Poking along

Progress is still slow in the world of boat building.  I've been putting along, trying to get the point where I can start stitching the hull together.

Since last post, the sailing hardware package arrived.  Well almost.  The box containing the sail track is still on a walkabout across the country.  Apparently, there had been a little confusion on this order, but thanks to Ed and the other guys at CLC, it all got straightened out.  Thanks guys.

All the blocks, rigging, padeyes, and doodads a guy could ever want.

In an attempt to get into the groove, I decided to tackle something mindless and easy....preparing the stitches.  I bought 150' of steel wire and started cutting this into 3-4" lengths.  For the most part, would then bend them into something resembling large staples.  The staple shape makes stitching things together much easier and minimizes the amount of fighting you have to do with the stitches. 

Measure and cut a length of wire.

Bend it into a staple.  I've found that using a DVD case as a mould makes the perfect staple.

The finished product.

A whole bunch of the finished product.

 I've also been coating the bulkheads and floors in epoxy.  The last coat is drying even now.  The next step will be to sand, sand, sand.  I'm not really looking forward to that, but it has to be done before the hull can be assembled. 

Floors and bulkheads waiting for epoxy.

Roll on the goo.

Two coats on each side is all it takes!

Now for the really exciting part.  Over the course of the last two kayaks, I constantly struggled with keeping the shop clean as I work.  Boat building generates a lot of used gloves, paper towels, mixing cups, stir sticks, brushes, odds, ends, fiddle and faddle.  There are many times when you are working to fast to keep ahead of epoxy that's about to kick, and in your haste to not ruin your project, a lot of that flotsam ends up on the floor of the shop.  I've tried cleaning up after each session, keeping garbage bags handy, hanging bags from the wall, on, and on, and nothing really seemed to work.  Bags were too small, too hard to open, not conducive to easily putting rubbish into, and so stuff still ended up on the floor.    To illustrate the insanity...

It is a rudder, and a waste bin!

Yes, that's my rudder with two grocery bags full of trash hanging on it.

Last week, though, I had a revelation, a breakthrough, an epiphany!  Why not get a big 32 gal garbage can?  It is easy to through stuff into (even from across the shop), big, tough, perfect.  As a result, I bought this beauty:

So far it has worked out just as I thought it would.  All of the rubbish generated during while epoxy-coating the bulkheads landing in the bin and not the floor.  Despite all of the epoxy coating progress and the arrival of the sail hardware, this really was the most emotionally satisfying advancement this week!  I feel like there is something fundametally wrong with that.