Day 3 Spontaneous Combustion

Day 3

Tea Count 0 (Well it was only half a day)
Injuries 0
Time spent 2.5 hours

So yesterday was a day off and therefore doesn’t count. It was a golf day with Perkins senior and Perkins junior, I wonder what that makes me?

Anyway today was the day I had been dreading for sometime. Today I would be using the epoxy resin (that’s glue to the non boat building fraternity) for the first time. This involves mixing resin with hardener and a funny powder called filleting mix. This has the effect of creating a strong, thick glue which is used to “fillet” the seams of the panels which holds them together after the wire stitches have been removed (hopefully).

The words on the tin did not make for cheery reading. “mix and use in a well ventilated room at 20 degrees”. My garage is not well ventilated and if it is then the door is open and it’s not 20 degrees! It went on, “mixing resin and hardener can generate large amounts of heat and can melt plastic containers and cause spontaneous combustion…WHAT, say that again! I re-read the tin, yup, it can set itself on fire at the drop of a hat, “dispose of carefully”, well duh! Anyhow, best not tell Zeen about this bit, it’s on a need to know basis and my plastic mixing containers look perfectly adequate!

I figured I’d practice on some spare ply first, to see how easy it was to work with. Apparently I have to mix it up to the consistency of peanut butter, it didn’t say smooth or crunchy so I opted for smooth but ended up with crunchy. And so the mixing began and very shortly I had my first batch of crunchy epoxy resin ready for spreading.

With confidence growing and no fires yet appearing my practice piece of ply was in fact one half of my canoe, well how hard can it be. Apparently quite hard. It’s like trying to spread peanut butter onto a two pieces of dry wood with another piece of dry wood. It sticks where you don’t want it too and doesn’t where you do! It’s crazy stuff

Anyway, within an hour or so I had filleted all the joints between the stitches (and my fingers) in the hope that tomorrow I can remove the stitches and it won’t all fall apart. Other jobs completed today was that of re-shaping the nose cone (it’s a rocket now) as it was slightly out of line after I had tightened the wires. I temporarily installed the mid-ships bulkhead in half number two. This was a pain to fit and has only increased my fear that the two halves will not match together and we’ll all get wet. I’m hoping for a fine day tomorrow so I can take the halves outside and marry them up to see if I need to re-work anything! I have to do this before I go much further as once the joints are taped there won’t much in the way re-shaping that can be done!

Well that’s it for now. Probably won’t post tomorrow as it’s New Years Eve, Happy New year everyone, and I shall be busy partying and buying a new wheely bin after the old one mysteriously melted and then caught fire!