Wednesday, August 19, 2015

The Starling Project - Part 25

The plan was simple. Sand the deck with the orbital sander before gluing and screwing the splashboards on. This seemed logical and meant I didn't have to negotiate my sanding around awkward space occupied by the new splashboards. The next step was to varnish the deck giving it a protective cover then flip the boat upside down ready for glassing.

So I sanded the deck and taped out the gluing area carefully. But I found the gluing and fastening a lot more awkward and difficult than I had imagined. Despite having carefully pre-drilled the screw and nail holes things turned pear shaped. My idea of being left with a pristine well sanded area all ready to varnish turned to custard - or rather returned to its former rather grubby glue stained state.

The difficulty lay not just in the deck camber but because the boards were angled forwards from the vertical they were very unstable until they were fastened. I made one small slip, ended up with glue on my hands rendering them slippery. Then one board moved beyond the masking tape area dumping glue everywhere and then it was all on! buggerising around all over the place. Never mind - been there and got the T-Shirt many times before.

To get a perfect fit in the centre I had to hold very firmly and maintain a slight twist for a long time while nailing (The dance of bronze nails on a gluey hammer head tested my sense of boat building Zen to the limit).  I think it was this that severely strained some chest muscles that had me headed to the hospital the next day. (See previous post).

BUT!!! Despite all that marlarky I am now very happy indeed with the new splashboards. I have made them a little bit larger and chunkier than the originals and I think they look great. I'll sand the glue marks off the deck, clean up the splashboards, fit a central supporting block and on we will go.  We are back on the wagon again LOL.

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