Well, that was a new one for me...

One of my students was preparing some Dookie Shmutz to fill small cracks and checks in his canoe. As I'm never sure of my student's level of experience with epoxy, I always make sure to let them know how to mix the epoxy. The epoxy in question was West System's 105/207 system and the ratio is 3:1 epoxy/hardener. The pumps that are sold by West System for the resin are metering pumps are sized to dispense the proper ratio with a single pump from each container.

I told the student to dispense one pump each of resin and hardener until he had enough volume, then to mix in the wood flour and silica until he had a mixture that was the consistency of creamy peanut butter. I was then called away to help another student. When I returned, he had what appeared to be the proper mixture and was applying it to his hull.

The next morning, we came in to put the canoes back in the barn. The filler on this canoe was not setting up - it was like soft putty. Sometimes it is a bit cool in the shop and the epoxy takes a little longer than usual to set. As last week was a vacation week, there would be no other classes in the shop, so we left it in the shop rather than take it to the much colder barn in the hope that it would cure.

Yesterday, we arrived to find the filler on this canoe stiffer, but not fully cured.

Bummer.

When the student came into class, I asked him how he mixed the filler. Turns out he'd read the can about the 3:1 ratio after I told him how to mix the epoxy and used three pumps of epoxy to one pump of hardener.

Uh oh.

Thotful spot time.

We ultimately resolved to scrape what uncured filler material that we could and to wipe the hull with denatured alcohol. Once this was done, we applied properly mixed filler.

This morning, the filler had set up hard. We appear to be in luck!

Life, Wonder Bread, the Universe and Everything

I must admit at the beginning of this post that this is shamelessly copied (with minor alterations) from a co-worker's Facebook post. These are the actual events of a Thursday afternoon two weeks ago. Quite frankly, we probably wouldn't have believed her but for the fact that she was in the boss's car (this would probably happen to him while driving...) and the fact that there was evidence in the form of pictures and, um, other material. Now, I'll just let her pictures and words tell it like it was:

This is a story of intrigue...

It was a lovely Thursday afternoon. Life was good. So...

...I decided to accompany my boss on some errands. While enroute to the bank, and without the courtesy of a warning...

...a giant hawk (not THIS hawk, but a similar-looking hawk) carrying...

. . . a squirrel (not THIS squirrel, but a similar-looking squirrel) came careening towards our vehicle. The hawk was swiftly losing altitude and crashed into the windshield. It flapped and freaked as its wings pounded the glass. My boss and I screamed and the hawk flew way, but not before depositing bloody squirrel bits all over the hood. We'd no sooner screeched to a halt when (and I knew it was coming when the sun went away) we were clobbered from behind by none other than...

...the Wonder Bread truck, which was driven by...

...an extroverted Malboro-smoking man with three half-teeth and a leg that dragged behind him a bit (not THIS guy, but a similar-looking guy). And so, in the end...

...the Wonder Bread truck didn't look too bad.

My boss's vehicle didn't look too bad

...but the squirrel? Life wasn't looking so good for that little guy.

...and it did take two trips through the car wash to get all of the squirrel off of my boss's car ...

Tech Tip Tuesday

(From Despair.com)

I have to say that I look on mistakes (Or Misteaks and Boo-Boos as Dave Fleming would have said...) a little differently than other people.

I've been working on several skin-on-frame kayaks. I'm almost ready to skin the boats, but I have a few more details I need to work on. These details are the foot braces the cockpit coaming and a hatch cover and rim. The coaming cover and rim are essentially laminated ovals and are very similar. Unlike very traditional skin-on-frame kayaks which are built specifically for one user and have fixed foot braces and sized cockpits, I'm trying to make a more flexible boat in terms of fit. To that end, I'm making adjustable foot braces.

I started out and designed a set of dovetail rails about 2 feet long with mating slides that had a large foot-pad. There was a pair for the left and right side of the kayak. On the slides were going to be pins with a coil spring to push the pin into holes in the dovetails to allow you to adjust the position of the foot brace.

Things started out auspiciously. I milled the rails. I made up the mating slide parts. I assembled the slide parts. I slid parts together. They slid nicely.

Then I started to look at things a bit more critically. There were some issues. The "wheelbase" of the slide on the rail was short and the parts weren't particularly robust. The release pin for the slides was going to wind up being behind the pedals. This would have been inconvenient as the the kayak is very low volume and it will be awkward to reach into the cockpit to adjust these pins.

Meh.

I was a bit disappointed, but I went back to my Thotful Spot.

I learned something. Well, I learned several things, really. I learned that wasn't the way I wanted to do this. I wanted something simpler and more robust. I wanted something that I could adjust from inside the cockpit. I wanted something that wasn't going to include any metal parts.

