Moved to Wordpress

http://woodyboat.wordpress.com/

Change of Plans?

When I first got the old boat, I thought for sure that the coolest thing to do would be to strip it bare and give the whole thing a natural glossy finish.  After working last summer on it, I found that the thought of spending another summer (or two) working on the details was more than I could bear.  PLUS I originally had been thinking old PAINTED boat - like the brightly colored fishing boats along the Mediterranean.  I'm sure the Larson was never intended to be a Med fishing boat, but I'm now thinking of giving that a try.

At any rate, I've Googled around and found some pictures of painted fishing boats to get some ideas:

Coming Soon: Season 2 of the Boat Doctor!

Beached for the season

I found that summer in Minnesota keeps you busy, especially when the grass grows so fast.  Seems like we need to cut the acre that isn't full of trees a couple of times a week.  Then there's the need to go sailing.  And the days that are too hot and humid to do too much of anything outside.

So, I moved the old Larson project outside onto a rack and covered it.  I might get the bottom done this fall - we'll see.

But this old boat blog will likely go dormant for a few months.  Look for more EXCITING episodes later!

R.I.P. John Deere

John "110" Deere, age 36, was pronounced dead on arrival after being rushed to Russ' Repair on Saturday.  "He was doing what he loved most to do - cutting grass" said his best friend Craig.  "He wouldn't have wanted to go out any other way.  It was sudden and painless."

Russ concluded that the cause of death was a blown-out piston, caused by the ignition of carbon deposits resulting from bad rings and years of burning oil and smoking.  "They don't make those engines anymore" said Russ.  "We would have had to find him a new piston, bore out the cylinder, get a new gasket, and well..." he said in a trailing voice.

Mr. Deere will be missed by the family's dogs Frank and Ralph, who loved to chase him around the yard.

His friend Craig has plans to park him on a hill in the yard as a memorial to John "just like the farmers do with their old equipment" he said.  A late fall event is also planned around Halloween where a straw dummy could be placed in his seat "kinda like a scarecrow".

John was registered as a parts donor, and was known to be active in the perpetuation of the Original JD Lawn Tractor league.  The family intends on honoring all requests for parts "'cuz that's what John always wanted most".

Freeing up time for the boat project

When summer first arrives in Minnesota, all things green launch into a frenzy of new growth.  It's a fantastic time of trees putting out leaves, pine trees budding, and perennial plants blooming.  Everything is in a hurry to grow and flower and spread its seed before winter returns again after autumn.  That's the good news.

Bad news is that the grass in the lawn grows at the same frantic pace, which means if you don't want the mosquitoes to create a permanent encampment at your place, you need to keep cutting it.  At least every weekend.  Maybe even more often.

Here in the northwoods, the mosquitoes can be fierce.  And of the two green acres we live on, one is made up of dense pine, and the other we've cleared and planted grass.  Last year the grass came along nicely, and it was "good exercise" cutting it.  This year the grass seems to be fighting to take over the woods, and cutting it is more good exercise than we'd bargained for.

But hope springs eternal...  and craigslist has riding lawn mowers!

Like some sort of karma, there's an olde John Deere rider for sale just a few blocks from where I got this olde boat.  So this weekend, another visit to Alexandria, MN.  This time with the pickup trailer and some sort of ramp to drive the mower up on.

The JD 110 was the first riding mower produced by John Deere back in 1963, and this one was the last version of the 110 in 1974.  The guy says it starts and runs, even though it smokes a bit upon starting.  But I figure that sounded just like me, so it might be a good match.

Ah...  life will be good with a riding lawn mower...  I can visualize it now (with a bit of help from the 1973 John Deere sales catalog)...  Cutting the grass in no time while Leta cooks up something tastey on the grill, leaving plenty of time to keep the boat project moving forward.  Makes you wonder what part of the 20th century we came from, doesn't it?

Well, I know now why they invented riding lawn mowers:  so a person has more time for other things on the weekend.  Seems like a vicious cycle in a way, doesn't it?  More stuff, less time; so more stuff to make more time; repeat the cycle...

(to be continued...)

Braised Oak Boat Ribs

The heat gun definitely works to lift the old paint, at least on the inside where it appears it was painted over varnish.  I cranked it up to 1100 degrees F, the highest setting, and the paint first starts to blister and then gets scorched bumps on it.  After that it will lift off in limp strips.  Under the paint, the old varnish turns into a goo, and it's pretty tough to scrape very much of that off.  So another sanding step will be needed to get down to bare wood.  I noticed that where it appeared that paint was applied to weathered wood, probably without any varnish on it, the paint was sticking a whole lot more.  It will be more work to get that paint off the oak ribs.

