Tuesday, November 16, 2010

Building ‘Sharpy’ Part 25

The Heaters

Halogen Heater with one burner on

Gas Heater with one burner on

Keel Support Frame with side and bottom cleats

As so often happens, I plan what I hope to do the next day, but things don’t turn out as planned. Therefore it was not unexpected that I would not make the stock for the kick-up rudder; instead I added cleats to the keel box support frame. These pieces of wood are necessary to strengthen the frame and to provide more surface area for the epoxy to do its work of permanently joining the frame to the side and bottom panels of the boat.


By the time I arrived home after being with my grandchildren, there wasn’t enough time before it would be dark to measure and cut out the bits and pieces for the rudder stock. It was more profitable for me to cut and join the cleats to the keel box support frame, especially as I was multi-tasking, by being online and insulating the outside tap from the expected frost tonight. I needed to do the epoxying in the kitchen before my wife would want it for preparing the evening meal.


In addition to the above, I wanted to sort out the heating for the garage. I needed to test the heaters to ascertain how long it would take them to bring the temperature up to the required 15 degrees Celsius for using epoxy. After one hour at the lowest settings, the heaters only managed to raise the temperature to 7 degrees Celsius. I have a feeling they will need to be on maximum output for about two hours to achieve the target, but I will leave that experiment for another day.

4 comments:

Paul Mullings said...

Bill,I think what you need is Ye Olde Pot Belly. It could run on your off cuts etc.

William Serjeant said...

Yeah, that would do the trick; I had one aboard the Speedwell that heated the whole boat - almost sent her up in flames when the deck caught alight! A bucket of water saved the boat and my skin too!

Bill.

Paul Mullings said...

A friend of mine in the UK who owns the barge yacht Nancy Grey has one of these; http://www.canvasandcast.com/category_Cast_1.htm

William Serjeant said...

Thanks Paul,

The Pipsqueak looks good, and I'm sure it will throw out plenty of heat.

By using both of my heaters on full throttle, I'm able to get the temperature in the garage up to 15 degrees Celsius, which is what I need for doing the epoxying.

I made good progress on Wednesday.