Sea Trials

me_rowing
Originally uploaded by dylanbright

I got the boat in the water tonight.

Don't Buy Foam Brushes at Walmart!

I bring you this warning as a public service. Not all disposable foam brushes are created equal, and the foam brushes from Walmart are absoulte crap. I put on my first coat of varnish yesterday with my last two foam brushes from Home Depot. That evening, I went to my local Walmart store and I bought 8 foam brushes, which I thought would get me through the next two coats and then some. That was incredibly optomistic.

The heads start to fall off the sticks after you cover about two square feet of surface. I was able to extend the life of them a little by almost ignoring the stick entirely and gripping the foam protion in my fingers. Even the foam would start to break down eventually. I went through all eight brushes for one coat.

Tonight I went to the Home Depot and stocked up. I think their foam brushes are a whopping 5 cents more than the ones at Walmart. It is typical of Walmart to provide the absolute cheapest product in every way, in the form of the lowest price and the lowest quality. I feel a full blown 1,000 word anti-Walmart rant coming on, so I will stop now.

Sanding and Varnish

Pre-Varnish_Interior
Originally uploaded by dylanbright

Sanding the interior before the first coat of varnish was a lot of work. I put in about 6 hours of sanding today, and that was with the seats, bulkheads and most of the strakes already sanded. The bottom was messy, even worse than the exterior. I definitely didn't get it perfect. If I had gone after every little imperfection, I would have really ate into to the fiber glass. My fiber glassing skills need improvement. After all that sanding, I took a nap.

After I woke up in the late afternoon, I called my Dad to help me take the boat outside to hose off all the epoxy dust. That wasn't too difficult.

Then I started applying the varnish. I poured some varnish into a plastic cup grabbed my foam brush, and got to work. At first it was peaceful, calm, and controlled. I started at the back of the boat. I set the cup of varnish down on the back seat. I leaned over to work on the bottom and then disaster struck. The boat tilted and the cup of varnish spilled. I grabbed a towel and started mopping it up. Then I quickly tried to spread out what was left over with my foam brush. I got varnish all over my hands and my quick, brutal brushing took a toll on the brush. After I recovered from a varnishing the boat perspective, I tried to get the stuff off of my hands. Latex gloves would have been in order for varnishing.

After scrubbing the varnish and a few layers of skin off of my hands, I finished the varnishing. The insident through me off though, and I was hurried and frustrated. It was also getting dark. After I was done, I noticed I missed a few spots. Fortunately it is one coat of many.