Thread: Building Shesha, a Hunter Valley GIS, Australia

Originally Posted by m2c1Iw

Bruce I'm at the varnish stage of my Eureka and the pinhole effect over epoxy is driving me nuts. No matter what I do tipping off no bubbles etc it still appears and I'm on the 5th coat at present.

Funny thing is it's only evident on the ply sections over solid wood it's fine, go figure.

Mike

Yes, tipping off epoxy only results in a marginal improvement to the finish. It's great if you need a non-slip finish though

Mike, I've just realised that you are talking about pinholes with VARNISH OVER EPOXY. This is a different problem, but thankfully is one that has a solution.

It's cause is residual wax on the surface of the epoxy. The wax is also known as blush and is a by-product of the epoxy curing phase. Each time you lay down a coat of varnish, the wax floats to the surface and causes the pinholes, so the solution is to thoroughly wash it down before applying any further coats of varnish. The wax is a type that is water soluble and so you can use just plain water, but some people on this forum have added small amounts of detergent, vinegar or cloudy ammonia to the water. A small amount of sugar soap would also probably work. Only when washed down and thoroughly dried with paper towels, give the varnish a light sand to remove the pinholes, and remove the sanding dust by vacuuming and microfibre cloths.

The subsequent varnish coats should go on smoothly.

Thanks Bruce yes I'm only too aware of blush and I have been careful about cleaning but still get the problem.

Guess I'm not careful enough. It is getting better probably by the 427th coat it will be fine.

The thing I find interesting is why the finish is OK over coated solid wood but not the ply, must just be coincidence.

Cheers
Mike

Originally Posted by m2c1Iw

Thanks Bruce yes I'm only too aware of blush and I have been careful about cleaning but still get the problem.

Guess I'm not careful enough. It is getting better probably by the 427th coat it will be fine.

The thing I find interesting is why the finish is OK over coated solid wood but not the ply, must just be coincidence.

Cheers
Mike

Can you think back that you may have perhaps sanded the solid wood bits and not the ply perhaps? Yes, my guess is that some wax has remained despite your cleaning efforts. This happened to me with my mast, but with the yard there were no problems as I washed with HOT water and sugar soap (IIRC) and used paper towels to dry it down.

Does anyone know an Oz supplier of suitable light duty wheels for a beach launching trolley for my Goat?

I need the wheels to have the following features
plastic/nylon rims
plastic/nylon bushes (no bearings to get chewed up by sand and salt water)
pneumatic tyres
resistant to salt and sand
reasonably priced
10" approx

I've looked around for a while and haven't yet located anything suitable, so any suggestions would be helpful.

Something like these:
Attachment 135158

I know about this crowd in South Australia

Pecon Sales
Pecon Sales - Google Maps

Thanks Mick, will give them a call.

here are some pics of the new box boom I made. Because the original boom was too bendy and I have a loose-footed sail, I needed to make a stiffer one.

It's a box boom utilising clear 40X10mm radiata pine, and 19mm thick Paulownia infills. If you think of the GIS's gunwales, that is the basic construction method used. The front infill is 600mm and the very aft one is about 200mm. All the others are 70mm and 90mm apart. The longer front one is to give the boom greater strength to cope with the downhaul stresses. Even though it is quite light 3kg), it can support my 70kg weight OK, so it should be plenty strong enough. The top and bottom capping of the boom uses uber cheap finger jointed pine, but the sides are the more expensive solid pine. In one of the pics you can see the finger jointed stuff on the top. With all those buoyancy chambers, it should float pretty well!

If one used some decent spruce or oregon, I think it's possible to simplify the construction and leave the capping off entirely. This could make lashing the mainsheet and downhaul simpler, and they would not slide. I thought about leaving the capping off, but the sideways flex was more than what I wanted, so the capping was added to stiffen up the sideways bend.

Finished dims are 58X38mm with a 10mm taper along the bottom at each end. The taper at the front disappears over 500mm (half a metre) and the taper at the back disappears over 1000mm (1m). There is a slot cut at the back for a 30mm brass sheave which should make adjustment of the foot easier. I intend running a simple 1:1 control line about 1500mm from the aft end of the boom to a fairleaded clam cleat. There will also be a micro fairlead that feeds the line into the sheave on the top of the boom. In due course I'll post pics of the rigging which will explain things better. As they say, a picture is worth a thousand words!

The boom only ended up costing about $20 in timber. With the sheave, fairlead and clam cleat, total cost is a tad over $50.

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Attachment 136024

Bruce,
Very interesting - I think it will be strong and light Good work

It was about time I unpacked the sail. It's made by Storm Bay Sails, Kettering, Tasmania.

Although you can't really tell from these pics due to the dappled light, it is a cream cloth, which by the way is a 5oz cloth.

There are 3 leach battens, a leach tensioning cord, 2 reef points as per sail plan, and a loose foot. Russell also supplied a long sail bag to accomodate the sail and the spars.

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Attachment 136077

Ah, he's got a complicated tent for his row boat

So what do you think of them? Well made? Well priced? How long before they get to work for real?

Richard

Originally Posted by Daddles

Ah, he's got a complicated tent for his row boat

So what do you think of them? Well made? Well priced? How long before they get to work for real?

Richard

Yep, very well made. Price was unbeatable so I regard the Storm Bay sail as excellent value.

Depending on weather, launch will be this month. I cant wait!

Well, look what I found in my GIS today. The little critter got in OK but couldn't get traction to get out again, and perished.
Attachment 136471

Looks than your GIS is wrong for Wild World...