3785Hrs – I’ve Had Better Days

I was all fired up to paint some aluminium today but while I waited for the paint to be delivered I spent an hour finishing off the paintwork on ‘Oscar’ the dinghy.

That jobs done now and she looks like she belongs to ‘Gleda’.

The paint still hadn’t arrived so I decided to continue with making my modified mast bases. Basically I’m carving them out of solid oak and fitting hardwood ‘keys’ that locate into notches in the bottoms of the masts to stop them rotating. I can see now reason to use the bases shown in the plans because I’ve changed the game by using aluminium masts instead of wood.

Anyway, getting them into shape involved using ‘Big Bertha’, the large circular saw  in the woodwork shop. I’ve used her many times and always treat her with a lot of respect for obvious reasons. Today though my mind was not fully on the job and after making a cut and powering down the blade I wandered round to the other side of the saw to pull out the finished piece. The saw blade hadn’t quite finished turning (there’s no brake on it), none the less I stupidly reached in and she bit me. I’ll be losing the nail on my right index finger and will probably carry a long term reminder of my stupidity. It could have been a lot worse, I’ve noted the warning.

After patching myself up and having a bit of a lie down I carried on until I’d reached a point where I’d had enough. I’ll ponder the mast bases a bit more before continuing with them. Here’s a few pictures to show where I’ve got to.

Just as I was packing up for the day the paint arrived. I thought I’d get a first coat of the stern tube to see how it went. I got the lid off the paint, gave it a good stir and went to pour a bit into the roller tray. The tray tipped up all over my feet! I now have white crocs and socks.

Like I said, I’ve had better days.