I Love the Smell of Epoxy in the Morning, It Smells Like... Victory.

I also love having MLK day off of work. I have been able to accomplish a fair bit due to the long weekend. I have officially completed chapter 2 of Pocketship! The lower hull is complete and work has begun on the upper hull. This is where the real excitement begins!

I was out in the driveway working away this afternoon taking advantage of the relatively warm weather. Hey, 40 degrees in January is practically shorts weather in New England! And I of course had the stereo cranked up pretty loud in the garage when my neighbor comes over and says the bass line to my trance music is "penetrating" A good adjective to use for that type of music I must say.... But I digress, I was polite and said I would turn it down, but he happened to see the boat in the garage and his immediate reaction was "Motherf*@ker! That's damn impressive! You've done all that from scratch!" I must say I enjoy people's reactions when they see the boat for the first time. It clearly is a source of great pride for me.

On to construction details though... I anchored down the seats the other day and peppered the deck with screws to hold it in place while the epoxy cured... I'm using the fast hardener in the colder weather, and I like to heat the epoxy up on my garage heater so the reaction moves extra fast. This has the downside of requiring me to work at lightning speed once the resin and hardener are mixed before the cup melts in my hand and I'm stuck with a rock hard gob of epoxy. (It's happened before, even in cold weather) But today I began by pulling up the screws and filling the holes with more epoxy so the deck will be nice and smooth after a final sanding tomorrow. See:

I also trimmed the footwell down so the edges are nice and smooth and used the 1/2" router bit to put a nice round edge on it. Looks pretty good if I may say.... although I have noticed the footwell isn't really very deep. For a tall person like me this will probably be a pain after awhile...

Lastly, the rudder is almost complete now as well. It is very tightly clamped together at the moment while the epoxy cures (the base of the rudder is hollow believe it or not, I am assuming it's designed this way to save weight) I need to add the rudder wing and the cheeks tomorrow, I am looking forward to using the router to smooth out the edges of the cheeks to give the rudder that professional look. A picture of that will come later this week.

On the slate for tomorrow is to start stitching the seatback frames into place and possibly even the rear cabin wall!

I Build Boats In Stereo....

Cause I live for the music... no matter what the world comes to...

Ok, no one will understand what that means but it's all good. This blog is for me just as much as it is for you.

One of my favorite things to do in life right now is to head into the garage despite the frigid temps, crank up my speakers connected to my phone and use power tools while listening to Armin, Ferry, and Deadmau5... Nothing makes me happier.

That being said, I finally have a few pictures of hardware being installed on the boat and some of the finer details being worked on. The lower hull will be entirely complete within a week or so... even though I feel behind schedule I'm still pretty pleased considering that epoxy takes 2 or 3 times as long to cure in this weather. (Although, my tenting abilities have advanced considerably) Tenting is essentially covering the areas of the boat where you want the epoxy to cure with a plastic tarp and putting 1 or 2 60 watt work lights inside under the tarp. Under a non-breathable material like plastic, the temp will stay at a steady 65 degrees even if it's -20 on the other side of the plastic. Kinda cool actually. I try to put the lamp near the lowest point until the tarp since thermodynamics more or less dictates that heat rises. (Ok, probably more "more" than "less")

However, in the follow pics you will that the footwell has been installed (via a little coaxing from the hammer)...

And now onto the details... The centerboard pendant sheave has now officially been installed! This is the first notably piece of hardware installed on the boat and quite frankly I am petrified that I will seal it in place by a stray gob of epoxy or something of the sort. Luckily, I only have 1 or 2 steps between now and when it will be sealed up forever inside the centerboard trunk. I had to grind down the bolt in a beautiful but terrifying display of sparks on my grinder. I'm quite sure the grinder is only meant for wood, but fuck it. You use the tools you have, not the ones you want. Right Mr. Dumbfuck Rumsfeld? The bolt is now the perfect length and the acorn nut anchored down beautifully with a squeeze or two or marine caulk. Let's just hope the tiny amount of excess caulk on the bolt doesn't seize the sheave...

Ok, time for Jon Stewart and a delicious Harpoon Celtic Ale.... Yum!

So Cold, and yet So Hot!

Merry Xmas, Happy New Year blah blah blah.... Thankfully my xmas was pretty fun this year, despite my sister yelling at her children in my ear repeatedly. Does it mean I'm getting old when I cringe at the sound of loud noises? Ok, I don't cringe at the sound of loud noises, just my sister. Perhaps that is a separate issue. But X-mas was good, I played with the little princess and enjoyed myself immensely. The food and the beer/wine were also good. A very special shout out to my brother-in-law for placing a shot of JD in front of me without having to ask for it. He knew I needed it. He's a smart man.

So, onto the boat... my apologies for the lack of updates. It has been a busy end of the year with traveling, skiing, working, and general shenanigans. The cold also seriously hampers my ability to work efficiently as epoxy is supposed to have temperatures near 50 to cure properly. I have a mini shop set up in my study to apply epoxy clear coats and since that room gets to about 98 degrees, the epoxy cures in just a couple of hours. Of course, I can't exactly bring the whole boat it, so any structural work has to have lamps set up with plastic draped over to hold the heat in. Surprisingly, a 60 watt light bulb will heat a small area to well over 60 degrees inside a sheet of plastic.

That being said, the interior floorboards have all cut, routed, and varnished and look pretty good in my opinion. The downside is that brass screws suck. They strip repeatedly, and often snap off in the middle making it damn near impossible to get the lower half out of the wood without ripping it apart. However, they don't rust either. I ruined more than a few, which sucks because brass screws cost about 4x as much as regular screws. But you can see how good the floorboards look now that they are installed. I'm not sure it'll be that comfortable to sleep on, but a good foam pad or air mattress should do the trick. Another reason for the length of time between updates is due to how long the floorboards took. I began cutting them around Thanksgiving, but didn't get the final coat of varnish on them until just before X-mas. Of course, they have 3 coats of varnish on top and two on the bottom.

The next step was to cut out the seats, and footwell pieces. If I had been designing this boat I probably would have made the footwell about 6 inches wider and the seats each 3 inches narrower, but I guess my feet are doomed to spend the life of my boat wedged in that footwell while I'm under sail. Oh well. The other notable accomplishment of late was to install the centerboard pendant sheave and shims. I will include a picture of this soon, but basically it is the little roller that the rope which lowers and raises the centerboard slides on. The shims are epoxied around the sheave to keep the rope from jumping off. It seems pretty effective actually. I also purchased some removable access hatches to cover the gaping holes in the centerboard trunk. Again, I will take a picture once they are installed in the next few days.

Tomorrow, I will be applying a final coat of paint to the footwell sides and bottom and hopefully epoxying them in place. Here's a few pics of the seats resting in place (they aren't glued down yet) but you can see how nice the floorboards turned out. I also modified the original layout of the floorboards. The lacewood at my local store was pretty warped and not available in good widths for making 3" wide boards, so I trimmed mine to 2.5". I had to use an extra board on either side but I thought it gave my boat a touch of originality.

Finally, I am working on some boat names now that it is 2010. I am still hoping to have the christening sometime in May, but it may be June or July in reality. Comments or suggestions for boat names are welcome... Right now I'm thinking about:

Ataraxia

Preferably in Greek:

Ἀταραξία