Wednesday, May 18, 2016

More Paint Pictures

Finished up the last coats and removed the masking tape.






Finishing up some bowpost and some touch up work.




Now all that's left is to finish the transom trim and add the transom art work.


Tomatoes sitting in the garage, waiting for some actual sun and heat so they can be planted in the garden.

Tuesday, May 17, 2016

Proud Mary

During the night it seems some nefarious elements have vandalized my baby.



Apparently, the all-night Pinkerton agent I've had watching the boat was taking a nap.



I'll leave it on for a while, sort of like not removing a parking ticket in hopes you won't get a second, thinking it may dissuade the scurrilous villains from returning.





But it's still the Huerfano.  And the name decal is on the way

Saturday, May 14, 2016

Newport & Jade

Sounds like a street intersection.    Not too far from Hollywood and Vine.  Or for you Dylan fans, the mythical 56th and Wabasha.

Time to actually lay down some color on this boat.

It was a nervous morning when Kev and I finally started this.  One, to see just what the colors would look like.  Two, to determine if my undersurface would look like the '55 Chevy, or maybe closer to an orange peel. And three, because neither of us had any boat painting experience and to look at the results of my attempt to repaint our bedroom, saving significant Chipotle change, things were less than promising.

Anyway, on went the Pettit Off-White and George Kirby Newport Green (which they matched for me),  contrasting very nicely if you ask me with the Jade Green striping.










Kev rolling and me tipping. And then trading off, depending on who needed a low back break.


Cheryl's car is out of the garage.  She moved it not trusting us to confuse it with the boat  :)


More after the first coats dry.


Taping, Masking, and First Stripes

We're back! for more updates on Painting the Hull.  Prior to taping I measured and marked the outlines for the diminishing white stripe.

Diminishing b/c it looks best for any wide stripe to taper slightly in width as it goes from bow to stern, since the width of the side panel near the bow is much taller than near the oarlocks and transom. In my boat roughly 31" vs 24".

I learned this trick at the Briggs class and also from Brad’s blog. 

I wanted a 6.5" stripe in the front, which should fit the boat decal letters I've ordered from A&B Sign.  The Huerfano decal will also taper, to match the proportions of the white stripe, from 4 5/8' near the bow to around 4" at the stern end of the decal.

The formula for calculating this is pretty easy, just measure the max side panel width at the bow vs. the preferred width of the white stripe at that point and determine the conversion factor.  In my case .2096.  We'll call it .210.

Having recovered from these difficult and tiring math calculations (trip to Chipotle for salad and Arnie), I marked the centerline of the lower of my two Jade (Dartmouth) green pinstripes, which will outline the wider white stripe.  And then painted two coats of the green on the boat.



It was not much later when someone gently asked me, looking at my painting work, if maybe it would be better if I hired a professional painter.  Or at least one with more skill.

Not to worry, dory blog friends (I use the pleural hoping perhaps there is more than one still out there).  There's a method to my madness.

Once the green pinstripes dried, I covered each stripe with some Frog Tape of the width I wanted the final pinstripe.  Then taped and masked the rest of the side panels, transom and bow for the Off White and Newport Green layers.



The Dory Design Team went around and around on how to handle the bow post and transom.  For now this was the compromise.  We'll see how the first round of paint looks since it's easy to make some color changes here if we don't like it.


Things are moving forward.  I've almost forgotten the recent sanding prep work.






Painting the Hull, Prep round one

The initial plan for painting the outside hull was to take it to a buddy's auto paint booth, prime it with an ultra high-build primer and then shoot some coats of PPG or some other 2 part polyurethane paint.

Ending up with something that looked like my old '55 Chevy pickup, after hours of Bondo and prep.

Spoiler alert here.

Well, after meeting and discussing the project, it became rapidly clear that maybe the surface wasn't ready for that type of finish.  Plus the cost of the materials was way higher than I expected, even with wholesale deals, and the labor costs (this is assuming I would still be doing most of the work) would be pretty steep too.  Maybe this was a statement on the actual quality of the boat fiberglass surface.  But as I've said earlier,  it's a boat.  Not a Barrett's auction car.

I really should have expected this, having gotten used to many earlier setbacks/changes, but it was a disappointment, esp after making two trips down to the auto paint store to pick out colors.

So, smart boat builders know where this is going.

Yep, more prep work.   And sanding.

