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Improvements, a Tik Tak, and Visitors
During the week, I started trying to get ready for the kayak build. I began by cutting the spruce plank up into gunnels.
Step 1 was to trim off the raggedy edge while leaving as much good wood as possible.
Knots. I had to cut the wood to minimize the effect of knots.
Naughty knots are not good for bending.
I got to the Boathouse early on Friday so I could get the Tik Tak ready for when the girls showed up. The cutout of the hatch becomes a doubler for the bottom - keeps the boat from bending. I made a tactical error by doubling the places where the skegs will attach - in theory, the skegs will take a lot of abuse so their connection should be stout, but stiffening the bottom now just made it harder to bend into shape.
Remove the screws and washers and fill the holes with toothpicks. You might want to find another way to do this - it's not the best.
Tik Tak prepped, it was time to go to work on the planer. The good people of Dewalt decided to put a proprietary chip spreader on their planer - and it does a great job of spreading wood chips all over the shop.
They were also nice enough to make sure you couldn't just cram a hose in there. Sweethearts. But, they hadn't reckoned on my Ph. D in redneck engineering.
PVC 3" elbow fits over the exhaust and sharp screws hold it in place. The 90° bend is needed to get the chips out and away from the path of the wood.
A 3" drain pipe runs from the planer to the cyclonic separator. It probably doesn't have to be this long, but it comes in 10' lengths and I'm not cutting it until I get done with testing.
The dust exhaust on the tablesaw is worse. I broke it off years ago. The saw is also made by Dewalt, but there doesn't seem to be any continuity between the tablesaw division and the planer division. Through the magic of Duct Tape, I was able to re-attach it and . . .
tried an adapter to get it to fit the 3" drain pipe. The results were not so good. The planer has a powered blower while the tablesaw relies on a vacuum to pull the dust out. I'll keep working on this one.
This is the center stick for the double paddle I'll be making for the Tik Tak. It's just a left over piece from the spruce, so it is very light. It's a little thin so I laminated some spare wood I had laying around.
Connie, Hailey, and Patience showed up, but right after school so they had some food to eat.
Oregon girls. It started hailing something fierce so they ran outside to be in the 45°+ weather while being pelted with rain and ice.
Slicing off the toothpicks using a Japanese Pull Saw from Duckworks. These babies are sharp and even though there was repeated instructions to keep one hand pressing down on the blade, someone managed to draw blood. We won't say who, but her name started with a "P" and ended with "atience." I am happy to saw we have a well stocked first aid kit and while the amount of blood was a little less than a diabetic would use for testing, I was able to provide a Band-Aid within seconds.
Hailey is a lefty, but she still manages.
Sanding. Now with proper personal protective gear!
Little discussion on the meaning of "mirror images" and marking Top and Front on the sides, and I smoothed them out with the power planer (remind me to get sanding belts for the Boathouse.)
We clamped the sides to sawhorses so we could get the bottom positioned correctly.
PL Premium for the glue (gap filling properties) and 3/4" stainless steel screws every 4" - get your screws from Duckworks, they are cheap! And after we attached the skegs, that was it for the day
In the morning, I got there bright and early to round off the edges of the boat with my favorite woodworking tool - a 4.5" angle grinder with a very coarse grit sanding wheel.
Geoff came and we set to planing the kayak gunnels down to 3/4" thick. The dust collector worked very well - not perfectly, but very well.
The local birdwatching group showed up to look at the canvas back ducks and western greebs. Hopefully, some will return to do some paddling.
The girls showed up and got to work on the Tik Tak again. They are painting it Black and Orange - the school colors. Shortly after this picture, I tied up Patience's hair into a bun, but they both still managed to get a lot of paint on themselves.
Gloss black is not my favorite boat color, but it's what they wanted. It took more than a quart to paint the boat. Not much more, but more. We'll burn through that second quart next week.
Hanna and Eve - both veterans of the Toledo Summer Youth program a couple years ago, came by to go for a paddle.
And off they went. Good for them. Patience and Hailey finished painting the inside and outside of the Tik Tak, and it'll get another coat next weekend, just before we put it together. This should leave plenty of time for it to get decorated before the auction on March 11. |
