29 August 2010

Hurry up and Wait!

Spring is here, along with Auckland’s famous four seasons in one day weather. Beautiful and sunny one minute pouring down hail the next.

During the week I measured up the remaining sheets, so that come Saturday I was ready to take them outside and cut them to size.  Then I laid them out on the strong-back, mixed up a batch of epoxy glue and glued them together.  Since its best to let the epoxy cure over night, that was my work done for the day.

Sunday I took the first sheet out and cut it to shape. As you can see it’s a fair size already (4500mm x 100mm) and this is only the first half!

Granted I’ll be taking a fair amount off giving it a more streamlined shape but I think my concerns about buoyancy were unfounded.

With that done I laid out the second side and glued them together.

So at the end of week twenty nine, after a flurry of activity and blue dust I’m back to waiting for the epoxy to cure. Speaking of which, I’m getting low on it and glue powder again. Well I’m almost out of glue powder. Next week I will get more supplies and glue all the sides together with the plywood core. If I’m careful I’ll be able to do it all in one day so that Sunday I can start shaping the ama.

Also during the week I spoke to Gary about paint options and he suggested two brands; one which is a marine paint, that are both available at Bunnings, which hopefully will be cheaper than buying through a marine supplier.

Useful link of the week: Building a better Leeboard.

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