It was getting tougher to sit inside the boat and do this stripping, and This Olde Boater was getting pretty much "stoved up" after about an hour or so of being hunched over and peering at it with my spectacles.  So I finally wedged a few split logs under one side so I could stand on the ground and work at it from there.  Much better having your work surface situated so it's literally less of a pain to work on.  Must be why surgeons don't sit on top of you when they're doing repairs in the OR.  Which reminds me, I have the intention of getting a slightly narrower scalpel for scraping between the ribs - maybe a 3/4 inch.  AND I'm going to check out getting one of those back support belts you see Olympic weight lifters and Sams Club employees use to try to minimize the "stoving" effect.

All the while of course, Frank the Zen Dog has been faithful in his job of supervising the work site.  I think he must be on contract from OSHA.  You can tell he takes his job seriously.  See, he's watching carefully and is ready at a moment's notice to man (dog) the fire hose - or pee on the fire hydrant - or try to keep his new baby brother Ralph from becoming a roasted hot dog.

Speaking of roasted, another good thing to do if you're an Olde Boater is to fire up the sauna ahead of time, knowing you'll also need to roast your bones after the Olympic braising event.  The sauna is good too for reflecting on how life imitates art, and Art imitates Life, and Zen starts with a "Z" just like Zorro, and if you really were Zorro you'd be riding a horse instead of fixing up a boat for a 20 horse outboard, or how the inboards are connected to the outboards.

Plus, after a good steamy sauna - or a dry roast if you prefer - you'll be perfectly prepared for a nap, which is perhaps the highest and best objective in all of this.

So, fire up boaters...!

The Inside Job

The unexpected spring snow melted quickly this weekend, so it was back to the grind.  Next step, stripping the rock-hard white paint out of the inside.  I'd already blasted away the loose chips last fall with a power washer.  Now I'd try out the drill attachment Tool Guy suggested from Home Depot.

It was a synthetic wheel meant to be a high speed sander / stripper, and it DID work better than the chemical paint stripper.  But after quite awhile working on a relatively small area, I got back to wondering how long it would take to do the inside of this 18-foot boat.  SO... another trip to Home Depot to look at power tools and attachments.

I'd heard about stripping paint with a torch, and was quite a bit leary about applying flame to an old wood boat.  But in searching through the isles I ran across an electric heat stripper - adjustable temperatures from 200 to 1100 degrees F.  I also picked up some more drill attachments that looked like they had the potential for removing mass quantities of old paint in a hurry.

By the time I got back from Home Depot it was fairly late in the day.  The olde Volvo wouldn't start in the parking lot.  Luckily Tires Plus was right across the lot and open on a Sunday, and engine work is included in the "plus" part.  Even got a ride home with the two dogs and new tools, so I guess that was lucky.  So... next episode I'll try to discover the quick and dirty way to strip the inside of This Olde Boat.

Until then remember, life is a grind so get some tools!

Grinding away at the dead and crusty

Sunday was a good day for grinding more of the outside finish, and I found it goes faster the more you get the feel for the grinder in your hand.  I also learned to DRAG the grinder instead of pushing it.  You end up with fewer gouges that way.

Using a fine grinder pad wasn't especially productive or useful.  They just wear out faster.  You can tell when the pad is wearing out when it either is taking the surface off slower, or you start to make burn marks on the wood.  If you're making burn marks, you're probably just taking stuff off with mainly friction, like when you have a dull blade on a circular saw.

I now have the old finish off of the sides, the back end, and the top of the bow; also the gunwales and splashboards which are made out of oak and are a lot harder than the cedar strips of the rest of the boat (duh).

So I'm thinking next to start on the inside of the boat, which I'm expecting to use a drill with an attached stripper tool on it.  It's about an inch or so wide, and hopefully it will fit down between the ribs and all that old white paint will come off.

At the end of the day, while gazing at what I'd accomplished (back to the Zen thing), I realized that the process could be a metaphor for renewal in a human sense.  I haven't developed the details of what is to learn there, but it's something about when you get older and have endured weather (and maybe some neglect) and your outside is a bit dead and crusty...  but inside you still have that beautiful and original construction material with it's living color and scent and feel.

Maybe you can (comment) tell me what it means to you...  Technical project suggestions welcome also!

Happy Boating!

Mom said "don't grind your teeth"...

