3-21.

It felt like construction actually began today. We mixed our first epoxy and glued a few things together. First we primed the epoxy resin and hardener pumps, then put a liquid coat of resin/hardener mix onto the surfaces that were to be glued. That liquid plastic soaks into the wood and helps hold everything together really well. Once that was brushed on, we mixed up the resin and hardener and added the silica, which turns the liquid into a goop, from really runny to really hard, like putty or peanut butter as the epoxy manual describes one of the desired textures. The desired texture for our purposes today was mayonnaise. We slopped the glue onto frame 1 where the doublers go and onto a 20x20 cleat (a little block that another piece of wood will be screwed into). We were also gluing together the two halves of the centerboard, along with the puzzle piece that we made when we ran out of wood.

Dealing with epoxy calls for chemical hazard measures - gas mask, latex gloves, sleeves, clothes you will most likely be discarding at the end of the process. Apparently some people have really bad reactions to the epoxy when they're exposed to it, and reactions can become so bad that a person cannot be exposed to it again. We don't want that to happen, so we're taking all the precautions to not get it on the skin or in the lungs. Also the tools get all epoxied-up which is not too good for the new drill, but there's not much of a way around that I guess.

Once the glue is on and the doublers are in place, they have to be held in place while the epoxy cures, or hardens. We used nails (and screws in a few cases, on the cleat and the centerboard), which are basically acting as clamps until the epoxy dries, but won't be coming out again.
Here's frame 1 with doublers and the cleat (top middle of frame) glued on. It makes quite a mess, and this is only the beginning! Glue slides out all the edges, just like when you're gluing paper as a kid and getting Elmer's all over your fingers. We try to save the stuff that's seeping out by scraping it off and using it to fill nooks and crannies that need to be filled. For example, on the centerboard where our puzzle piece meets the main piece of wood there's a slight gap, so we pushed as much glue into that as we could.
It is also a very disposable process, involving many mixing cups that will go in the trash along with countless gloves, brushes, stir sticks, etc. Too bad.


And the centerboard held together with screws, nails, and clamps (or cramps as the British call them). It could take up to 48 hours for it to cure, when we can take off the clamps and proceed on.