What I have in mind is a single central rail with a dovetail on the sides and a holes in the top that can sit on top of the keel stringer. It's sort of like a wooden drawer slide and will have a longer engagement with the central rail. The foot pedals will be a single piece attached to the slide that will run on the rail. There will be a long flat strip of wood extending back towards the seat with an integral pin. This strip of wood will be a leaf spring to keep the pin in the holes and should be reachable from the paddler in the cockpit.

Previous design and theory are important when working on an idea, but there's nothing like trying and doing, whether you get it "right" the first time or you make a mistake.

So, if you do make a mistake, have the persistence to keep on learning, honing your skills and trying new methods to achieve your goals.

Kids

Most people who don't have children don't understand those of us who do. Surprisingly, they don't understand our offspring, either. Even though they were children once themselves, they appear to have forgotten most of their own childhood and probably don't remember the joys of it or the trials and tribulations of their (very) patient parents.

I suppose those people who are young and single don't give too much thought to the bathroom, either. They just take it for granted. Parents of toddlers have to give it lots of thought.

For example, I was in the bathroom getting ready this morning and had just flushed the toilet and was preparing to shave when DS wandered into the bathroom in a dazed manner to use the toilet.


"What's that noise?", he asked.

"Uh, that's the toilet tank filling up with water." Being that I am an engineer by profession, I proceeded to explain to him the inner workings of the toilet and why it was filling the tank with water.

Then it dawned on me.

"Why did you ask? Have you never heard the toilet tank fill before?"

I got a particularly confused look from DS.

Probably not.

For the longest period of time, DS seems to have been imbued with some mutant predisposition that left him unable to flush the toilet. As a parent of a child this age, you must understand that this had both good points and bad points for DW and I. First, there is the obvious bad point of coming into the bathroom to find that the toilet has a "surprise" of some sort in it. Then, there are the good points. You can almost instantly determine both the gastric health of your child and know if he wiped.

Yup.

Did any wiping occur? For the longest time, DS seems to have assumed that he has a Teflon bottom as he would tell us that he didn't need to wipe. A quick check of the laundry basket would always shoot this assumption down faster than a Scud missle over Tel Aviv.

'Skid marks'? Check.

C'mon kid.

We'd be ecstatic if he'd just use the papyrus as reliably as the kid below:

To be quite honest, I think that there is a distinct difference between the genders when it comes to potty training. I don't remember it being such a big issue for DD as she was growing up. As a matter of fact, it was the day that DS first came home from teh hospital that she managed to sleep through the night without a diaper and wake up dry in the morning. She just decided that was what she was going to do and did it.

At the moment, we have different issues with DD. She's at that in between stage. To borrow and excellent expression from one of DW's bloggy friends, Expat Mum ,(One of a group of wonderful ex-patriot, mostly British, blogging moms - do go visit her!) DD is turning into a...

Queenager.

While others find her to be a delightful and charming young lady when she is out and about, at home she can be much more, um, assertive.


She's decided that those things that she doesn't deign to do, she will not - and let you know that she won't.

In no uncertain terms.

At this point, her progress on the kayak that we've been building has ground to a halt and we're having a bit of a tête-à-tête in regard to the terms for doing the building work. As it is something that I know that DD wants to do, I've put a condition on when we can work on the boat. It's not extreme or anything. I've simply told DD that if we are to work on her boat, her room has to be clean. Not spotless, mind you - just neat. It still doesn't seem to be a great motivation for her even though I know she wants to work on the kayak.

I'm still looking for a motivational tool.

Got any ideas?

Oh yeah, I know what you're thinking, by the way - and no, it's not blackmail!

The Overboard Brothers

Lake George on a calm day

My father was the one person who really got me started paddling. One of the reasons that we did lots of paddling was that my family was actively involved with Scouting. The Scout troop often took several paddling trips a year. One would be a weekend trip to a local river or pond and the other would be a multi-day trip to a bigger piece of water.

One year, we took a trip up to Lake George, New York and camped for a few days on one of the islands. For those who may not be familiar with Lake George, it's a big piece of water - about 32 miles long and between 1 and 3 miles wide and surrounded by mountains on the East and West shores.

On this particular trip, we spent most of our time eating, swimming, fishing and improving our paddling skills. The island we were staying on had about 10 camp sites on it and we were camped on the two sites that were on the north side of the island. The "shore" such as it was, was a large piece of rock that extended about 15' above the surface of the water. To the North, the nearest obstructions up the lake were some islands maybe 5 miles away.

On one particularly perfect weather day, my father and our Scoutmaster Tom decided to take one of the canoes out for a paddle. The weather was a bit cool and they went out fully dressed, but with life jackets on. They were planning to explore the group of islands that we were in to the South. While they were out, the wind whipped up in a fierce way from the North. Because of the Geography, the wind is funneled down the lake by the mountains. The lake was putting up some really big rollers - about 3-4' peak to trough. I remember the waves were breaking quite far up the large rock that made up the "shore".

