Winner, winner

Chicken Dinner!

Folks I can declare the paint shop a roaring success, spent this afternoon base-coating the forepeak components in Morrells PU lacquer, For this i need to wear an air fed gimp mask but thats a small price to pay as this stuff is up there with the Reactive resins epoxy - yes it rocks too.

The reason it rocks is simple: this lacquer is touch dry in 15 minutes sandable in 30 and recoatable in 45, whereas that bloody over-priced Hempels crap i bought (to topcoat the window frames) would take 16 hours - yes thats not a typo, 16 arse-dragging hours till it went off.

And as is typical most of the time here in Blighty the marine-based product is total fucking robbery as the Morrells super quick drying PU works out at £50 give or take for 7.5 litres and the Hempels super slow diamond hard is getting on for £40 a litre!!!

 Mmm...........................fuck that!

Admittedly you dont get a cute picture of a sailboat on the Morrells tin but i can just about live with that if i'm honest. Also i should big up the Sealey spray gun i've been using, the SSG501 (if you're interested) and still available on ebay for less then £20 as the last time i talked paint i was considering a Devilbiss gun.

This mainly because they're amazing spray guns which we used to use back in the day at the shop but seeing as they were brother Rik's and i dont have money to burn i'll stick with the Sealey gun.

A truly great bit of kit seeing as you can get a needle/aircap from 1.2mm all the way upto 2.5mm making it a really versatile spray gun for no money, go buy one! 

Heres how things look at present:

Thats three coats of sealer on the above and below:

These pictures make me look almost talented - will be a different story spraying the hull and deck i'm sure, tomorrow i'll lay down the clear top coat and white basecoat for the outer frame.

My only concern based on todays efforts is i dont have enough free air capacity to run my mask and gun for more than 15 mins so when it comes to spraying the boat i may have to get a bigger air receiver................more kit i guess...............

Ciao

Meanwhile four months later.................................

In truth i wish i had more to show but just haven't really, the joinery for the forepeak has been made and broken down currently in the paint shop awaiting lacquer and paint, the beams have been fastened to the foam bulkheads with A2 screws and thickened epoxy resin.

Spent today doing a few bits of paid work in the shop and inbetween sanding down all the pretty bits of the forepeak ready for basecoating. Other than that not a lot to tell, this is where i was at this afternoon with everything removed waiting to go back on. 

All the athwartships beams that are pattressed through the bulkheads are back on permanantly, still loving the epoxy resin, interestingly had an icing bag full of the stuff burning my hand - it was that hot - and yet still totally usuable, absolutely kicks arse.

I'm still here....

Been getting asked why nothings happening and its all down to 'work' work, still after this job i'm doing now is done the next couple of bits of paid work are in the shop so will get back in the shed soon.

Rog

Shops open!

Not much to report as i'm working at the moment but in the last couple of weeks i've managed to get the garage emptied out and re-purposed to a spray shop to commence the 'great finishing'.........sounds a bit Chinese that?

I thoroughly recommend throwing stuff away, very cathartic i find, was a bit disappointed to discover nearly every piece of hardware on a Centaurs deck is worth around £100 in scrap, still all this, and with my contribution to charity of what seemed like a rediculous amount of power tools meant i now had some room to build a spray shop.

The only two things i kept over from the original space was my bench and the beer fridge, two very important, some would say (me included) vital components in any workshop set up. The plan was to get the bench under the window and leave the bulk of the floor area free to set up tresels as required to set components down on to spray.

Also have made and fitted some drying racks as well as fitting two not so big but incredibly powerful fans: one drawing air in through the garage door and one exhausting through what was the back window. 

This to get rid of any fumes that may linger so also found myself spending a fair bit of money on filter media which looks like rockwool in various colours and thicknesses plus pleated card for the overspray to stick to beforehand and treated myself to an air-fed mask too.

The plan in all of this is to finish (in every sense of the word) as i go so as soon as a component is made be it a locker lid or bulkhead it gets lacquered or painted a colour then bonded to the boat as i dont want to go back and risk damaging stuff or getting a bad finish.

Still debating whether to buy a decent gun, got my eye on Devilbiss' FLG5 and their GPi guns as these guns will spray both primer and topcoat, might have to see how the pennies go, Have bought a couple more cheap Sealey ones the same as i used to prime the hull with high-build.

Couldn't help myself as someone on ebay was flogging them for £15 each, i paid £35 for the first one and seeing as i got it working pretty well be it with some thinner in the paint thought it a wise investment. 

Just waiting for the lacquer and paint to show up.....................

I too have suddenly become "un-busy".

*EDIT* Reactive resins has ceased trading.

Got sacked last Monday - in my case it wasn't a producer rather an over officious member of site staff. At least i'm not freezing my arse off in the van although I could've done with the money but still I wont take that shit from anyone least of all some kid barely out of short trousers.

Anyway this has freed up some time in which to get on clearing the garage to make the paintshop plus i wanted to start tidying up the newly appointed bilges before i get the frame down permenantly. I'm not too fussed about them being perfect but want them smoother, to do this i'm using another product from my new best friends at Reactive Resins. 

This stuffs called Easifair S, its a spreadable 2 part filler supplied ready made in two separate tins and again like their excellent resin system ratios 2:1 by weight so not hard to measure and use. Also because of this you get a characteristic sorely lacking with additive based products such as Wests and thats consistency everytime you use it. 

The filler itself is lightweight and wet in appearance, the hardener quite the opposite, almost like dry sponge cake, initally i thought it may have gone off but continued anyway as it all became apparent when mixing the two. You get the perfect fairing filler that doesn't slump but has enough 'give' in it as to be easily spread using a plastic card .

I used this filler as well as the trowelable version last year when fairing a 43 foot Robert Clark sloop and initially dreaded the washing and wiping down given the magnitude of the task until i learnt much like the rest of reactive resins products they're non-blushing.

So unlike Wests its as simple as; apply, let it cure then sand, theres no dicking about with scotchpads and patting down with paper towels. So far i've got the furthest forward compartment done and can report it sands a treat and like their resin is better value than West systems.

Just to reiterate, i'm not getting paid for any of this - i'm just a happy customer of reactive resins, as i've discovered, using their products is a no-brainer so get them & leave the washing and wiping up for when you next do the dishes. 

Cheers

Meanwhile, back in eco town.............

Paid work carries on, bloody freezing it is too at the moment, still - it all pushes the project on a little further so can't whinge although i find myself thinking how did we industrialise the world when watching this total shower balls up the construction of 90 houses in the Oxfordshire countryside, but thats another forum and website.

Still i got as far as cutting and assembling the new v-berth bunk frame before i returned to paid work, did this in Sapele but as with so much timber these days the quality is pretty terrible so will spray white as the scheme forming in my head is White and Oak. 

I found myself having yet another moment of inspiration like the epiphany i had over Christmas which is to convert my garaage to a spray shop. The main reason being theres shed loads to paint and the garage is a much smaller space to heat for the paint to dry plus theres little in there of any use apart from the airline and my bench.

So the next job when finished up at Bicester will be to empty out this space and re-purpose it for the job at hand.

Cheers

Thats better.

Looking a bit more ship-shape up front:

Spent today tabbing the bulkheads to stringers doing the final run around both cutting and overlapping cloth so now all tied together and currently post curing with an infra red heater, all nice and strong. 

Tomorrow I'm gonna repair a couple of parts of the deck i damaged getting all the old guts out and whack abit of fairing compound around what i did today.

cheers