Tech Tip Tuesday

Ok, I lied a bit...  Not too much tech here.

A former student of mine is building a Solo Portage designed by Rob Macks of Laughing Loon.  It's a nice boat and he's doing a beautiful job - as usual.  We cut strip for it a while back and he got way-layed by "real life" in the mean time.  Recently, he got back at it and was ready for a little help applying fiberglass this winter.  About a month or so ago, we glassed the outside and this past weekend, we finished applying glass to the inside of the canoe.

Glassing is one of those jobs that's much better with extra hands.  When one of you is sticky with epoxy, the other can be mixing resin, trimming or getting supplies.  When you get tired, you can swap off.  It's a good way to do the job.

When we got done, the boat looked like this:

Since then, he's trimmed the boat to the sheer lines specified by Rob Macks and it looks nice:

After we got done, we had a little fun.  My student lives in the hills and there's still a bit of snow up there.  (Nearly 3 feet on the ground!)  He suggested we might like to go snowshoeing when we were done glassing.  DS who came along on this trip and occupied himself with my iPod Touch while we were spreading epoxy, was really very, very patient. He was also very excited to get out on his snowshoes that he got for Christmas this year.

It was a nice warm day and the sun was shining.  There were tracks in the snow of wolf or coyote and porcupine.  It was just warm enough that you could smell the forest.  You could hear snowmobiles running trails in the distance.  The views were fantastic:

It was a great day.  There should be more days like this!