VISIT TO LAKERCRAFT

Today I visited the master boatbuilder Anže Logar and his company Lakercraft, where he is currently building a wooden river boat for transport of up to 60 passangers.

The boat will be used on Ljubljanica river which lazily sweeps trough the capitol city of Slovenia-Ljubljana. The level of workmaship and the quality of construction is on a very high level, and besides that, Anže also designed the boat, and made all the plans for it. No wonder if we know that he finished the 3 year study program for boatbuilding in Finland in one year, and he also has a previous wood engineering degree from University of Ljubljana. From the moment you step in the workshop, you can feel his passion for wooden crafts.

Today he was covering the bottom of the boat with fiberglass & epoxy, and I invited myself, to see how he does it, and learn something. It was very interesting, and I even tried to apply some epoxy to fiberglass fabric under his guidance, and the process now seems much less intimidating.

Anže really is a super nice guy, he builds great crafts, and he is willing to share the information and the knowledge he's got ( altough sometimes I have to remind him to use less tech languge with me, as I am far from engineering:) ). I must stop by his shop more often! So it was a very fun day in great company!

And of course I came home very motivated and finished sanding the hull, and if all goes well, tommorow I will glass it!

SANDING THE PRECOAT

After the precoat cured and dried for 24h I thought that it was time to sand it with 180 grit sand paper. But it seems that the 20 degrees Celsius (the temperature in the workshop) was not enought for epoxy to fully dry, so I was only able so sand it by hand, as the use of the electric sander generatet too much heat trough friction, and epoxy dust started to bond together in pieces of chewing gum consistency. So I only lightly hand sanded 1 half of the canoe, and let the rest cure for another 12 hours. But I got to put on the fancy suit:) (pleas consider that uncured epoxy dust is very toxic, so always use proper protection!!!). You can see the difference between the still shiny left side of the canoe and the dull sanded half on the right.

PREACOATING WITH EPOXY

I decided to do a precoat with epoxy, which basically means that you put on the canoe one coat of epoxy. The reasoning behind this is that the precoat seals the wood, and enables easier work when applying the fiberglas cloth, as when the wood is sealed, there is less chance of air bubbles forming underneath the glass fabric. Now it has to cure for at least 24h, and then I will sand it with 180 grit paper (to provide a good mechanical bond beetwen precoat and fiberglass), and after that, Anze Logar from Lakercraft will come by and show me a few tricks on how to work with fiberglass. To tell you the truth, I would like to leave the canoe as it is ( it looks nice to me, and I admit that I spent propably close to an hour in the workshop today just looking at it), as I feel nervous about the fiberglass laying process. But the best cure for that is to start right away, and if all goes well the outer side of the canoe should be done in one week. Exciting stage of the project for sure!

Some additional photos

Here are some additional photos of some stuff made by me (except for the mahogany closet, which was 80% made by my father in law, and I was the apprentice). The second photos is a dollhouse for my daughter, and the last photo is a LED light, which I made for our hallway.

Making the paddles & fine sanding the hull

Since most of the work I did in the last days was pretty boring and not much new was created, I decided it was time to make a pair of paddles. For the paddles I used ash, mahogony and some plump wood that was ment to be burned in the fire, but I decided it was way to nice for that. The purple colors in it are simply beautyful.

Some time ago I also built a smaller paddle for my daughter, and she wanted a picture of a frog and a picture of a grey heron on it, and what a woman wants, a woman gets, even if she is only 4 years old, so I burned the images to her paddle with a simple pyrograph. For her paddle I used ash for the shaft and some walnut leftovers for the blade. The paddle was fine sanded and finished only with natural oils rubbed into it.

For this I used a great product ( "Old craftsmens oil mix"- Rustikal, which is a mixture of linseed, tung and citrus oils) made by Samson . It even comes in an old style aluminium can, which I really like, make s you feel like an old craftsman instantly! I have also used this product for a mahogany closet build for a friend, and it looks and smells soooo nice! They have much better products then their web site suggests, so do not hesitate to call them and ask, they are friendly! The feel in the hand of the paddle that is treated this way is amazing,you actually feel the wood and not some synthetic varnish. I have allready tried my daughters paddle on 2 occasions and the oil finish works great, it just needs a recoat once in a while (you just rub the paddle with a cotton cloth soaked with the oil, and the finish is like new).

For all the glueing I again used the Mitol glue, which is my favorite by far, as it is exceptionally strong, easy to clean off hands, non toxic and fairly priced.

The big paddles are roughly shaped, they still need some work, but as I wetted the hull of the canoe, to swell up the compressed fibers (from the pressure during sanding) before the final fine sanding, I also had to wet both paddles, just to see the colors in them. It was hard to leave the workshop yesterday, I could stay there for hours and watch the colors of the wood!

Cutting the sheerline

With the rough sanding done it was time to cut the sheerline. For this I used the measurements on the station blocks, and I transfered them to the outside of the hull (remember: Measure twice, cute once!!!). Then I connected the marks with the flexible batten (actually a scrap strip of mahogany) and drew the line on all four sides. The first cut was made with the electric saw, to 5mm of the line, and then I went to work with a chisel, paying close attention to the direction of the wood grain, and I trimmed the wood to the line perfectly.

Fairing, rough sanding and gap filing

During the holidays I spent some time in the workshop, it wasn't the most exciting work, but it is very important stage for the final result. To avoid too much sanding, which produces dust, I first went over the entire hull with a spokeshave and home made metal scraper (basically just a flat piece of steel, sharpened with a file). After the high spots were taken out, it was time to fill a couple of gaps in the wood, and I did that by mixing epoxy with fine wood dust (for color matching). For the gaps in mahogany, which were almost non existent, I added mahogony dust, and for the gaps in spruce, I found that the regular baking white flour produces best results when mixed with epoxy.After the gaps were filled I let the epoxy cure overnight, and then the next morning I sanded the entire hull with 80 grit sandpaper, to fair it and produce smooth consistent curves.