Everything Takes so Freaking Long

Of course I still have a business to run, and customers insist I eventually make them the parts they pay for. Making molds isn’t as much fun as it used to be, but of course its still fun, and once in a while I still get to see something a little bit original before anybody else, but everything seems to take way to much time.

If you watched the last installment of “Another Boat Project That May Never Get Finished” (Part 5a) to the end you saw me there about spent late in the evening. I didn’t come back from that five minute break. I went inside, had a beer, and fell asleep without finishing it. You may have noticed it was light and then it was dark a couple times in that 32 minute video. That was 3-4 days of work scattered out over several weeks. Some stuff at thr very beginning was months ago.

I have started on Part 5b. Measuring and fitting a single piece of aluminum to be temporarily screwed in for the main sole (floor) of the boat. Later the screws will be removed, and it will be riveted in. I actually shot some video measuring, but I don’t have a good place to layout and cut the sheet. In the past I have laid out aluminum sheet on a flatbed trailer, and set a circular saw just deep enough to cut through. I’ve still got the trailer, but its had a load of steel tube for another project on it for a while. I hadn’t unloaded the steel, because it was as good a place as any for it until I am ready to start that project.

I decided a few weeks ago to unload the trailer, and I noticed the wheel on the tongue jack was busted. I didn’t want to mess with it until I fixed that. I’ve had a new wheel for a couple weeks now, and finally just a little while ago replaced it. While I was working on it a fishing buddy showed up with a trolling motor and electronics off his boat. No, he didn’t want me to fix them. Not this time anyway.

A while back I fixed my buddy’s trolling motor with parts taken off another trolling motor I was given (thank you to that person), and when my buddy bought a brand new trolling motor he brought me the one I had fixed for him. I appreciate that. It will probably now be the one that goes on Whisker Seeker when it gets to that point. That’s appropriate, because the one I borrowed parts from had been slated for that role previously. Not counting the parts missing from the old one to fix this one, this one is in a little better shape too.

I still need to go unload that load of steel tube, and every time I walk outside I have to turn around and come back inside to find some work gloves. I’m used to not wearing gloves most of the time. In a machine shop there are things that can make you dead. Long hair, long sleeves, and gloves. If it gets hung in a spinning thing (drill, mill, chuck, etc) it can suck you in and break you. As a result I never think to grab gloves when I head outside to work, and in variably I burn my hands on tools or parts, and have to go find my gloves…

After I unload this bundle of steel, then maybe I can throw a sheet of aluminum on the trailer deck and start marking it out to cut.