Hot Valentine's Date

I'm a little late on writing down what I've done on the canoe recently. I've had some productive weekends in February though. After my last entry about scraping the inside of the hull I went at it with the 80-grit on the ROS and then sanded it down to a smoother finish with 120-grit paper wrapped around a couple of tightly rolled up magazines. After sanding I wet it down with a damp cloth. Dampening the wood swells the fibres and reveals where more sanding is needed so I repeated this process a couple of times.

With the inside finished it was time to get out the epoxy and fibreglass again. The timing for this activity just happened to coincide with Valentine's Day. Now that Tracy and I have been married for a few years, the traditional fancy meal out has been done so what says "I love you" better than spending a day together with face masks, rubber gloves and toxic chemicals? It's a two person job for sure and Tracy and I have a good system down. She mixes, keeps track of where I am and touches up the spots that I don't have time to get to. We rolled out the glass over the inside and I cut it where I thought it should end. After making the cut though it seemed a couple inches short. I'm not really sure how I did that, but I had little choice but to live with it. The glass isn't supposed to go all the way to the ends anyways and it will be covered by the deck on the one end that it is a couple inches short. I don't think it hurts the integrity of the boat. The inside is a little trickier than the outside because the glass tends to pull away from the hull if you tug on it. I was more aggressive with the squeegeeing this time. I only want to use two coats of epoxy on the inside so it is much more important to eliminate the drips and puddles. For the most part I think it worked out great. I got a little bit zealous with the squeegeeing towards the end and I tugged the cloth a little two much causing some wrinkles. Once this happenned I tried to tug on the cloth diagonally to get rid of the wrinkles and this just caused more. As I was trying to get rid of these the epoxy was starting to set making it more and more difficult. After a while I realised that everything I was doing was just making it worse so I packed it in and crossed my fingers. Now that it is fully set I can certainly see the wrinkles, but the fabric isn't exposed and its not glaring - probably not noticable unless you're looking for it and it will be underneath the stern seat. Well those are my canoe confessions for today. I guess anybody reading this will now know what to look for! :-P

Fibreglass

Ever since I started building the canoe in my half of the garage, dust, cobwebs, termite droppings and debris have been falling from the ceiling onto it. Up until now it hasn't been a problem because I just wipe it away and continue on, but for the fibreglass and epoxy step debris falling from the ceiling won't do. So I spent most of the day Saturday cleaning out the garage literally from top to bottom. I don't think it's ever been cleaned since it was built in the 1930's. I took the shop vac to the ceiling, framing and roof joists and just about everything else above canoe level. Afterward I was still worried about stuff falling from above so I tacked plastic sheeting to the beams above the canoe.

On Sunday, I got all my supplies ready - resin and hardener, paint brushes, plastic squeegee, mixing pots, disposable gloves, mixing containers, face masks, etc. and recruited Tracy to be my Chief Mixer. The 6 oz. fibreglass sheet was unrolled directly on to the canoe. It is actually quite delicate and any pulling, tugging or touching can quickly deform the natural weave of the fibres. We carefully laid it out and there didn't seem to be any major creases, which made me happy. With Tracy mixing the resin and hardener for me and cleaning my brushes and containers all I had to worry about was getting the resin onto the boat - just enough for the 'glass and wood to soak it up without drying out, but not too much that it pooled and dripped. Tracy also kept track of timing and where I was on the hull so that I could return to a previously applied area after 30 minutes to squeegee off the excess epoxy. I certainly couldn't have done this alone. At first we were working on a 20 minute interval as recommended by the book and I was finding it hard to keep up with the schedule, barely finishing applying the resin to one section before having to go back to squeegee a previous. Since the weather was fairly cool though, the epoxy was not curing very quickly and I found after the first couple sections that 30 minutes worked out better.

All in all the process went fairly well. There are no major bubbles, dry spots, cracks or runs in the 'glass. There are quite a few drips that formed even after I squeegeed that I will have to sand off before the next coat, but that is probably the worst of it. Before I put on the next two coats I think I will apply a couple extra strips of fibreglass fabric to the bow and stern for extra strength and durability in those locations.

Oh yeah, and I chose a name for the canoe. You can see it (upside down for now) in a couple of the pictures.