Fiberglass and other crimes

Sometime ago I got the notion that when you build something yourself you get to control how much violence you do to your environment and to yourself.  Your time is your own and you know how to price it when youre doing something for yourself and so you can make good decisions rather than the strictly economic decisions of someone who has no goal other than to make money.
If you buy something thats been manufactured disreputably, the seller usually takes great care to keep you ignorant of how much damage was done to the environment and the people who manufactured the thing. The seller usually tries to create a happy shopping environment that floods your brain with endorphins so that you forget all about the awful conditions under which the thing was made, assuming that you ever cared how the thing was made or were able to find out how it was made if you did. Or as someone once said about sausages, you dont really want to know what went into them. And so if you buy anything you probably dont want to know how it was made.

So when somebody actually says something honest about a manufacturing process, I am heartened, and so I quote here from Thomas Firth Jones excellent book, Low Resistance Boats.
"Fiberglass work is alienating, because no matter what suits are worn and fans are run, its smelly and filthy and unhealthy.  Its possible to lay up a hull or two nonchalantly, but if the work is done steadily, alienation sets in. Ive never known a conscientious fiberglass worker, and when opportunity arises, many will go beyond carelessness to sabotage.  Urinating into the mold is standard.  Beer bottles and pails of uncatalyzed resin are routinely chucked into keels.  Whenever possible, the work is done drunk."
Well, you get the idea.  Jones goes on to advise the prospective buyer of a fiberglass boat to get it from a shop that doesnt do enough fiberglass work to be alienated by the process.

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Plywood the other boat skin

One of my ongoing research areas is what to cover a skin on frame boat with other than industrial fabrics sealed with modern sealants.  Yes, there are animal skins, and I know that people have covered their boats with cow hides, but you see, we live in an industrial society and the imaginary scenario I am creating for myself is that the factories have shut down and one has to operate as boat builders of old did, that is, to find boat building materials in their immediate surroundings.
Perhaps we have to broaden our definition of skin on frame a bit and allow a boat where the skin is the main structural material and the frame is of secondary importance.  Enter the plywood boat.
In my case, not a boat exactly but a plywood pool punt.  The main idea was to not spend a lot of money.  The secondary idea was to provide a stable lounging platform for a pool in an environment that is too cold for swimming for most of the year.

Here is the punt under construction.  One sheet of plywood formed the bottom, another formed the sides.  Height of the sides was just a bit under 16 inches.  Early trials established that 16 inch sides were too high so I trimmed them down to 13. Perfect. The sheets of plywood are screwed to battens inside the punt for additional support.  Water proofing of the screw holes courtesy of 3M 5200. Water proofing of the seams was done with a layer of glass adhered by epoxy. 

Initial trials also established that the sides of the pool abraded the fiberglass that I sealed the seams with so I added some wooden bumpers at the corners and some skid rails at the bottom for dragging the punt in and out of the pool. Then a few coats of gray paint from a five gallon bucket that a friend was tossing away, or rather, giving away. And oh yes, we realize that the pool is greener than it should be. 

The same day we launched the new improved punt we also ran into a small futon and some quilts that a neighbor was discarding.  These are now lining the bottom of the punt.  Very comfortable and stable to boot for someone used to sitting in narrow kayaks.  Sometimes it is OK to trade speed for comfort.

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Ventilation Air Subduction other reasons why paddles dont work as well as they should

One of my readers recently informed me that what I called air subduction already has a name in the field of boating, namely, ventilation.  OK, there we go, the internet once again comes to the rescue and dissipates darkness by spreading light, at least in the linguistic domain.
The original post, the one just before this was all about ventilation diminishing the efficiency of paddles.  Ventilation, the sucking of air down the back side of a paddle blade is a problem but can be fixed by appropriate modification of ones paddling technique.
But the problem, fundamentally of getting the best bang for ones paddling buck is that there are too many variables to the deployment of a paddle by a human and inadequate means for measuring input energy vs. forward propulsion, the two key numbers one needs to measure efficiency.
I thought the problem was more or less insoluble.  But perhaps it isnt.  Quite coincidentally while launching my kayak to do some paddle testing, I fell into conversation with a painter who has been commissioned to do paintings of some of the Americas Cup boats. He told me that the boats have a person on board whose title is tactician and he advises the helmsman, the person who actually controls the boat.  The tactician sits at a computer which gets constant inputs from a variety of sensors and then suggests ways to wring additional performance out of the boat.
Thats all I know, but I suppose that as software and sensors get more sophisticated, some of that learning paid for by sailing syndicates might also be used to increase the efficiency of lowly kayak paddlers.  I havent done any serious research on the topic, but who knows, paddle design might be advanced from art to science, assuming of course that someone cares enough to spend the money to do the research.

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The Yurt Gets a Door and other improvements

The sixteen foot yurt has lived for over a year without a door.  But now that it has a stove, I discovered that the yurt loses heat quickly without a door.  Actually, I already knew that, but since my improvements on the yurt tend to be on a just in time basis, having a source of heat made a door imperative.  The first stab at a door was to just staple some pieces of vinyl banner to the door frame, but in a wind they were practically useless.  So the next step was to build a door with a wooden frame, something more substantial that would actually keep the drafts out.

The stove, blazing away.

The stove pipe now has a hat which keeps the rain out of the pipe but the smoke hole needs some flashing around the pipe so the tarp that covers the hole in the rain doesnt get melted by the heat from the stove pipe.

One of my neighbors at the shop has donated a chair, a mockup for the console/chair for the boat he is building.

And here is the new door, a wooden frame with a piece of plastic banner stapled to the front of it.

And here is a view of the door from the outside. Love that shanty-town look.

Closeup on the latch mechanism. The string goes through a hole on the top and another on the bottom.  When outside the door, you pull the top string to pull up the latch or the bottom string to pull the latch down. 

By the way, the yurt has now withstood 65 mile an hour winds and survived.  Little by little, small improvements make it a better structure.  Surprisingly, the most challenging task was how to keep the roof in place since wind going over the top of the roof creates a vacuum which wants to lift the roof cover up and then blow it off.  An improved tiedown system did the job.

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