March 23rd
Took the week off to work on the Jumbo and it's rained everyday. This has slowed me down a tiny bit. The epoxy is slower to cure and I'm not able to spread out my sawhorses for extra work surfaces. But I'm somehow moving forward.
After fitting the side window panels/frames and windshield panels/frames, I then had quite a bit of glassing and epoxying to do. Because this framing is pretty minimal I felt the need to glass both sides of each panel. So the past two days has been spent just on that chore alone. The proceedure is the same as I've done with other glassing projects. Precoat the wood with epoxy, let it soak in, brush on more epoxy on any dry looking spots, then put on the glass, squeegee it down to make sure you have no wrinkles, then fill the weave. Wait over night so the epoxy is cured. Scrape the seams and any epoxy drool or glass boogers the next day. Then flip over the frames and repeat the whole thing again.
All the window panels/frames are done and I've repositioned them on the hull to make sure everything is still aligned. Tomorrow I'll start gluing them into place. I hope to have them all glued in, filleted and taped by the end of tomorrow. In the meantime I'm still playing around with the tugboat roof. I think I like it.
I'd ordered a new trailer winch stand last week and it came in yesterday. I installed it and it fits perfectly. This stand is higher than most winch stands I see, but is needed because of the position of the bow pipe and it's rope loop. I still need to deal with lockingin the bunk positions and the bow keel roller. As I've said before, the closer I get to the finish the more little things I have to do.
