Injuries: 0
Time Spent: 2 hours yesterday, 5 today
The quarter was actually yesterday (Saturday) but as I only worked on her for a couple of hours and all I did was to build the second bulkhead it really didn't seem worth posting any updates, plus time was in very short supply yesterday. Posting any images of my progress would have been much like Reading's match with Hull yesterday...pointless! I might as well have used the images from the first bulkhead.
So as I said, time was short yesterday as I had driving duties to get four cadets up to Benson to go flying. With the weather against us we were late getting back and by time I had refuelled with toasted cheese and tuna melts, it was gone three before I got started. With dinner planned for eight fifteen with Sarah and Graham and the inevitable two hour “I've got nothing to wear” débâcles from Z, there was little time left for boat building. Worse still, I then found out that the restaurant we were actually going to was three miles further away than the one I thought we were going to. This of course meant leaving five and half minutes earlier than anticipated. Will this boat ever get finished?
Today however, you will be mightily relieved to hear was a different story. Sure, it was a late start, to follow the late night and a Sunday morning lay in was well needed, but I still managed to get in a good five hours. Bulkhead number one is now complete and screwed, (but not glued) into place! Bulkhead number two has all it's framework cut and is ready to be glued up when I can next face mixing epoxy resin. Since my last episode of epoxy mixing went badly wrong I'm eager to avoid the whole matter of epoxy mixing. Whilst mixing said epoxy I dropped my stirrer into the mix. The sensible thing to do would of course be to simply carry on a with a new mixer, after all I do have a bag full of them. But no, seemingly without any conscious thought process I went straight for the pliers to retrieve the mixing stick. It worked well, the stick was recovered, but now the pliers were proper sticky and the stick was now on the workbench together with a bunch of resin. Reaching for a cloth I instinctively new this wasn't going to end well but I couldn't stop myself. Sure enough within a few seconds I had managed smear the sticky stuff over most of the bench, all of my hands and now I had a very sticky cloth to boot and the recovered stick was now in the bin. Pointless exercise. I gave up!
I spent a little time this morning prizing the pliers off the bench but I doubt I'll ever get them unstuck enough to use them for their originally designed purpose. I'll keep them though as they do make a good emergency hammer.
My other achievement today was to use my faithful router (that's rowter not rooter for all the techno heads out there) to round off the bulkhead frame and cut the slots in the frame. This process was not without some foul language due to a router (that's rowter) bit breaking mid way though a pass, hence one rather wiggly slot. I have decided that this now adds character to the build and will remain forever wiggly. Zeen was mightily impressed with my progress today even ventured out into the cold to examine the bulkhead in place. She delicately ran her hand across the wood and exclaimed “oooh smooth” whilst smiling in my direction, scary huh! I smiled back hiding my concern slash fear and asked her to take some pictures!
I'm hoping things can move on a pace now that the bulkheads are all but complete and next week end should see me taping the inside fillets of at least one half of the boat.
Dinner last night, by the way was awesome. Great food, great company good catch up albeit that for most of the evening we were the only four in the restaurant and in keeping with the boat theme we sat overlooking the Thames!
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