At any rate, they returned and came around from the lee side of the island into the teeth of these waves. They were doing just fine until they decided to try to make a turn to get back to the dock. (BTW - the surface of the dock was awash at the time from the waves!) As they got broadside to the waves in this 17' long canoe, over they went. One of my friends and I who were in bathing suits grabbed another canoe and went out to do the rescue. We pulled the swamped canoe over the gunnels to drain the water, flipped it and put it back in right side up. We then used paddles to stabilize the two boats to let them climb back in.

After the fact, my father and the Scoutmaster were known as "The Overboard Brothers".

I guess The Divine Miss M just has it in her genes!

A little surprise.

My oldest child's 9th birthday was this past weekend - "The Divine Miss M" as I refer to her.

So, Monday - Labor Day - was a "big day out" for the family. The weather was gorgeous - sunny and in the high 7o's, clear and dry with a slightly increasing breeze. We packed up the family, three of our canoes and a breakfast and drove up to a local state park with my father.

When we arrived, we brought the breakfast over to a table overlooking the water and started a wood fire. Soon, the smells of coffee brewing in the French press, hot chocolate, sizzling sausages, home fries and wild blueberry pancakes with real maple syrup were dancing on the breeze along with the aroma of woodsmoke. Leftovers? Nahh... You're all lucky I haven't got smell-a-vision installed. You'd gain 5 pounds just from that.

While we were having breakfast, the breeze freshened up a bit on the pond. No whitecaps or anything too bad, but...

After we got breakfast cleaned up, we drove over to the launch ramp. The three boats are all hand-made. The lapstrake canoe is a Charlotte, the small cedar strip is a Wee Lassie and the larger one in the rear is a Wabnaki. The Divine Miss M had only been on her own in a canoe once. In the fall she paddled the Charlotte in a small area of the same pond. She decided that she wanted to paddle my Wee Lassie, so I was paddling the Charlotte.


My father, DS and DW were in the Wabnaki. It was DS's first time in a canoe - ever. He was very excited. DW was excited too, but only because she's not particularly comfortable in a small boat.


We finally got out on the water and The Divine Miss M was trying to paddle with a Greenland style paddle that I made for her. She wasn't having much luck as it was a bit short for the Wee Lassie's beam. She then tried a larger paddle which she managed to work with. I was trying to stay close, shadowing her in the Charlotte and at the same time having a running tutorial on paddling as she tried to go along in a straight line. She was finding it a bit frustrating as she's very light and the wind was pushing her around a bit. Pretty soon, she felt she was getting the hang of things and was paddling fairly aggressively. I warned her not to get too cocky.


It was very sudden, really. She appeared to try to take a stroke, but the flat of the blade was not oriented correctly and as she tried to push, she got no resistance from the paddle as the blade sliced through the water - over she went.

The next thing I saw was the canoe's bottom and a floating paddle. The Divine Miss M was nowhere in sight. I had a moment of panic only a parent can have and began closing the short distance at an amazing speed. While I was paddling, I was relieved to hear her screaming very loudly from underneath the canoe - I knew she was OK if she was screaming. Little girls have this really piercing scream when they want to.

As I got to the boat and rolled the gunnel of the submerged canoe up to get her out from under the canoe she darted out and grabbed the gunnel of the Charlotte. She was going to haul herself aboard.

Not so fast, young lady! Let's wait for Grampa and he can help balance us while you get in - before you swamp a second canoe and the camera, wallet, key fob and dry gear!

It took me a minute to convince her to hold onto the canoe and float while waiting for my father come over. Amazingly - she hadn't lost her hat, her glasses or anything else. She finally stopped screaming once she got in the boat again. She was wet and cold, but OK. After being transferred to my father's boat, I went back and collected the loose paddles floating in the water and towed the swamped canoe to shore to empty it.

Amazingly, The Devine Miss M wanted to get right back into the canoe and paddle back to the put-in. I've got to give her kudos for wanting to get right back in the canoe. It was very brave of her, considering the scare she had.

She did learn some valuable lessons today:

-Always, always, always wear your PFD.
-Don't overestimate your skills.
-Don't paddle with your shoes on, you may need to swim, and it's easier without them.
-If you got over, stay with the boat.
-Even when the boat is upside down, there is (usually) air underneath!

-Always dress for the water temperature, not the air temperature.
-No matter how warm the day may seem, the water can be COLD.
-Always have a dry change of clothes. You may not be going swimming, but Murphy may have other ideas.

No pictures of the after-capsize Miss M. She was a bit too ornery for them!

Wordless Wednesday

OOPS! Ok, wordless Thursday, not wordless Wednesday - I'm a busy guy!