Swinging the paintbrush.

The big day has come.  Well, a slightly bigger day than some!  Its been a bit warmer of late, about 17 deg C here this afernoon and with primer paint on and sanded it seemed like a good idea to paint the outside of SEI’s hull.

Resene make really good paint,  the staff at their open 7 days a week branches are better informed and usually more helpful than those in the big box hardware stores paint dept, and I often use their paints.

This time I felt that I’d like a change from the usual high gloss enamel, I’d tried their water based enamel on the kayak and while its easy to slap on, and durable in terms of its ability to survive the elements it does scratch easily so I was looking to see what other alternatives there might be.

Sure enough they’ve got a semi gloss satin finish solvent based enamel called “Lusta-Glo”  ( Who thinks these names up?) . The spec sheet said all the right things, and within the limited range of colours in this paint type there were a couple that were close so,

Dark green hull, I bought a can of white which will have a few dribbles of the green added to paint the interior with, and a rich russet red for the gunwales and maybe a boot stripe along the waterline.

I put the first coat on today, brush coated, stroke lengthwise diagonal one way then the other then tip off lengthwise. 

It brishes nicely as long as the brush is kept fairly full, looks ok.  I like the idea of the satin finish, its more workboaty in its look plus I have to admit that one of the things that I like is that it tends not to show the defects in my building quite as badly as high gloss.

Its a little darker than this in reality, not quite Hunting Green or British Racing Green but about as close as the limited palette for this paint could get.  Looks good, but the data sheet says that it won't have its natural finish for a day or two after application.

I have to say it goes on well, no trouble keeping a wet edge and feathering the new paint in as you go.

Just as a by the way, I'm trying to reorganise my shop, thats why its all untidy.

It’s a bit of a landmark in the build,  I’ll give her another coat on Sunday then flip her back over a couple of days later and get on with gluing the seats in and tidying up before doing the tinting trick with the green and white before painting the interior.

Soon.  The end is in sight, in this case it’s a double end.

Roll on summertime.

Working on the mast for SEI

Beefing up the mast.

Chuck Leinweber at Duckworksmagazine.com has been using a woven fiberglass sleeve to reinforce the wooden masts he’s made for the various boats he’s built.

As far as I know he’s been using fairly cheap lumber for the birdsmouth system spars, and with the glass sleeve over them there has been no failures even when pushed very hard in events such as the Texas 200 and Everglades Challenge.

Here's his catalogue listing along with a little video showing how the 'glass sleeve is applied.

http://www.duckworksbbs.com/supplies/cloth/sleeving/index.htm

When visiting last year I had a look at what he’s done, looked over the material and decided that I’d give the stuff a try.  So, today, got the parcel out, sanded the mast blank off a little and got into it.

Its like a Chinese Finger Puzzle, push the ends together and it gets bigger in diameter, pull and it gets skinnier.  To apply, I shoved my hand down it while pushing the ends in, made it big enough to fit the mast through easily, and slid it through.  Taped the butt end to the wood and smoothed out the glass sleeve running my hands toward the other end making it smaller and a close fit as I went.

 I put a tape around the mast at the top end of the sleeve, this to provide a clean end to cut the strands of fiberglass to.  Next, I taped the end to the mast to control it while wetting out, and got into it with a brush and epoxy.

With two layers of gloves on, I smoothed the layup out, working from the start end up to the top of the mast pushing any bubbles out as I went.

This is fairly heavy fiberglass, and it soaks up quite a lot of resin, this 3.5m length took 300ml of resin. 

To see how the sleeve would work if I were to use Peel Ply or a similar substitute to control the resin content and finish, I wrapped plastic masking tape around the lower 800mm or so ( I ran out of tape)  and checked the rest to make sure it was properly wetted out.  I’m away for two days, and will pull the tape off when I get back so lets see how it comes out.

After all this was done, I was sitting on my bunk reading and sipping my mug of tea, watching this guy sitting on the end of my dock.  He or she is a Pied Shag, quite a big bird, similar to a Cormorant.  There are lots of them here as well as their cousins the "Little black shags" and the occasional King shag.  Its that time of year when the birds are seeking mates and making nests, so there is lots of interest and activity here on the river.