Monday, July 20, 2009

R.I.P. July 20, 2009

After a life dedicated to cleaning, the Curtis wet/dry vacuum expired while selflessly sucking up liters and liters of sawdust and epoxy dust from the Curtis Pocketship construction. The vacuum was predeceased by its spouse Dustbuster and now joins her in that great Hoover in the sky. In lieu of flowers donations may be made to the Shop-Vac Retirement Home.

By the way, the photo also shows the transom skirt cap in place and on the right hand side of the floor the mahogany rubrails are milled and ready to have the scarf joints glued. The cabin decking is epoxied on one side and after sanding will be ready to glue in place tomorrow or Wednesday.


6 comments:

TrevC said...

That vac has been around since I was there. I think you got a good run out of it!

Dave C. said...

You are right, in the last couple of months it has been subject to a lot of abuse so I can't complain.

Cliff said...

Dave,

Looks like you are well underway with this project!
I am just starting my own pocketship.
Lots of little details to think of.
A question for you from early on.
When you made the centerboard trunk,was the lumber inbetween the panels actual 1" thick or dimensional lumber which is actually 3/4" thick?

Thanks,

Cliff

Dave C. said...

1" thick to fit the centerboard. I had to double check a few times myself but ALL measurements shown on the plans are the actual sizes. This means you will have quite a bit of careful milling to do on your table saw to get the dimensional lumber cut to the actual dimensions. You will have lots of fun once you get to cutting the trapezoidal shaped rubrails :-)

Cliff said...

Thanks Dave,

I'll try to not think of rubrails right now!
Do you need silica powder to for example glue the blocking onto the centerboard trunk, or glue up two pieces to make the noseblock. Can I use the cell o fill instead? I did not get any silica in my kit.

Dave C. said...

Cell-o-Fill is the substitute for silica. I used Cabosil (silica) because I didn't buy the kit and couldn't find a convenient supplier of Cell-o-fill. The cell-o-fill is supposed to be nicer to work with than silica because it doesn't billow all over the place into clouds of silica dust. The cell-o-fill will be used for all of the glueing on your Pocketship.