Three is Plenty [boatbuilding]

There haven't been as many new and different observations to share while applying the epoxy to the inside, now that I actually have the epoxy.

And I wanted to wait until I could put my hands on the boat this morning, before making any firm declarations of what I suspected, but now I can say that I get to stop at 3 coats instead of 4 for the inside of the boat. There are a couple of small patches that are still rough to the touch, but I have to figure I'll probably be patching again anyway. And so, back to sanding! Soon.

Yesterday when I went outside to start warming up the garage, it also occurred to me that I could use that time to start tackling some of the drips and bumps and runs.

For instance, here's a spot where I think I got distracted after coat #1 because dinnertime was approaching. These are some particularly egregious drips, and after I noticed them I was much more careful about the gunwales.



This carbide scraper, plus the teardrop one, plus the square cabinet scraper, helped to take the drips down most of the way. I definitely agree with the person on a boatbuilding forum who professed a preference for scraping over sanding.



But I did have to follow up with a little bit of sanding. A certain amount of sanding is unavoidable.

Periodically, little bits of sponge flecked off of the epoxy roller, too, and got stuck in the fresh epoxy. Probably this is less of a problem when epoxy is applied at temperatures closer to the upper thermal limit, where the epoxy is much less viscous. I did read some commentary from an experienced boatbuilder who makes it a point to generally apply seal/finish coats at warmer shop temperatures for more ideal epoxy flow. That's probably easier to accomplish in a shop that isn't one's mother's uninsulated garage that's just a little too short for the boat, in the late fall.



Thankfully the paint roller flecks aren't particularly hard to remove with a scraper.



So my strategy for prepping the inside from here will be to sand everything, mostly just to identify the high and low spots and most horrible lumps and dips. Then I'll scrape any egregiously terrible areas, sand some more, and most likely patch again. Then clean, wash, clean, and varnish.

Interestingly, the literature that came with the boatbuilding class does include the suggestion of a set of cabinet scrapers, even though I haven't found them to be the most useful out of the scrapers I've acquired. Actually, they're still more useful than the riffle rasp set. I'm glad now that I didn't try to spring for the more expensive riffle rasps. I'm also just glad to have learned so much more about scrapers. The bigger carbide paint scrapers look amazing to me now.

I might do some test sanding this afternoon. I learned from fillet-patching the inside, that it's pretty easy to tell if the epoxy hasn't yet cured enough, because it gums, rubs, or peels instead of turning into horrible microscopic dust. Yesterday when I was scraping I could tell that the epoxy had barely set enough to be able to scrape, even. I could scrape flakes but they would occasionally get gummed up on the edge of the scraper. In any case, soon I'll either be into full-bore sanding, or I'll be waiting to start until Friday.

Two more photos for fun.

One, a look at how lovely the interior is after the third coat of epoxy:



As long as you don't look *too* closely.



That's the biggest fiberglass/epoxy bubble on the boat, and I must not have noticed what was happening when I put the first epoxy coat on. Unless I break through while sanding, I'm just going to leave that one alone for now. I'm less concerned about that on the inside as compared to the outside.

There are also a number of pretty obvious scratches and other blemishes, but I'll live with them and call it a learning experience, because I'm certainly not going to sand back down to smooth them out NOW. And ultimately they won't affect the boat's function.

Minor tea updates / mango bread [food]

I went big and actually bought 3 different kinds of loose-leaf chocolate tea the other day, which was obviously a game I came to regret. I hadn't yet opened the third kind when I blogged before. It's a coconut-chocolate chai, and now that I've had some I have fewer regrets. If anything, it highlights that a LOT of different things all get called chai these days. But it's aromatic and flavorful and actually pretty good.

annikusrex and I also discovered that the chocolate-mint can be convinced to have SOME flavor if it's slowly steeped for a long time.

But when I tried that with the chocolate-orange it came out bitter.

Life goes on. I'll drink what I have and move on to other tea in the future.

-

The mango bread came out good enough that I made a second loaf, although my mom said after she had a slice her evening blood sugar measurement was high. So it's just as well that I don't plan on making a habit of making it.

Materials [stuff]

Two other rather random things bouncing around in my head:

1. The other day I read a news story about a speculative proposal for my community in New York that would involve building a factory to make bricks out of dredging waste. There are of course a lot of questions and concerns, particularly around pollution production, and the idea could fizzle out, but honestly I love it. Shit bricks, folks. Interestingly it sounds like heating the dredging waste to the high temperatures needed to produce bricks could either break down or fully immobilize the PCBs and PFAS in the waste. I would just have to hope that such a factory would have the appropriate air scrubbers (being fully aware that there must be legal regulations in place to actually make this happen). This is especially a big deal because there's another factory in the community already that has been burning waste material that is causing it to release these kinds of compounds into the air - a worse fate than just burying that dredging or other waste "somewhere."

Anyway, I love the proposal from the standpoint that it would take unwanted waste material and turn it into building material. I've already said a lot recently about trees, anyway.

2. After everything I wrote about Western redcedar, I got really curious about how the bark is harvested, processed, and used to make baskets.

Well, it turns out that the Smithsonian Arctic Studies Center Alaska produced a whole series about Tsimshian basket weaving in 2019! Here's a link to the first in the series:

https://youtu.be/YrFOFxftByQ?si=KcHUDHrkFOK0-qjA

Now I'm curious about the long-term consequences for the trees from which the bark is harvested. I could imagine the trees continuing to be basically okay, because the harvesting doesn't completely girdle them, although the harvest looks to be a one-time thing for each tree. I'm fine with that, and it really helps me to understand why the cedar baskets and weaving I've seen offered for sale are as expensive as they are. They SHOULD be that expensive. I actually started to watch the 5th or so in this series first, which reiterates the importance of walking through the forest with deep respect; I think part of that respect comes from a recognition that the resources in the forest need to be protected.

I also loved hearing the master weaver featured in the beginning film talk about her realization after going to a basketry conference, that people across the entire globe all weave.

I don't personally plan to take up basket weaving at this time (hello, too many other hobbies!) but I definitely want to keep learning about it. Maybe more about local materials in New York, now that I have a better understanding of some of the local materials along the Northwest Coast.

Feeding the internet [cats]

(for the internet runs on cats, does it not?)

Every once in a while, I have a good idea.

It has been getting marginally colder in Seattle, which has been making me feel marginally guilty on the behalf of the cats, because I have just had the one orange fuzzy cat bed set up for them on this trip and I've caught Martha growling in a territorial fashion at George when she wants the One Bed. What to do? This morning it eventually occurred to me that I already have something of the correct shape and size that could be converted into a larger cat bed, even allowing the cats to snuggle together if they so desire: the hard-sided cat carrier!

It also seemed like it might be good to find out whether they could be enticed to like the fleece padding that had been inside of the smaller, soft-sided carrier that George peed in at the beginning of the trip. (I've cleaned it all at least twice by now, including application of two different enzyme products that are supposed to break down the smelly cat pee compounds; the zippers on the soft-sided carrier, however, seem beyond repair at this point).

Some catnip quickly got their attention.


George seems to approve:

Watch on YouTube

(side note, one claw got somewhat stuck in the video but he got it free a second after I stopped recording)

Then my mom even went so far as to offer the use of her heating pad, and I added one more fuzzy blanket.

The new bed is now Martha's territory, which means George can continue to sleep in his beloved fuzzy orange bed, and if they both get desperate they have room to snuggle together.