Friday, February 4, 2011

Setback, Remediation, Discovery and a Kludge!!


Tonight's work was supposed to quick and painless. Tack in the stations with glue, remove the copper sutures, double check the hull's fairness and do the final fill in of the seams with thickened epoxy! I figured two hours at the max.

Last night's problem of having a front bow panel not cooperate reared it's ugly head again. It's probably a product more of my anal retentiviness. To make a long story short I was not happy with how I tackled the problem the evening before. I dismantled that work and set about finding a better solution. Fast forward two hours and some cutting and rehaping of the bow panels, sheer and stem profile - and I'm finally a semi-happy camper. I'd better be because I've since epoxied the panels together at the stem and they ain't coming apart. The modifications I've made may require some rejigging up the deck panels but nothing I can't overcome. Sorry no images of the procedure as I was too busy and too easily frustrated to be concerned about documenting what we used to call in the Naval Reserves - a clusterf#ck!!

In the plans, it calls for the tacking of the panels to the stations temporarily so that you can remove the fasteners (push pins, in my case) in preparation for glassing the outside hull. It is suggested that you tack with wood glue. I decided to try a glue gun. I figured it dries quick and you simply need to place dabs of glue in strategic places to hold the stations. It appears to be working like a charm. I could put a spot of glue right were I wanted it. It was thick enough to stay in glob form without wanting to run. Plus it set in minutes - thereby cutting down on the wait time. I had the stations tacked in a few minutes.I did a check and the glue can be lifted from the plywood by simply prying with a chisel.  Badda boom, badda bing.




The next step was to remove the copper sutures. What took a few hours to put in, came out in a matter of minutes. I am happy to say that all wires came out without a hitch and non were set in epoxy and, therefore, had to remain in the hull. I am also happy to say that the "porcupine boat" is no more although it did manage to give my fingers a few good pokes before it was over. I guess the blood stains will sand off!!

Once the sutures were out I finally managed to get a good look down the lines of the hull. I am very pleased and no tweaking was required. I mixed up some thickened epoxy and filled in the seams. All went well.

No pictures of the above steps as they are pretty much identical to those covered in previous blog entries.

Before packing it in for the night I did my routine scrutiny of the night's work - see above concerning anal retentiveness!!  A glance down the line of the stem showed a VERY slight waver. Not willing to let sleeping dogs lie, I figured that I could take some of the waver out - especially seeing that the epoxy had not set yet.

Wikipedia defines a kludge as a workaround, a quick-and-dirty solution, a clumsy or inelegant, yet effective, solution to a problem, typically using parts that are cobbled together.

Below we have a fine example of a kludge. A square is, by nature, straight but thin. BUT the clamps could not hold it horizontal. Let's add a 2x4 for support. BUT a 2x4 ain't going to hold itself up. I think we need another clamp. And so on. And so on.





I'm sure there's a much more elegant wave of doing this but it was 12:30 in the AM. I was five hours into a "two hour job". I guess I wasnit thinking "straight" - hahahah. Pun intended.  I'm curious to see how well it worked. We shall see when I take apart the kayak kludge later this evening!!

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