Wednesday, 7 August 2019

Summer Recess | Workshop Improvements

I had a long break from boat building over the recent six or seven weeks, during which I did the sort of things that people normally do in the summer. 

You know. Spending time with friends and family. Going on vacation. Sorting out things around the house and garden. Nothing whatever to do with boats.

I did make a few improvements to the working environment though, on return from holiday.

Some time previously I finally got fed up with using the dust extractor as a vacuum cleaner, which meant disconnecting the sander and fitting a nozzle to clean up the mess, and then refitting the sander. It wastes a lot of time and it's not really what the dust extractor is for anyway. The next big job is to sand the fibreglass in the interior of the hull, in preparation for a second coat of clear epoxy, and anything that could make that less onerous would be very welcome.

So I 'borrowed' an apparently unemployed vacuum cleaner from the house. Here it is, looking quite pleased with itself.


It was immediately useful and looks like a permanent fixture.

Sanding the interior also entails a lot of leaning over into the boat to reach the bottom panels, which often means standing on a stool or a work step. Early in the build I had the step slide away from underneath me a few times, slipping across the floor and dumping me into the boat, so I used a non-slip barrier mat to keep it safely in place.

So now I obtained several more mats and placed them around the boat, so it's easier to move around without dragging a mat along with the step. Here they are.


The workshop was clean, tidy, and ready for the next big job. More sanding. Can't wait.

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