Sunday, April 09, 2006

Sanding continues...

A little bit each night. That's my tactic for dealing with the sanding phase of building a Passagemaker dinghy. Well, not so much a tactic, really, but a consequence of some other things going on right now. So at least I am making progress. The interior has been given a going over with 120-grit paper, but some rough spots remain, a result of some inattentiveness while applying the final overall coats of epoxy. Those drips take a long time to sand down. But at least the bronze screws holding the bottom skeg and skids are nice and bright now! The sanding is indeed tedious, but at least in a couple areas where I started the 220-grit sanding, the result is very satisfactory. There won't be too much more to blog about as the sanding continues. But in the meantime, check out these sanding songs. CLC completed a recent month-long contest to write a "sanding song" and recently announced the winners. Total hours 75.25.

Also, I finally tackled a problem I had been putting off. Earlier, I had installed a trailer hitch on our Saturn VUE. But for months I had been avoiding finishing the job by installing the wiring harness. The main stumbling block was running a dedicated wire from the vehicle's battery to the harness switcher in the rear of the vehicle. One cannot simply splice the trailer wires into the VUE taillight wires because there is insufficient current in that circuit to drive both taillights and trailer lights. Instead, a logic switcher is spliced in, and is connected to its own power supply. I puzzled over several routes to run the power cable from the battery, through the firewall, under plastic panels, and to the compartment in the rear of the vehicle where everything is connected. I finally did it this morning, and after some fumbling with a rubber grommet in the firewall, I got the power wire in place. A clean installation, all ready to splice in the controller and the trailer harness plug.

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