my wife's, and then instead of doing anything practical I came home, fired up her bike and took it for a burn, in the process discovering that the starter solenoid has failed, necessitating a screwdriver to bridge the contacts in order to start it, and also one of the carbs has a stuck float so power delivery is totally unpredictable and I accidentally drifted the thing through across three lanes while cornering on a major road in Burnaby before getting it under control. It's an old Honda 400 and I don't think it's had that much action since about 1982.

But then rather than come home and do something domestic and safe, I went ahead and took my own bike out for a while and as such didn't touch the boat until late this afternoon. I guess the point of all this was that I can't be expected to go hooliganing on bikes, and build boats, and then waste a bunch of time putting laundry away. So if the place is a mess it's because I came home and chucked my leathers on the couch and mixed epoxy.

Again, I recognize that I do not belong in a civilized society.
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Hi "Ribs,"  

 

Like you, I put some time and effort into my first fairing board.  Then I realized that it'd be good to have several fairing boards on hand with different grades of sandpaper.  I ended up being very happy with dead simple fairing boards that are nothing but rectangles of pink insulation foam board.   I used adhesive sandpaper that comes in rolls, but it's the same idea as your split sheets.  The foam is stiff, but flexes over the curves and it's very light.   It worked for me to grip the boards across their edges, but I'll admit that might not be comfortable for those with smaller hands.   My 80 grit board gets used a lot where I used to use a rasp for rounding off corners etc.   It works faster and the big pink board is way easier to find!

 

Bob

 

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  • 2 weeks later...
I apologize for the lack of updates; it's a mix of being really busy, and the fact that most of what's left to do is a bunch of subtle incremental changes so the pictures never look any different than the week before.
 
Construction is basically complete; I'm really just prepping surfaces for finishing now.  Here's the current state:
 
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I didn't plan on leaving much more than trim in bright but the further along I get the more I am tempted to leave a lot of visible wood.  This is slowing things down because I need the epoxied surfaces to be fair, I can't just throw putty on it to fix things.  But some larger surfaces may look good enough to leave a bit of wood out.  I have ordered the WR-LPU as a couple of people have suggested; it's impossible that they know less than I do about brightwork so by definition they know more and I'll give that a try on everything that stays bright.  It will be more than I originally intended but we'll see how that goes.  I'm not committing to very much yet!
 
I have at least gotten it to the point that it feels like a boat awaiting paint, rather than half a boat.  I'm really, really looking forward to splashing her before too long.
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On 3/29/2018 at 7:18 PM, meester said:

Hi "Ribs,"  

 

Like you, I put some time and effort into my first fairing board.  Then I realized that it'd be good to have several fairing boards on hand with different grades of sandpaper.  I ended up being very happy with dead simple fairing boards that are nothing but rectangles of pink insulation foam board.   I used adhesive sandpaper that comes in rolls, but it's the same idea as your split sheets.  The foam is stiff, but flexes over the curves and it's very light.   It worked for me to grip the boards across their edges, but I'll admit that might not be comfortable for those with smaller hands.   My 80 grit board gets used a lot where I used to use a rasp for rounding off corners etc.   It works faster and the big pink board is way easier to find!

 

Bob

 

That's a really good idea.  To be honest that fairing board was a 20 minute project that I just photographed a lot so I'd feel like I was accomplishing something but that rigid foam concept is a really good one.  I also have freakishly large hands, so I don't really see a downside.

 

And since most of my stuff is connected to my off-grid place, it happens that I probably have a bunch of rigid foam lying around somewhere, because I have used a bunch of it to make cooler-coolers.  I usually draw them up to maximize whatever foam I have available but there's almost always a strip left over, often something in the 3-6"x16-24" range.  So somewhere here I probably have a backer ready to go.  That's a good idea.

 

 

Oh, I will also say that elsewhere I was already asked about the spray deflector profile.  It's a slightly unusual shape and as such I guess it makes sense that people might be curious about it, and as it happens it is specifically designed to meet a very particular set of parameters.

 

The parameters are laid out below:

 

1) I had a piece about that shape and even though I planned on making a more conventional, rounded shape, I thought this looked kind of interesting so I just smoothed it up and left it.

