Making snow, and a Do over!

A sticky situation... well, not sticky enough.
My hardener got contaminated somehow... I thought perhaps the night time temp cooled off to much for it (slow hardener) as it took two days to set... but was still somewhat pliable and didn't offer as good a sound report when tapping it over as the rest of my work on the bow.

Did two other test batches, same result... it comes out of the pump clear but when mixed up it goes cloudy. Any ideas what caused that? It was from the last dregs of an A sized drum, so maybe the stuff separates, aged out, or moisture got to it... whatever the case, I got some new stuff man... the good stuff.

Whatever the cause, I'm redoing it. I figure that anything worth doing is worth doing to the best of my abilities... lest it always be a curiosity of it's about to blow up or not. Rather spend the time here now than wish I did half way to Bermuda...

The glue failed, not the balsa. In most of it, its dead slick on both the underside of the skin and the top of the balsa. In a few places it grabbed hard enough to shred the mat out of the top deck skin... Good, but not the balsa shredding goodness I want.

In other news, I made a lot of snow. I'm entertaining building a water tank in the bilge, given I can find some FDA approved lining goop... I ground out the last remnants of the engine stringers to banish the last drop of oily goop from my boat. She did smell all lemony fresh, now I'm back to needing my respirator for the foreseeable future. Picture = post vacuum cleanup for the initiated. For the initiated... About 4 square feet, 4 plies thick of solid mat. The bilge was full of dust to the prop shaft, and an inch thick up to the rudder tube... I was sporting the look that suggested I had just molested a box of powdered donuts. (grin)You may also notice that the starboard settee is missing a piece. I was curious to see how much space there is under there for additional storage, not a whole lot... but a few wedge shaped bits of foam glassed in and there will be a nice home for a pot or tea kettle that there wasn't before. I'm not going to go back with drawers, it'll be a cabinet door for better utilization of space. Still have some work to do on that front, as the bulkhead the galley bolts to is rotten... as is the cockpit bulkhead. Water + Non-marine-grade plywood = mush.

Zach