More Dust

Oh dear...

The good thing about an angle grinder with a paint-stripping tool is that it chews through old finish in a hurry and turns it into dust.
The bad thing about an angle grinder with a paint-stripping tool is that it chews through old finish in a hurry and then if you're not careful - VERY careful, it turns bits of the hull into dust, too...

I'm trying to get through the resin and cloth to the point where there's still a bit of resin/varnish/finish between me and the wood. It is do-able, but it is also very easy to go a bit too far. I'm not that worried because the boat will be getting a (very thin) reinforcement of glass cloth after all this finish is off and some of the internal work has been repaired.

The first picture here shows some of the nearly chewed through fabric in a patch in the upper right quadrant - sort of a whitish area - and the bits on the other side of the keel (foreground) where I've very nearly gone a bit too deep.

Right now the thing is SO dry that the skin is quite brittle.

For a bit of a change of scene (and to not run a power tool for a while) I've turned the boat over and started sanding the white primer off the framework. I'm not sure why anyone would put white primer on what was once a lovely wooden boat, but there's not much accounting for taste. Purists, of course, will take me to task for using the grinder but while this is a labour of love, there's only so much love to go around and this part of the boat is a wrinked mess, with a thick layer of fibreglass inside the hull, too.

Here you can see the boat interior dismantled farther than the last photos from January. I tried to take some shots showing where the skin had come free of the frame but the good old digital camera had used up its battery - next time.

Bought some chemical paint-varnish stripper - I'm pretty sure that's what's on the outside of the rest of the hull - and I'm very much hoping it isn't the resin used to hold that fabric on..
Til next time - it's late...