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On 3/25/2018 at 9:42 PM, cracked_ribs said:

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There's not too much to show these days (or at least it feels that way to me) because the progress is incremental and sometimes I'm just gluing down stuff I had previously mocked up anyway.

But I'm plugging away. I wanted to start fairing the hull so I made a fairing board; it's a scrap of 6mm ply with a backer of foam track pad. Track pads are used in skytrain and other light rail construction: I have a few of them left from back when I used to work on that kind of stuff (although I threw a lot out, which now makes me a little sad. Great backing for sandpaper). I cut it to 4.5"x22", so I can cut a sheet of sandpaper in half and stick it on lengthwise, works great.

[IMG]

[IMG]

[IMG]


[IMG]

I just stick paper on with elmer's spray glue and peel it off when it's used up. The bottom is pretty fair now, so when I get back from Easter I'll put on a few coats of 25% graphite/epoxy mix which should make the bottom really resistant to gouges etc.

Right now the centre seat/daggerboard trunk is gluing in, and the bow and stern seats as well. I'm really starting to struggle with the idea of painting over all this rich wood colour...very nice to look at. But the UV will destroy it, sitting in my bay for half the year or more. I'll never keep up with the necessary varnish schedule.

At any rate here's the current state:

[IMG]

[IMG]

[IMG]


Try to ignore the state of the place, I know it's a total disaster. I went out for coffee this morning and ended up insuring my bike and my wife's, and then instead of doing anything practical I came home, fired up her bike and took it for a burn, in the process discovering that the starter solenoid has failed, necessitating a screwdriver to bridge the contacts in order to start it, and also one of the carbs has a stuck float so power delivery is totally unpredictable and I accidentally drifted the thing through across three lanes while cornering on a major road in Burnaby before getting it under control. It's an old Honda 400 and I don't think it's had that much action since about 1982.

But then rather than come home and do something domestic and safe, I went ahead and took my own bike out for a while and as such didn't touch the boat until late this afternoon. I guess the point of all this was that I can't be expected to go hooliganing on bikes, and build boats, and then waste a bunch of time putting laundry away. So if the place is a mess it's because I came home and chucked my leathers on the couch and mixed epoxy.

Again, I recognize that I do not belong in a civilized society.

 

Who are you? Are you me? :)

 

Peace,

Chief Uncivilized (Heck, I Don’t Even Hardly Wear Shoes, Except On The Motorbike...)

 

P.S. Not just the goofery, neither. I did wax romantic about the longboard on my own build thread. I use double stick carpet tape if the paper ain’t pre sticky.

 

Boat looks good, Man!

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Well, I finally have some demonstrable progress:

 

Work continues on the little tender; I have the keel in place and have begun the finishing stages.  Here you can see the graphite bottom treatment; that's epoxy with graphite powder mixed in.  It's a bit tricky to lay but it went down pretty good in the end.  Should be extremely hard and slippery when cured, although once I have the thing in the water I'll need to put bottom paint on a part of it just to keep marine growth off it...it'll be sitting in the bay for months at a time so the actual part that stays wet will get an ablative paint or something.  I have a bit lying around somewhere.
 
I'd really like to try this graphite bottom on my Double Eagle.  The current running surface is about 40 coats of ablative paint, applied with a spatula or maybe a cat.  It's hard to tell.  But it'd be a headache to apply.  Still, for a trailered boat, a really slippery, wear-resistant surface might be nice to have.
 
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Wife still tolerating the project fairly well.
 
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The rabbits have been acting out all week though...my wife was away for a week and they were quite annoyed about it and nibbled everything and stopped using their litter box in protest.  Strange animals.  They seem to have calmed down now, though: their tiny, fuzzy rage has melted away now that my wife is back.
 
 
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   You need to be careful about tiny, fuzzy rage.  We have it here, too, but it manifests as shrill barking and feet biting (my feet, not the dog's).  The antidote does seem to be directly related to wife-presence, though, so it's probably good to keep her around.

   Oh, and the boat is looking great! :)

  

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  • 2 months later...

