I knew it wouldn’t be long before I’d have to do another one of these Wanchor posts.
From the highs of the day before yesterday where an end was in sight for the work to the hull, to the lows of yesterday where I had to undo what I thought was a sterling job of starting to fix the keel void. I have officially renamed said void as octosphincter, it has 8 holes and is full of shit.
Remember I said I had to grind down those perspex sheets because they would be getting in the way of the work on building the hull up from octospincter? Well it turned out to be a lot more complicated than that. For fuck’s fucking sakes! I essentially wasted a whole day undoing the botchdge job. Yes I know it’s spelled incorrectly. Here’s the reason.
Let’s start with some good news first. For all of an hour yesterday my hull was water tight for the first time in years. Save for the drainage holes on the transom (They’re supposed to be there Zed!) and the hole where the spinny log thing is supposed to go.
As briefly mentioned yesterday I stopped off at Halfords to go and pick up two more pots of that fibreglass filler paste. Still filled from the optimism from the day before I was chattier than I usually am when I go into shops where I don’t understand what 90% of their stock actually does. Shout out to Luke from the Rayleigh branch for putting up with my banter.
As soon as I got down to the yard I fired up my drill and ground each one of the holes in the transom. I cleared off the resultant dust , wiped each hole down with a damp rag, waited for it to dry and then mixed up the fibreglass by adding the hardener. Oh wait! I forgot to add I bought some new tools too!
- New scraper to replace the one I borked
- Stainless steel spreader thingies
- Thinners – To keep new tools clean after working with fibreglass
I spread the fibreglass over the holes in the transom, waited for it to dry and sanded those motherfuckers until they were flush with the transom. I plugged those little holes like a pervert at a glory hole convention! I was still the fibreglass master! Look!
Yeah baby! Bow down before me for I am a god!
That’s it, that’s where the good news ends and where my day took a turn for the worse. In fact it turned into the single most soul destroying day I’ve had on the boat since I bought it.
After the transom I chucked my new spreader thingy into a bath of thinners to let it soak, climbed on to the hull and went to inspect my work from the previous day on the octosphincter. It became very apparent very quickly that not all was well with my magnificent solution to filling the octosphincter with fibreglass filler.
I ran my hand over the fibreglass to check how hard it had set and low and fucking behold there was still squidgy wet paste in various places. This is what happens when you gung-ho a whole fucking pot of filler without checking you’ve mixed the hardener in completely. Nevermind at least most of it was hard and I could always scrape the squidgy stuff away and add more filler after I’d finished grinding the perspex sheets to get them out of the way of what I needed to do.
So I fired up my trusty sander and set to work. It was all going swimmingly well until…
I mean what the actual fuck is that even about? Firstly why would it just crack and snap like that but more importantly why wasn’t that motherfucker still glued to the sheet of perspex underneath it? Gah! I needed to check what was going on and gave a tug on the broken edge of the perspex and it actually moved! Noooooo!
It didn’t take long for me to pry all of the boards out from under the fibreglass. Yes, most of what was under the hard crusty bits of filler was all squidgy too. Like some sort of demented but pleasant smelling lava.
Not one of the perspex sheets had adhered to any of the others. Whaaaaat? The glue was still wet, it was a complete fucking mess. Ok apart from the fact I’d left one side of the protective film on them what else could have prevented them from sticking to each other? Perhaps I should have sanded each of them to give the glue more purchase? Who the fuck knows?
Me, actually I do. I followed the instructions from the tin of glue to a tee. Wait until the pale white colour of the glue starts going transparent before sticking both surfaces together. Easy. I even bought solvent free glue so it wouldn’t eat through the plastic. So what was the reason? Easy, the pot’s disclaimer says:
Suitable for use on most but not all plastics
Trust me to buy the one plastic the fucking glue doesn’t work with. If I was an illiterate, uneducated oik I’d call myself a cunt right about now.
You absolute cunt!
It gets fucking worse though, you see that filler around the edges of the octosphincter well that filler just happened to be the filler that did set. Harder than a viagra infused man missile. I fucking give up. It took me most of the rest of the day to sand that down and the octosphincter now looks like this again:
A whole day of time at the boat essentially wasted! I cut my day short after cleaning my work area and putting my tools away. Well that is apart from my brand new spreader thingy that was still in thinners. Guess what? That’s right my avid little disciples, thinners don’t stop the fibreglass from hardening on the tool, even after soaking it. You’re supposed to wipe the filler off with thinners. Holy Mary Mother of Fuck! Could nothing go right? Apparently not no.
Anyway after getting home I popped to the pub to console myself with a nice refreshingly cold beer and messaged Spawn of Me No. 1. He’s busy writing exams so wanted to check in with him. Is it too late to tell him he was an adopted Ethiopian baby?
Oh. One more thing. You know how I’ve been saying 8 keel hole bolts and calling it octosphincter? I’ve just noticed there are 10 holes. So not even the title of this blog post is correct. Motherfuckingfucker!
Decasphincter doesn’t quite have the same ring to it.
Last day at the boat today. Despite the setback I am raring to go and I am determined to get the octosphincter sorted today. Stay tuned.