After seeing that I was getting nowhere fast with the stripping, I tried using the oscillating sander on half of the back end.  After a relatively long time wearing out sandpaper on half of it, I had limited results.  That's when I realized that I'd be working on this project most weekends this summer and maybe getting it in the water before the end of the season...

So that's when I went to Home Depot to look for a power tool that might speed up progress. The Tool Guy there set me up with a grinder with a sanding attachment.

GRINDERS EAT WOOD!

On the left is what the chemical stripper did on the front of the hull.  It pretty much didn't even bubble the rock-hard green paint.  Now on the right, here's just a couple of minutes with the grinder on the same spot.  Right down to the wood - no questions asked!  Yippie! The back side section was down to bare wood in a comparatively short period of time. And the entire back end had the same result.

There's a cautionary tale here -

 the grinder isn't something you want to take after your grandma's old furniture!!! 

It does some serious finish and wood removal pretty fast.  It's going to take the finish off the outside of the boat in a big hurry, and polish the metal fasteners along with it.  When you hit the nails, sparks are flying!  It takes awhile to get the touch so you don't end up with big circular gouges.

Mom always said "Don't grind your teeth."  Moms know best.

Ain't no silver bullets!

I was imagining that the old paint and varnish would be dropping off like leaves from a tree in the autumn...  But that stuff is definitely not a quick shot to the heart of the matter.

My first attempt with the chemical stripper, I spread it on thick over a few large areas of the boat, then went inside and diddled around for about 30 minutes; then went back out expecting everything to come off like the peel on an orange.  NOT!

One thing that happened was that the sun had gotten stronger and the stripper had dried in several places.  I took a scrubber to the varnished area and a lot of it flaked off, but the finish was only about 50% removed.  Areas with ancient old paint on them, less than half came off with an initial scraping with the putty knife.

I rinsed it all with mineral spirits per the instructions, which didn't seem to really do anything at all.  I think that step is probably more useful after you have virtually all the finish off and just want to clean it up some more.

It was then that I realized that this was going to be a lengthy project afterall...  I thought of putting a wire brush on my drill and going after the paint that way, but knew it would tear the heck out of the wood, which is fairly soft in many places.  I think a vibrating sander would be a hard way to go too because of all the pieces and seams.  So I tried a different approach with the stripper.

I sat down in the back of the boat and started painting on the chemical again, and where it didn't seem to be having much effect, kept painting the stuff on.  As I was able to scrape paint off, I'd suck up the globs with the shop vac, and then put more stripper on the part that hadn't dissolved that much.  I'd guess I spent at least a couple of hours on the back corner of the boat to get the results that show up in the picture.

Being that it's mid-April, it could easily be mid-June before all the finish is off, just mostly working weekends.  Or it could even be early fall, depending on what comes up in the meantime.  Oh well, it looks like it will be

"steady as she goes"!

Lung stripper...!

Whoa!  Be forewarned about chemical strippers - they are highly toxic and the fumes will go right to your head!  When I crawled up under the bow and started painting this stuff on, I had to retreat pretty quick cuz it was just seconds before I began to feel the effects.The other thing about the chemical stripper is that you definitely want good rubber gloves, and be very careful to not get it onto your skin or it will start to burn.

First thing this morning I pulled the boat out of the garage and onto the gravel driveway; then started to take off parts and remove the seats.  I noticed that the brass pieces were still in really good condition, but that steel screws, for example, were pretty rusty and will have to be replaced.  I'll probably get as much brass stuff as practical, or at least galvanized steel.  The brass screws and bolts came out easily, but the rusty steel stuck and stripped out the hole as it was coming out.

Once all the seats were out, a shop vac was really handy to get all the loose paint chips and dirt and pine needles out of the boat.  It really seemed like I was making a lot of progress pretty quick.

After smearing the stripper on and letting it work for awhile, it seemed that it was going after the paint and bubbling it up a lot faster than it was eating the varnished parts.  I'm guessing that tells me something about the difference in wood protection between paint and varnish.  The varnish really seemed to be stuck tight to the wood.

The label says to wait 15-30 minutes and then start scraping the loosened finish off with a plastic putty knife.  It will probably be a good break to get away from it too and breathe some fresh air and load back up on coffee.

Something tells me that the hard part is about to begin.  Or maybe the harder part, and it just keeps getting harder?  At least it's getting me out into the beautiful spring weather.  It still freezes here overnight, but the days are up into the 60's F, which is well nigh tropical up here in the northwoods!

Well, here's hoping your project is going well.  I'll be back with another report later.