Boats and 100 degee weather

Yesterday started out kind of slow. I have been wanting to get out to the Venture and  fool around but life happens. I finally decided damned the temps full speed ahead! Mostly it  has been moving things around.We have  been using the boat to store some stuff in light of all the drama that was happening. Since I'm stuck here, with a house I can't sell, for a while any way, the decision has been made, as painful as it is, to move the stuff back inside and stick it in a corner some where and get back to what's important to me! If I can't sell this place for a while I'm darned sure going to get this boat ready and take it ANY PLACE that will sustain sailing even if it is Lake Texhoma or one of the area lakes  for the duration!

Having said that! Well it was  still a good day. I got outside and in the boat. I started out right after sunset. When I finally looked at the clock, it was about 82 degrees F according to weatherbug at 3:16 AM. . The good thing about the houses immediately around me being empty is the misc noises I make fooling around late at night are not a problem as if my neighbors were really close. Now I can't exactly start up a drill or a power saw but  little noises like dropping a hammer or climbing in and out of the boat are not going to give any one a sleepless night.  Not having to worry about my trouble light shining into any ones bedroom window makes it nice. It's how I plan to beat the heat for the not so noisy parts any way.

Tried to  pull the chain plates off. It's not happening with only one person. Have to have someone man a screw driver on  the out side while I pull off nuts on the inside. Did get the measurements for backing plates. I figure to get some  3: x 3/16 inch .  I'm figuring 6 feet should be enough to get that part done. Throw another 2 ft of 1/4 inch for new chain plates and I should be good. Am going to get new  bolts, nuts etc so all the metals match . That and some bytal tape (spelling) and I'm good to go.  I have been toying with how to do this. The voc tech school here has a class that operates a hug computer operated  metal cutting machine . You see where that is going, right? Have to wait til it opens but what the heck I'm here any way may as well make the best of it. If that don't work I'll get the Dremel out and do it my self. I looked up sources for the metal . WOW can you say EXPENSIVE! If any one has a source for 316 Stainless  3/ 16"  x 2" or 3/ 16 x 4",at a decent price PLEASE post it or send me an email!

Have been playing around with the idea of going ahead and saving up for the solar panel to get the wiring started, Have to get a wiring plan figured out.  Its only a 22 ft boat so I'm figuring rough eye balling it , the longest run I should have is maybe 16 ft, not counting mast of course. I've got enough block to raise this gal up and drop the keel, so that is on the agenda s a definite.

Where is all this going?
The baby boy has LEFT THE BUILDING! Now that the set back is almost over, once again I am free at last! Momma's days of being Momma on a full time in house basis are OVER! We had a minor setback this last three weeks but things are getting back on track! I honestly cannot decide who this pushing your fledgling out of the nest is harder on. Yeah, at 28, since the medical issues are resolved, its time for him to be on his own. NO DOUBT about that.

What I do not get is why, once they are  "on their own",  when your child steps into the "goo" and ask for your help, do they seem to think that this willingness to help them sort it out, as in think it through to THEM finding a conclusion and or solution THEY CAN DO,  means in THEIR OPINION, you and your assets are on call 24/ 7 all of a sudden, as if they were three again? OK, I get that it takes time for them to adjust to a new life of living on their own.. That's just a case of they have to get experience and there is only one way to get that. What I do not understand is why it suddenly becomes (in their opinion) your crisis?  Can you say OY!
Parents teach your children  how to plan! Make sure they have coping skills for really bad days! Teach them that THEIR LACK OF PLANNING IS NOT YOUR CRISIS! My son understands what caused the problem. He was taught the skills to cope with adversity. Some things only come with getting knocked down and pulling your self back up. This was one of those. Time will tell how long it takes for all that stuff  we tell our children that they  did not want to hear takes root and gets solid. The good news is at 28 he only has about a year and a half before that second coming of age that seems to kick in at 30 starts to take effect.

