Six Hours...Bah!

After the Epoxy coating was put on and rubbed I took a recommended short cut by using car body filler to fix the tiny marks here and there just because I’d got carried away by this stage. Of course I used a really good brand of the best marine type, then sanded it to perfection before putting the first coat of two pack primer over it… (gulp!)

The two pack primer melted the filler and the whole sticky mess had to be scraped and sanded off.

The company who made the filler (3M) and the paint company (International Marine) got their heads together and discovered there was a chemical in the still curing Epoxy* that reacted with the Filler only when exposed to another chemical in the primer. They duly made notes for their information sheets… (Lucky me, making scientific/chemical discoveries in my shed)

Thankfully I’d only had to put filler in a few places so the re-sanding then repainting wasn’t too nasty.

*Freshly painted and glossy

I’d picked out a beautiful dark blue two pack paint which took weeks to get here, I went in and checked it but (foolishly) waited a few days until coming back to pick it up. When I did come back the paint was missing, gone! One of the workers at the paint store had stolen the paint (no one knew who) and they could only order more…or I could take what they did have. With Winter fast approaching I couldn’t wait weeks more so I went through their stock and picked the least nasty paint they had, which is an awful sort of crème. The other reason I couldn’t wait was that I had all the materials and permissions for a new shed and just weeks to have it up and finished, I had to finish the canoe because it had to go outside in the weather until I had a shed to put it in.

*Close enough to finished...

I had the usual dramas putting on the four coats of two pack paint but after what I’d already been through it went smoothly enough.

Finally finished and with 11 coats of epoxy, primers and paints it was put in the water just once in our local marina before being plastic wrapped and put out in the back yard for the long three months of Winter.

The shed is finished now and complete with boat racks close to the roof so I can simply slide the canoe from racks to the boat racks custom made for my trailer and back again… every thing is perfect except for that one little kick in the tail….

*It's one and only time on the water.

During Winter I took a fall off my Yamaha, a seemingly small incident except that I came down heavily on my left shoulder. I felt something give immediately but tried to ignore it hoping it would go away but after several doctors appointments, x-rays, scans and eventually three Cortisone shots into the shoulder I have to admit it isn’t getting any better. There are three new tears in the shoulder to go nicely with the one that was already there. I cant lift my arm above my head, cant lift weight (like the canoe) and certainly cant paddle a canoe until at least three to six months AFTER my full shoulder reconstruction sometime in the second half of next year!

Now you might be thinking I’d be pretty upset about that but I can see the irony in it...

I will eventually get to use the boat and maybe even catch a fish or two from it but the point of it was the challenge to build the boat and whether I can use it or not, I took the challenge and achieved what I started out to do and I feel pretty good about that!

* the Epoxy cures over several weeks but can be finished off well before that.

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