On a nice weekend day, I gently rolled the boat back outside (with Kevo's help) since the rear frame was broken and jury-rigged (see Dory Visitors and Frame Tragedy). We made it outside in one piece, which was kind of a shame since the next step was to power up the Makita auto sander and my Bosch RO sander and go after it.  And after it.  And more sanding.  Went through about 20 discs of 40 and 80 grit paper.  They just don't make the PSA stick on adhesive like they used to.

After about 3 hours, polluting the entire neighborhood (thank God for the strong wind which cleared the area) with a cloud of epoxy dust, (that was until the thunderstorm came through and washed things down briefly),  I decided enough was enough.

It felt smooth to my hand, considering the earlier, "it's just a boat" mantra. And we gingerly rolled dory and broken frame back into the garage.  I'm hoping the next time it goes outside it will be to transfer to the waiting trailer.

No pics here. Was too miserable and covered with dust to take them.

Better times ahead.




Sunday, May 1, 2016

Boat Bling

Time to put on some shiny things!

First, some time down in the woodshop cutting the hatch hinges to length and drilling holes on 3" centers.


Piano hinges were then installed, #8 SS screws into the decking and underneath frames, and 8/32 SS machine screws into same size brass sex nuts inside the lids.  I think the brass sex nuts look really good with the lids open.  May just keep them open all the time to show off.




Southco latches were then installed and tightened, and a couple of the lids were slightly adjusted for fit.



Followed by some weatherstripping from McMasterCarr.





Finally, brass footman loops were installed into the four center hatch lids with 3mm cord to keep the lids open.  These seem too small to me and I'll probably go up to 4mm.


All to the background of my entire Pink Floyd collection, played on shuffle through Cheryl's new Bose wireless speaker, placed safely well away from the action. (She was out of town :)  )



Looks like a boatman board meeting.



All in all, a pretty productive Sunday.  Back to work tomorrow :(



Masking and Anti-Skidding

Spent about two hours masking my deck for the anti-skid.  This took a whole lot longer than I expected ("just going out to the garage for a few minutes of work after dinner hon.."..........).







Then rolled on the Pettit Skidless compound Friday morning.  There are two ways to do this.  One, the "broadcast" method, involves rolling a wet coat on the taped off area, and then using a flour shaker or maybe a big salt or pepper shaker with big holes, add a layer of the dry powder followed by another wet coat on top.

Since I'm running low on Pettit Easy Poxy Grand Banks Beige and didn't feel like buying another $35 pint plus the $5 Haz Mat fee, I went the other route.  Plus the folks at Jamestown recommended it.

Just mix a few scoops of the anti-skid into the paint, keep it stirred up, and roll it on.  Simple and worked great.





Later, after another delicious Chipotle salad, I pulled the tape off and was pretty happy with the results.






A couple of days later, I knocked down the sharp edges on the entire surface with some sandpaper.  Otherwise it would have been pretty abrasive on bare feet.

So far the only down side, the Pettit one-part polyurethane takes a long time to dry and the surface is still pretty soft 3 days later.  I'm hoping some more time in the warm garage, and later (some day) maybe some baking out in the sun will finish the cure.  So far we've seen very little sun since March in Sunny Colorado.

Still waiting for the 8" of snow to melt so I can get into the veggie garden beds and plant the cool weather crops.




Huerfano

Back from a week on the Bighorn fishing. Saw lots of drift boats, but all Clacka, RO, and Hydes. Would have been fun to take my dory down the river fishing. Not ideally set up, but I'm sure we would have gotten a lot of comments.  And with all the rain and snow we had, a decked boat would have been nice.

View from the cabin one night.  Pheasants cackling everywhere, Geese honking, Sandhill cranes making their rusty gate sound (not sure how else to describe it).  


Several important decisions have been made despite my lack of presence in the garage. The dory design consultants are always at work. Looks like we're going with the Newport (teal) Green/ dark (Dartmouth) green pinstripe combo. And will have a Lone Pine logo (also from Dartmouth) on the transom. Kilroy is out. This has all been influenced by the heavy Dartmouth-weighting of the design members, Cheryl bringing her Southern Belle style as the lone exception.



But the name will be Huerfano, which is solely Western (always capitalized as I tell my kids). As I mentioned earlier, it has special meaning to our family plus I like the concept of "the little orphan" which best represents my boat, built without any close antecedents.

A picture of the Huerfano through a car window shows why the Lone Pine will be much more stylish on the transom than an amorphous pile of volcanic rock.  The Huerfano is special to us but not especially pretty.  Kind of like my boat.