The list

Before Johnny Cash died, he gave his daughter Rosanne a list of, in his opinion, the most influential songs of  his life time. Cash made it a point to make sure Rosanne recorded  some of these songs, and having  heard many cuts from her album, "The List", I can say its a good one. My list has finally been written regarding the old boat build, and it consisted of : #1- Finish painting the super structure. I now wonder why its taken me so long to  finally put together a list now that I have finally checked the list clean.... Im finished painting the super structure. The paint pot is on the back shelf, the boat is unwrapped, the shop has had two months wort of sand blasting, grinding, and over spray blown out of it. You know its dirty in your shop when you have to use a leaf blower to clean it out.

I guess this is a milestone of sorts for me as I really now feel I"m on the down slope run of this whole deal. No more of the feeling of "this sucks" that I was beginning to feel as I kept attacking the paint job. No more blowing the dust off of me as I call it a night. The other night on  Wednesday, I painted until 1:00 am just so I could get this monkey off my back. Oh well, time to move forward.

The paint turned out pretty good, and Im for the most part happy with it. I have a bit of orange peel going on, but its not to deep, and can be wet sanded out. Although a bit late now, I  need to understand what causes orange peel. I think its from not applying a heavy enough coat. Ive had problems with this paint not atomizing the way I think it should, so maybe theres more  going on with the problem being a few small details.  The wheel house looks excellent, and the aft deck also looks good.

I took a picture of the wheel house where you can also see the fore deck hand rails. when I put the hand rails together, I matched  the angle of the hand rail stanchion to the reverse rake of the wheel house windows. Now that everything is painted it finally shows proud, and I like the detail. Maybe Ive been hanging around the paint fumes too much, but I think matching the angle is nice detail vs a plumb stanchion.

Just because I wanted to see how some more finish work would look, I put a few windows in their openings. The white Im using is actually an off white. The dark windows make it look more pure white, but theres no  denying the windows look sharp in their openings. Im so glad I went with radius corners.

Like I said before, all the remnants, tools and reminders of the paint job are put back where they belong. My weather window is fast closing on me, but Im determined to get her to the launch site before the calender says its too risky. The earliest Ill be ready is in about three weeks. The ideal schedule for me would be to have the hull to the boat  yard on a Wednesday, the super structure the next day on Thursday, and crane the super structure in place on a Friday. This would leave me the weekend to weld the two together, then back to work on Monday. If all goes relatively well, I should be ready to  go in about three weeks, but as I know too well things change. Before Thanksgiving would be the ticket, but early December also works. Like I said before, Im cutting it close. Hopefully, some global warming will come my way and give me decent weather to work with.

Anyway, the list has been checked off.

Cheers