Promised Pictures.

That's right, I am a Squarespace king.  Click the small pic and get a reasonably sized larger pic.  Two night classes at the local community adult education building and a little experimentation is all it took.  Here is one of the two fuel tanks (the other one is much closer to being done but didn't photograph as well) with the baffles glassed in.  Holes are then drilled in the baffles and then the top is glassed on.  After the tanks have been glassed they are pressure tested at 1.5 psi.  That doesn't sound like a lot when you are used to filling your tires to 35 psi but when you think of the area of the tank that's tons (figuratively) of pressure being put on the tank. 

The forward deck is on the 32' Osmond and is in the process of being glassed in place, the top is temporarily screwed down until the fiberglass has hardened and then the screws are removed.  The top is made out of nida-core and is shaped using a housetop jig that is older than I am.  It has the custom "Clark Island Crown" that gives our boats a recognizable look.

Some general info since the move to Squarespace:  about the same number of visits per day, people are on the site longer (because the pics are here instead of picasa), and lower bounce rate (because the new content is here and not sitting over at blogger).

Functional Thumbnails???

If this was successful you should be able to click on this small picture and be taken to a larger picture of the exact same thing.  Like blogger, only more complicated.  But I'm not complaining.  This interface is definitely slicker and if I was a little smarter the web site would be infinitely better. 

After receiving a quote and a set of technical drawing of the motor going into the 32' Osmond the engine beds can be put in the boat.  The original idea was to cut down the existing stringers to get them to where we wanted to be but cooler heads prevailed and the beds will be built from scratch.  Two pieces of 1" foam were bonded together to make the primary structure and then these stringers will be fiberglassed over with 21 to 28 layers of fiberglass (alternating matt with woven).  We should have the motor ordered by the end of the week and if all goes well it will be sitting in the shop when the owner arrives on the 17th.

I almost have it, I just have to figure out how to resize the original picture before I link it up to the thumbnail in the blog.  Learning is fun.

Looks done, doesn't it?

One finished galley.....minus a sink, a set of drawers, and doors for the double slider behind the stove.  It looks like I'm still having trouble picking the correct size for these photos they look "low resolution" with the choppy lines.  We'll get there eventually.

Shades of Gray.

In an attempt to nonskid the side decks today we ran into a little bit of a color problem.  After the owner had selected "Twilight Gray" and the color chip had been sent to Advance Coatings Co. to be matched the end result was a little off.  The desired color is the light gray in the middle and the result was much closer to the bottom (darker) gray.  I could see that the gel was off but wanted to take a picture of it and send it to the owner to verify that the color had to be lightened.  Looking back I should have just lightened it and rolled it on the boat.  We mixed up a small batch of gel and put it on a scrap of nidacore (pictured) and I ran over to the house to grab the camera.  Obviously today is the day that the camera decides to die.  Well it didn't die but it is terminally ill and will not take still photos anymore, video still works but the color quality on the video made it next to impossible to show the gel color differences.  Now with no way to show my maine-based gel coat to my georgia-based customer, I make an afternoon trip to the city to buy a new camera.  Back to the shop and back to my color chart and sample nonskid armed with my new resonably priced camera.  Take the photos, post the pics on picasa, call georgia, leave a message, wait patiently, get a call back.................."yeah that color's too dark".  If anyone shows up for work tomorrow (SAT) we are going to mix in some white (maybe 1 gal white to 4 gal gray) until the color is closer to the desired "Twilight Gray".

Here is one of the custom teak peices from Hewes & Co., a drawer/trash can combo that will be located in the galley.  They also dropped off doors, drawers, double sliding door frames (??), trim rings, and panel for the fridge.  Basically anything I didn't feel like making I farmed out to them and they did an excellent job.  All this stuff would just eat up hours and we felt that our time could be better spent on other parts of the boat while we waited for the parts to be built.  I'll post some pics of the installed items tomorrow (the new camera's battery only had enough life to take a couple pics, and the book said to fully charge the battery on the initial charge to protect the life of the battery) they are really giving the galley a "finished" look.  Even though it isn't really finished yet.

All the words are where they should be, this isn't as hard as I was making it yesterday.  Next I will learn how the reader can click on the photo to see a larger version of that photo.  Then embedded video and live streaming web cams.  Then live chat sessions and eventually (once we get enough followers) we build a boat for the fans and give it away to the 300,000th person to leave a comment or start a thread in the forum.

Bermuda Boat

If I knew how to make the words go where I wanted I would be much happier.

The top pic is the boat, the next pic is the opening stages of a curved fuel tank.

I'm getting frustrated, these pics are suppose to be the same size as the pics in the last post and they are coming out like postage stamps.

I should be able to hire someone else to do this.

So if I click on the left aligned photos and then click "left" I'm allowed to type over here.  The learning curve on this is redonkulous.  Left pic is the nidacore forward deck.  The photo of the forward wall of the head has been fit but not fiber

glassed in place yet.

I need to get a tutorial on how to use squarespace, obviously.

Promises to do better tomorrow seem implied by my lack luster effort on these two posts.