Half a new dinghy

I was at the dentist this morning, and while setting up, the hygienist asked me what I did.

"Oh," I said, "I operate a plane."

"You're a pilot?"

I did what I always do when I don't want to answer a question: I just asked another question.

"Do I not seem responsible enough to be a pilot?"

"Oh," she said, "you totally do. Is it exciting?"

"Running a plane?"

"Yeah."

"Well, anything gets repetitive after a while."

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Chines rounded off for fibreglass taping; flat planed into centre to allow for keel.
 
I got my start the exact same way!



You know, several years ago I took my wife to an expensive restaurant, which in itself is just asking for trouble. But anyway she wanted to try it so I agreed.

The waiter instantly got on my nerves with this snarky, condescending attitude, which is also a recipe for disaster.

So he asks if we want to order drinks.

"Sure," I said. I pointed at the wine list, about halfway down. "We'll take a bottle of this pie-nut here."

"The...pinot, sir?"

"This pie-nut here," I said. I looked him in the eye.

He hesitated. But he went for it.

"It's...pinot," he said.

"Who flies the plane?"

"I'm...I'm sorry?"

"Who flies the plane?"

He had nothing. "I...it...it's..."

"Well it ain't the f##king pee-low," I said. "We'll take a bottle of this pie-nut here, got it?"

He brought the pie-nut. It was about a hundred bucks. It tasted like grapes or something. I congratulated the waiter on the great job he did carrying it from the back of the restaurant to the front. My wife just shrugged. She's used to it.




I recognize that I have no place in a civilized society.
 
Dont the people in your strata get excited about you using power tools in your unit?
 
I've actually just been using hand tools, I guess with the exception of a cordless drill for a little bit one day. But the building is luckily built with a lot of sound isolation in mind; I cut into one of the common walls between the units one day and it was a double layer of gyproc on offset 2x4 with insulation between. So the wall is something like eight inches thick, and the studs that our gyproc is attached to are separate from the ones our neighbour's gyproc is attached to, with an inch or so gap between the back side of their studs and our gyproc. We can almost never hear anyone else in the building.

The rabbits do love the shavings; they grab them and chuck them around and nibble on them. They also like to play with the cutoff ends of anything, grabbing them and flinging them around and then chasing each other around in the piles of shavings. They're fun to watch.
 
Looks good. I might have missed it but what epoxy resin are you using? System Three?
 
Good to know. How you you find paint sticks to it? I've always used west systems with pumps but recently I did a pretty big floor replacement and used silvertip laminating resin. About 1300 bucks worth of resin lol but I wasn't footing the bill. Still undecided on weather to use a barrier coat primer or just paint right over the resin.
 
Oh man, the silvertip stuff is luxury-grade. A friend of mine is doing a 17' centre console with that stuff and it's just cream.

Paint seems to adhere well enough to the marinEpoxy...

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A lot of what you're looking at there is just Rustoleum primer rolled on over mEpoxy. And this thing gets ABUSED. Crab traps dropped on the deck, exhaust manifolds and risers stripped and chiseled out on the surface there, sand from our beach on boot soles ground into it...the fact that there's still visible paint there at all is kind of shocking.
 
Today was a bit stupid work-wise but I still accomplished a couple of things: the deadwood and keel are ready to go on, although I'm leaving them until later because they'll make the boat sit funny upright. Plane shavings everywhere again.

The exterior is now fully slathered in epoxy, so it needs some fairing once dry. But it should be plenty waterproof. Note shininess of entire boat now:

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Also the rabbits really like the overhead shelter vibe.

And I started laying epoxy on the bulkheads and seats..

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I would like to leave the seats bright. We'll see how that goes.

Oh, and I decided to get some meranti for the rear knees. I had some pine 1x6 already leaning up in a corner so initially I cut the knees out of that, but then I decided I wanted the option of leaving the rears bright. The fronts I intend to cover in a slight modification of the design - I would like to very slightly enclose the bow because exiting the Fraser in 25-30kt westerlies on an full outgoing flood has left me totally paranoid and crazy and open bows freak me out now. So my plan is to make a very small deck which transitions to a backrest for the bow seat, that is also a couple of inches of coaming. Yes, I realize this is fairly crazy. However, my old beater dinghy (as mentioned in post one) got ripped off the roof of my boat while I plunged through waves at Sand Heads and now when I look forward at completely exposed hulls I get totally creeped out.

So that's another thing I did tonight: I cut out the rear knees, and slopped epoxy on them.

Tomorrow I have to run down over the border and pick up fibreglass tape because my local guy had nothing useful. When I get home, I want to glurp (technical shipwright term for experts like me) some more epoxy on the small parts but I'm heading to my cabin Thursday or Friday and need to do laundry first, so I may not get much else done. My wife is at a conference on communicable diseases all day so I'm holding down the fort and feeding the rabbits...but then on the other hand, she's not home until late so nobody expects me to be present for dinner, either. So...we'll see.
 
I love following projects like this. Great work.

I’m still blown away that your Mrs is onboard with a living room project. Mine would be less than supportive.

How are the fumes from the epoxies and resins?
 
Oh, she's a character. When we were younger we spent a whole summer just living on a motorcycle and touring across the US...around 10,000 miles altogether, sleeping under a tarp stretched over the bike. It was amazing and we loved it even though we were penniless. But we loved it so much, few years ago we redid the west coast leg of the trip and she was still perfectly happy sleeping on the ground and living in her leathers.

She's way more bothered by the idea of trying to adapt to a normal workplace environment and listening to her coworkers yap about throw pillows or gas mileage or coupons than she's ever going to be by the presence of a boat in the living room.

As far as she's concerned, the fact that I build stuff in the living room and would be about as likely to respond to complaints from the strata by throwing one of them off the roof as anything else just makes me more like her ideal husband. I think if I ever started seeming like I could be told not to do things she would be upset.

Partly as a result of my totally ungovernable personality, however, I can personally only tell you this about the fumes: I think they're probably not bad, but I'm not entirely sure, because I've had my nose broken several times and can't smell things correctly.

My wife says they're pretty strong for the first few hours but then they wear off. But she describes the smell as "chemically peanut butter" and says it could be a lot worse.
 
Good job. I find it easier to encapsulate the panels before stitching them up.
 

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You've got a good breeding pair there...leave them alone with the lights off and you'll end up with a whole pile of little projects taking over your shop!

I might have encapsulated mine first if I'd planned things out, but I just started working on it and then realized I only had about 12 or 14 oz of epoxy left from my last project, which seemed like enough to do the fillets. So I ordered more epoxy and just did whatever in whatever order was convenient while waiting for the epoxy.

Then I discovered my local shop didn't have much in the way of fibreglass tape so I ordered that and I've been working around having epoxy, but no tape.

So the order is really random, but considering my schedule I'm happy with things so far.
 
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