I apologize for the lack of updates; I work two jobs and one is cyclical in nature so when I get busy I get really, really busy.

 

Everything that's primed white here is going to be WR-LPU black soon.  Everything else will be WR-LPU clear.  Everything that's already black is epoxy-graphite in the hopes that it'll hold up to abrasion.

 

Still have to do the mast step and a couple of other little things.

 

 

2018-06-16 09.51.08.jpg

2018-06-16 09.53.05.jpg

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Yeah, she's quite supportive.  The bunnies mostly focus on scampering, and (I discovered this morning) tunnelling into the hay storage.

D55pw1P.jpg

 

A hay bale is for a rabbit is like that far side cartoon about dog heaven where a mail truck made entirely from spam rolls through.  It's a home, and it's also their favourite food!

 

The wife is currently recovering from a motorcycle crash - she lowsided her bike while panic-stopping trying to avoid someone turning left across her path and in the process, broke her collarbone.  As such she is totally off the hook for rowing duties...a clever ploy.  She is furious about not being able to apply makeup with her right hand for the moment but otherwise fine.  The driver was oblivious to the situation and carried on as though nothing had happened.

 

That happened yesterday so I've taken the day off to care for her but she doesn't need much pampering so I may do some more boat work if she doesn't need help for a bit.

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Tell her she hasn’t lived until she’s broken both at the same time. :)

 

My collar bone count stands at twice on the right, and five times on the left, plus both rotator cuffs long gone.

Both joints are wonky now. I can’t, for example, reach back to the back seat and grab something. Ahem.

 

What’s worse is road rash. Did she get any? Lose any ink? I’ve done that, too! Haha.

 

Also, remind her this is a chance to get better with her left hand. If I hadn’t broke my wrist so many times, I wouldn’t be ambidextrous. 

 

And, seriously, my best regards. I hope she’s fine, and I hope she gets her bike fixed. Or a new one!

 

Peace,

Robert

 

Oh, yeah, boat stuff, too. But aren’t spouses what it’s all about?

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She was fully leathered up for the crash actually, so not a mark on her skin (which she was very, very happy about).

 

Actually, one of the few funny moments afterwards was her determination to wiggle out of her leathers before the paramedics could cut them off.  She got out of the jacket and it was really hot out so she was wearing just a bikini underneath and then when the firefighters arrived they started lecturing her about riding in a bikini and how they couldn't believe she didn't have road rash.  Then the paramedics showed up and they were a couple of fairly young women who loved the leather pants so much they spent about five minutes carefully sliding her out of them instead of cutting them off.  In fact all the first responders were amazing; the firefighters offered to take her bike and gear back to the fire hall so I could pick it up at my leisure, and about half the people on scene were riders themselves so they really went into high gear.

 

Surgery on the shoulder is tomorrow at 6 am.  They're screwing and plating her collarbone because it's pretty much wrecked and won't heal correctly on its own.  But she is in good spirits and once they bolt her shoulder back together she should heal up quickly - they said 6-8 weeks to full recovery which is just amazing.  I watched her hit the ground and slide past me and I did not expect news that good.

 

One of the rabbits seems to understand her limited mobility or reduced movement or something and keeps hanging around her and licking her ankles and sitting next to her on the couch.  I think it is a bit concerned.  The other one is totally indifferent but she's basically a wild rabbit so...extraordinarily fast, not very approachable.  Kind of a jerk.

 

Somewhat incredibly her bike sustained less visible damage than mine.  I broke a mirror because when she slid past me I leapt off, apparently clearing the bars completely and dropping the bike.  I have no memory of this but two cars stopped to help and the drivers watched it all and told me later.  Her bike was almost perfectly intact, with a tiny bit of rash on the headlight ring and ONE of two filaments in one turn signal broken.  That's it. It's so light I think her leg stopped it; it was on top of her and her calf is totally bruised from where it hit.  The opposite side mirror stalk was a tiny bit bent because I flung it off of her and it fell over the other way, but that I just bent back for the ride home.

 

Anyway tough to watch and very hard to see her injured but she seems to be recuperating quickly.

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