A Shipwright in Training

Ok, rushing may Feel like the only viable course of action at times, but really, you don’t need me to tell you that it’s a bad road to travel sonny. And I’m not particularly good at taking my own advice on this one either. It’s weird, when there’s tons to be done but we have to wait (I’ll get to this), I have a real hard time just kicking back and doing nothing.

Here’s the story. I got in a little early today to prep the boat for its last varnishing.

All the bright finished surfaces got a good sanding with 220 grit followed by a red scotch brite pad. All we needed was an extended period of time when there would be minimal dust in the shop. The whole school got a “talking to” by the program director around noon about the level of disorder in the shop, so today we were to do a Major Cleanup. That meant Major Dust, so I wanted to get that attended to as soon as possible. As soon as the dust settles, we’re good to go for varnishing & final boot stripe painting. We even flipped the boat to get the boot stripe taped up for this.

And then flipped the boat back upright again so we could do both the varnish work and the boot stripe. Unfortunately, we ran out of prep work by about 1:30. Cleanup wasn’t until 3:15 and I couldn’t convince folks to do it earlier, so we were stuck for almost 2 hours with nothing really to do.

The thing is, other folks had Lots that needed to be done, so I went over to Matthew’s boat and started helping him spile a new ceiling plank. His boat partner just became father to twins, so he’s GONE and Matthew’s been falling behind.

And while it was all well and good to help out, it was equally annoying to not be able to attend to the varnishing. These things that need to dry… you just don’t want to put them off to the last minute. If for some reason you screw up, you really really need that extra time. And besides, the domino effect is:

• You don’t put spar hardware on until the varnish is done.
• You don’t do final topsides and deck paint until the varnish is done. It then has to dry.
• You don’t permanently install the deck hardware until the deck paint is done

We float this boat in 4 days. Delay the varnish, and you could be putting paint on the boat the day before it goes in the water, which means putting deck hardware on the morning of launch… Hell no, I want a leisurely breakfast with my buddies that morning. Forget that.

We still haven’t attached any of the hardware to the mast, and I want to build in time for making sure that’s all ok. I think it’ll be easy though, to be honest.

So, the good news is that Kev and I were able to put the final coat on all the spars in record time, and by staying after an hour or so, I was able to finish up the last of the varnishing on the boat itself. So, we’re good to go for paint tomorrow.

I just want a stress free life, is that so wrong? Is that so unrealistic? Yes, yes, and thrice yes.

This morning I got the quarter round in… this is the trim piece that goes around the base of the coaming and hides the seam between the coaming and the deck. It’s a tricky thing to fit into place because the wood curves and twists as it makes its way around the coaming. Since it has a round edge, it’s particularly tough to clamp in place, and you need it tight to keep the upper edge tight to the coaming.

Here it is going in. That’s bedding compound against the coaming.

And a little farther along

I got a little out of hand with the bedding compound.

Luckily, some careful scraping with a putty knife and a mineral spirits wipe down cleans it all up nicely.

The really scary thing about putting in the quarter round is the possibility that you could shoot a screw right through your coaming. I got Very Very close to doing that, and luckily felt the wood starting to bulge before the screw head came through. A bit of careful sanding and a coat of varnish and all is well.

I also got the boom crutch cleat and support screwed in and bunged.

The boom crutch is a removable piece that holds the boom up while the boat is waiting to go sailing.

So, at the end of the day, we managed to finish all the varnishing. The coaming is now nice and shiny

And the transom’s not half bad either.

Tomorrow we paint and put on hardware! It’s really looking like an actual boat.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 29th, 2007 at 8:35 pm and is filed under Classes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.