(the canoe after about 25 years spent biding its time)As you can see, it's hard to fit in one shot. This is a photo of the hull. Brief history of this canoe: 70 years ago, this canoe is born. 35 years ago, it comes into my dad's possession. 34 years ago, it receives a new yellow paint job to cover the aging maroon gel coat. Some time in the 1980s, the canoe is involved in a crash involving my dad and my grandpa, accounting for the various patches of busted and patched fiberglass you see in the photo. Since being patched, the canoe has slowly fallen into disrepair: the patches aren't sturdy, the hull leaks, the fiberglass is coming un-laminated from the cedar planks to which it once adhered, the gunwales are dry-rotted. So, what is one to do about this? Fix it!
I bought some paint thinner, fiberglass fabric, epoxy, an orbital sander, a respirator, and have been going to work. The process (as far as I can see) will involve tearing off the aging fiberglass patches, taking the paint down to the original fiberglass, redoing the patches, injecting epoxy into certain parts of the hull, pulling off and replacing the gunwales with new hardwood strips, and repainting the whole thing.
It's a stereotypical relationship, but my mom and dad are always butting heads over what to keep and what to dispose of. My dad always errs on the side of conservation and reconstitution, while my mom likes to get rid of anything that doesn't have an apparent use. While there's usually a middle path that's more reasonable than either extreme, I've got to go with my dad on the contentious issue of the canoe. Despite the disrepair of the boat, when I look at the old planks, laid over the cedar skeleton, and think about throwing the boat away because it is going to take so many hours of work, I feel like it would be profoundly wrong. Imagine the guy who put the thing together. He'd be rolling over in his grave.
More on that later. Now, here's what the canoe looks like. I've stripped the top layer of paint off and am preparing to sand down to the fiberglass. For areas that are structurally sound, I'll leave just a bit of paint so that I don't damage the FG by sanding it. For areas that need to be repaired, I'll take all the paint off since they're getting patched anyway.
The spots you can see straight through to the wood are the parts that were punctured by knots in a fallen log that my dad and grandpa couldn't avoid while paddling a few decades ago. Time to FIX EM!!
When I'm not working on the canoe or blogging about working on the canoe, I'm usually riding my bike or playing with Lucy, my 9-year-old Golden Retriever. See?
(my track bike trying its hardest to be a road bike)With Elite Track Nationals coming up at the end of September, I've been putting more and more time into track-specific training. I'm planning on racing the Omnium, Individual Pursuit, Scratch and Points Races, and maybe the Team Pursuit (if I can find a team), and I've been lucky enough to hook up with a local training group of cyclists who are also going to Nats, thanks to Jen Triplett. First session is tomorrow, coached by Jennie Reed, so we'll see how that goes.
Riding the track bike on the road is a lot of fun. I haven't got a lot of gear combinations, so for now, I'm forced to roll a 52x16, which means I ride on mostly flat terrain if possible. That bike, while incredibly heavy, is also very stiff, and can go quite fast in a straight flat line. Since my TT bike is disassembled (mined for track bike parts), as is my road bike (still in hill climb mode), I'm doing most of my riding on this bad boy.
And look at this awesome dog! The golden retriever, not the ugly giant dog that didn't want to do anything except follow her around Lake Washington.
Big stupid gray dog just harangued Lucy the whole time she was trying to get the ball!! What the heck??
No comments:
Post a Comment