Day 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | Sept 7-17 | Sept 18-19 | The Launch | Outings |
Day Five, Sunday, August 22 |
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| Was set to snip off the copper wires, get the fiberglass done by mid-morning and actually have a life for the rest of the day, but soon realized that was not going to happen. |
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| Snipping off the wires was satisfying and pretty easy, but I then had to sand down all the little wire bits that were still sticking out. Aghhh. An exercise in patience. It's nice to have those wires out - I kept sticking myself with them as I brushed by. I even have a scratch on my forehead about an inch long. The perils of stitch and glue construction. I never knew. |
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Sanded for 4 hours and my hand hurts. A fifteen foot boat is really big. I should have made a kayak for an action figure, not me. But it does look beautiful I think, and I'm not about to stop until it's done right. How many times in my life will I build a boat? I'm starting to get a little obsessive. It's amazing how 4 pieces of plywood can make such a beautiful shape simply from the cut of the pieces of wood. I don't have a good picture that expresses this but the curve seems like it is made up of many more pieces. |
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Draped fiberglass cloth over the hull ... |
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| and painted it with epoxy. I used a foam roller this time and it was so much easier than with a brush! The fiberglass becomes pretty much invisible. I was very precise and cannot find one air bubble. Waited 3 hours and did it again. Lots of bubbles this time. |
| I'm trying to decide what color to paint my hull. I like white the
best but it isn't very practical. But then, building a kayak in a studio apartment isn't
very practical either.
This kayak is obviously a different model. Green is nice, but maybe a bit too Eddie Bauer-esque.
Option 3: Varnishing the whole boat. I love this look, but they say it's safer to paint the hull a bright color for visibility. I don't want to look like a little floating log to those huge Circle Line boats on the Hudson! I saw a maroon one that looked good too. Let's make this interactive, shall we? How about voting? I won't promise that I'll obey. View Hull Color poll results here. Chesapeake Light Craft (the kayak kit company I used) has been great. And one of you suggested I send them this URL. I did. Here's the response I got:
It appears I'm doing everything right!! (I assume you all know I meant on Day Four I went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and that by "played" I didn't mean "performed" simply "had fun while I looked at medieval illuminated manuscripts." I only wish I was that multifaceted. To be able to say "I performed at the Met while my epoxy dried!") |
