Thirteenth week of the refit..

2/14..20/04? The dates are beginning to blur..

All right, its yellow. -And that's about as good as it gets. This Zinc stuff is like trying to paint with fingernail polish, its horrible!

Starting the process, totally nervous, mentally going over all the steps, hoping that nothing has been forgotten.. Open up the can, dump it into the mixing pot and.. "Huh? Its the wrong color! This stuff's white. Isn't the zinc primer supposed to be yellow or greenish?" Starting out on the wrong foot. Pour everything back and cap it up. Good thing this was caught before adding the catalyst.

Clean everything and start over. This time its the right color. But, once painting starts, I realize I'm in for it. It runs, it streaks its awful! I'm ruining all those endless hours of prep. work. About three feet down the mast its obvious that a brush isn't going to cut it. Specially since the foam end of the brush fell off. ARRGH!!

Switch to plan B, break out the roller. The clock ticks away on the epoxy reaction as I scramble through the garage looking for a paint tray. Nothing! I can't even run down to the store to get one, Julie has my car Keys! ARRRGH!!

Desperate, I grab the only pan like thing I can think of. One of my brand new cookie sheets for making Chocolate Bombers. "But how do I hold it? The kids little red wagon!!" Drop the sheet in the wagon with the pot of paint. Pour it out and go to town!

All this work and it still comes out terrible. The poor wagon ain't all that red no more either..

Sigh..

Wait and wait for the zinc coat to fire off. By late afternoon it was dry to the touch. Kinda' soft but dry. Time for the white primer.

The primer is not as bad as the zinc but its still pretty horrid. Rolled on two coats and it looks rough as a cob. Why bother sanding if no matter what I do its going to look like a fifty foot golf ball? I might as well have painted it with spackle.

During this entire painting fiasco it was threatening to rain. Luckily it held off long enough for the surface to harden. It took two more days for the primer to finally cook off. (In the rain.) When it was done the mast looked like it was encased in white leather.

Double sigh..

Al Rock!

Those that read these Banderlog narratives will probably recognize Al. Al is one of the people that routinely step in to save by sorry behind when I get myself in over my head. Well, here I was yet again with grandiose plans I can't accomplish.

I wanted to come up with a really nifty spreader tip bumper that would take the place of the mass of tape that was originally used on this craft. I had a few ideas what would be a "cool" way of doing it but no way to actually fabricate them. Al is fabricator extrodinarre!

Al took one look at my doodlings and sketches. Said something like "Umm ah.. How about this?" And that was just the ticket! He was on it in a hot flash.

Ta da!! The shrouds go through slots at the end of the spreader tips. These little caps hold the shrouds in place. The wire loops keep the head sail from catching on the hardware.

This is the upper spreader tip, the lower one is a little bigger.

Cool cool cool!
Were are things sitting at this point? I'm sanding the mast and spreaders again. I decided to sand the "leather look" off the mast and reprime the entire thing. The hope is that starting with a smooth base of primer and zinc there may be a chance of getting a smooth primer coat on there as a base for the top coat.

We'll see..

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