 The good news is he has a really good distraction so now mother won't be the single most important women in his life. He found Ms. Right! I got to spend sometime getting to know her.  She is a trooper! She will definitely do to ride the river with . She in not a wimp by any means.  We have been talking about what I'm planing on doing with my life . At first all kinds of bad experiences were really making her anti boats. Now you KNOW that aint going to work very long around me, right? We had some talks .She seems to be slowly coming around,. Last night she informed me that being afraid of boats, sailing etc over what happened in her childhood was not sometime she was going to allow to continue,. The girl has MOXY There are very few things that make me want to climb up into someones face but, oh by howdy! I'll not go into the details as it is not my story to tell, but I would so love to keel haul or at least,put a extraordinarily large knot on someones head after hearing  about the DUMB STUNT that some  so called adults played on some children!.
The GREAT news is  this gal is the one that has him inspired to do all that stuff men are supposed to do. Who would have thunk it! LOL
 I must have done sometime right. My other son informs me he also has started a relationship with his Ms. Right. She also sounds like a trooper and a basically well grounded gal.  RELIEF!  Who knows maybe grand children are on the horizon? Time will tell.

well I guess that's it for now. Think I'm going to go get my tools out and ready for later when the sun goes down. I have  some hardware to pull off a boat.

Sail safe but sail!
 

Polyester, Woood and Wood Stoves.

 On this page I am  making the pics larger then normal to show detail. I'm not sure if it will make it upload a lot slower and be a pain  for viewers. Please , feedback on this would really be appreciated! Thanks. 


Poly trimming was good practice for using the Dremel I used the EZ lock cutting blade and was very pleasantly surprised how it did and how long it lasted. 




 Resin  I am using for this part of project 

The resin  container says it is water proof. This is their general all purpose house hold use bondo. The little tube is the hardener that came with it. The small bottle is what I bought at Oreillys. The mixing bowl I got from Oreillys. I really like them, They cleanup really well with an acetone soaked rag and if you look a the photo below you can see it has multiple markings for different types of resin. Not bad for less then a buck

It originally has Bondo liquid hardener  written on it but the lettering came off as I used it due to sticky hands from resin.

  Love all the markings. A good all purpose  "disposable" resin bowl.  I did not need the markings using the Bondo but it will sure come in handy when I get to the point of learning how to use 2 part  Epoxy.






 If you remember what I had after the poly cured was a real mess around the edges from having the plastic I used underneath. 

Front

  

Back

               Some close ups of the mess  on V berth tip  board.

 Shots of the trim job in process
  I forgot about taking shots before I started this but you can still get the general idea. I started by just taking it off a little bit at a time with scissors. Probably not a great idea but it got the largest part of it off. .If I had to do it all over again, I  would use the Dremel for this part.

You can see where the resin from both sides overflowed the board.

I now know how to make ice cycles out of resin. 

The back of the first board I did  No plastic under the board..

the resin sealed the edges really well in various places. It seemed a pity to cut it off but it had to happen to fit.

Front

Back

See the void?

Separation of cloth due to plastic moving things around so I could not keep the cloth in place. Next time I think I will use staples to keep cloth in place.

 Time to use the Dremel.

First we take off the biggest part, making sure we leave enough room to not gouge the wood.

                       

                              Close ups of what we have left

 On to the porta pottie board.

Ready for final sanding to pretreat top side.

    Just so  every one  knows I do use safety gear. Glasses and a mask rated for fiberglass.

   
          
           My Blue heeler standing by  to  make sure I get it right. 


  I still have to sand the excess poly off the front as that looks really tacky and has to be done before  I pre treat  for poly on the top sides but one step at a time I'm getting it done.

Looking GOOD!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Even that first board I did for the  porta pottie looks decent  on the edges now that it is trimmed up.

 I got busy with starting the job of trimming up the wood for the bulkhead between the bow flotation and the new storage space. Am using the wood that was in the middle section. It is a tad to short across the beam but I can use a board stretcher made out of the other piece to fill in  the gaps.  I HATE throwing perfectly good wood away, Once it is in place and fiber glassed,  it will be fine.  For those if you that do not know what a board stretcher is, it is simply adding extra pieces where it is to short.




