Grrrr HISSSSSS Spit

[Daddles]

Just had one of 'those' moments in the shop ... again

The job?
Making a laminated knee for Sixpence - Sixpence being the boat in my avatar. A knee is one of those gussets you put between two important bits of boat, in this case, from the centreboard case to the hog (the long bit of timber along the bottom - the spine of the boat). A laminated knee is a sort of triangular block of wood cut to fit the angle (8" legs on this one and about 30mm thick) but the long leg, the one you see (as opposed to the other two which are glued to the bits you're gusseting), has a curved face made up of half a dozen laminated strips.
Imagine two bits of boat, a curved piece in the corner made up of laminated strips and back filled with timber. They look really trick when varnished.

Anyway, I successfully did the laminations a week or so ago. Glued up the backing timbers last week, carefully fitted the laminated curve to the backing yesterday ... with good old epoxy of course.

Today I'm out there cleaning it all up and cutting it to fit into it's corner.

The clean up went well. Then to the fitting. The first job was to get one leg straight. Cut off the excess, then onto the bench sander to get it just right. PING - the laminations came away from the backing timber right at the end :mad:

Growl. HISSSS. Spit.

What had happened is this. It's bloody cold here at the moment - max temps around 15 deg, rather less at night in the shed. Cold weather slows down the rate at which epoxy cures so this morning, the poxy, while holding quite well, wasn't fully set. No probs normally. But I'm grinding away at this piece of timber with a bench sander. Right at the end, the backing timber becomes just a thin wedge, right down to a feather. Grinding away with a bench sander creates heat, heats up the wood and the poxy which softens the poxy and so the poxy says - 'stuff you, time to go inside and weep on the woodies forum'.

So I am.

Piccy attached.

It's not a disaster. As you can see, a bit of epoxy, a clamp and, this time, leave it to the weekend so it's got a chance to set properly.

I don't mind being a muggins - it's this urge to prove it all the time that annoys me

Richard

[echnidna]

I don't mind being a muggins - it's this urge to prove it all the time that annoys me

Richard

And I thought I was the only Klutz in the forum!

[jmk89]

Richard

So sorry to hear about the delam. episode, but thanks for posting about it because it makes all our own juggins events look like something that could happen to anybody.

The good thing about these episodes is that when the project is over, you will be able to look at the piece in question and remember the emotion that went into getting it right - if you wanted to, you could write an essay on the Proustian aspect of boatbuilding (I'd swap a tea cake for the knee of a boat any day!!! ).

On a practical level, for small pieces like that, I have found that popping them in the oven while it is cooling down from the Sunday roast helps the epoxy finally go off - I wait until the epoxy has reached the set but not hard stage you described and just finish it off in the slowly cooling atmosphere of the oven. SWMBO has even accepted that this is a good idea because it means I don't have so many episodes that make me grumpy and it doesn't use any power (so it doesn't cost anything) - in fact it is using energy that we have already paid for, so we get something for nothing!

All the best, take a few deep breaths and get back into the job!!!

Cheers

Jeremy

[Daddles]

I've been a good boy Jeremy - I've spent the afternoon making a mess of a mast step

True story. I used to fly control line stunt models. My most successful design was named Tantrum thanks to all the things that went wrong building the prototype

Richard

[RETIRED]

I wondered where Murphy had gone after he left here for a while.

[Auld Bassoon]

Murphy is safe and well, and living in my shed :mad:

[Daddles]

Murphy? Haven't seen him since I dropped the thicknesser on him a couple of months back

Richard

[E. maculata]

Murphys crazier cousin big O'really? can't even get into my shed....he's standing right where my shed is going (now next month at the earliest)trying to further stop any progress .

[Schtoo]

Daddles,

Take a cardboard box big enough to fit the widget in, cut a hole it so you can run a light in the box and stick a 15W globe in there. Bake until golden brown and crispy...

Worked when I needed to use poxy here, at -5*.