See the weave
These are close up shots of the first board I polyed. I did not know about pre treating it. You can see the weave of the cloth which as I understand it is a bad thing. Even I can tell  this is not a good thing when compared to the board I pretreated with the diluted poly. This board, if put under water for a sustained period of time, I do not doubt for a minute would have severe delamination and form blisters.  
This is I suspect why so may are down on using poly based resin for boat repair. When it comes to the hull or rudder, there is no way I would use polyester based resin. But  for my purposes of interior it should be fine. Heaven forbid me ever being proven right about this by my boat being underwater! The board I pre treated with the diluted poly s does NOT have this problem.

 V  Berth Storage Bulkhead

                                                                                                 
 I was truly surprised how long that one cutter lasted. I started out with trying to use my sons battery operated circular saw. The blade is getting really dull  and the batteries are needing replaced, so I changed over to the EZ lock on my Dremel.  I finished the  second slant cut with it, did all the trimming on the two v berth pieces and   got one of the hull notches done before I needed to change blades. Not to bad IMHO for one blade. It was burning the wood instead of cutting it by the time I got to the  second        notch.                                                                                                               
 
That's all for now on the boat. 




We finally got the wood stove ready. It was covered up out side but still got rusted. I guess metal absorbs moisture even if it is covered really well. Any way to make along story short we had  a mess. It got rusted and I was NOT going to put it back in the house looking like that. I went out to Ace hardware to get some primer and stove paint. 

While I was there John  ( manager) reminded me about rust converters. He showed me a product but I did not like the idea of it turning a gray or white color.  I noticed a little bottle of Rustoleum Rust reformer sitting up stop shelf so even at 8 dollars plus  for a 8 oz bottle  I bought it since it turned the rust black, which was more in line with what I had seen on you tube videos about another product. Plus I figured if it went well I would not have to repaint. I was not looking forward to  having to have the guys brush all that rust off, sand it level  and then prime and repaint that stove. Long story short, it took a couple of coats to do it.  On some really bad spots we used three and four coats but it looks pretty good, even if I do say so myself.  It is a more rustic look then if we had sanded it and painted it but that is OK.  I don't think any one but me is going to care about that. I do want to put a light coat  of paint over it later so it matches the stove pipe better . We sprayed the chrome pipe so it matches . One thing I do need to mention if you use the rust converter  or paint on a stove MAKE REAL SURE YOU BURN IT WITH A REALLY GOOD SOLID STRONG HOT FIRE BEFORE YOU PUT IT IN HOUSE! That first fire is going to stink so bad it will drive you out of the House! PLEASE TRUST ME ON THIS! WE PUT A PAPER FIRE IN IT THINKING THAT WOULD DO.  I WAS SO WRONG!!!! 
 It ended up taking the best part of 2 bottles but it was worth it in just the work saved of not having to brush, sand, prime and paint the stove.

Shots of in progress stove rust conversion to show the color after rust conversion.

Not to shabby

Looking good and working just fine!!!!!!!!!

 I finally got around to ordering the parts for the Lumina.  100 bucks USD but what are you gonna do?  It has to be done.  We basically are replacing the entire  coolant over flow system. 

I can't believe how much they want for new tires for this van! It is outrageous! 500.00 for tires? I'm having my son go  check out the salvage yards.  Same issue for the boat trailer  and little trailer.
 One thing at a time it will get done. 

 The house is getting really close to  being done. Have a lot of little stuff still to do then we are good to go.




That's all for now. Sail safe but sail


 And never forget to USE DA GREY MATTER

What I (we) did during my summer "vacation"

Some Misc Pics that never got uploaded:

June started out  with 105 degrees and stayed that way until Sept, which surprisingly brought cooler temps. Needless to say not a lot done on boats but wow what we got done in house is great!
In no particular order......

Before shot of ceiling, Wood stove smoked up a bit and ruined ceiling paint.,

No home remodeling is complete until someone puts their  foot through the ceiling

Oh the joy of remodeling a house while your trying to actually live in it.