Presents!

Yesterday was like a birthday! The UPS truck followed the mail carrier up the drive, both delivering packages - for me! Of course, I was expecting these deliveries but still it was fun to get them.

One box from Duckworks included two sizes of Biaxial FG Sleeving - one for Gardens' mast, the other for sampling/testing purposes.

Also in the box was a copy of Dave Nichol's book, The Working Guide to Traditional Small Boat Sails.

One box from Amazon had two quarts of Rustoleum Spar Varnish. Not terribly exotic but I've been using this varnish for a few years and I like it.

The other Amazon box contained a roll of stretch wrap plastic - to wrap the Biaxial FG Sleeving as per the Duckworks' Demo Video (scroll to bottom of the linked page).

And now, on to the fun stuff: I built a short, small diameter (43mm) section of birdsmouth spar for sampling/testing the sleeving.

I built a small stand to hold the test piece.

The test operation was moved to the house so Jan (recovering from hip surgery) could assist. The sleeving went on the spar; epoxy slathered on; everything wrapped in plastic stretch wrap which was then perforated to allow the excess epoxy to ooze out.

Estimating how much epoxy to mix was interesting. The 10 oz. sleeving looks like it will take quite a bit of epoxy to wet out, so I mixed up 60mg (which to me is quite a bit). I only used about half of that to wet out the 16" of sleeving.

Now we have to wait until this evening - or maybe this tomorrow morning - to see the results. Since this is the first time using this technique and a learning experience, I won't be disappointed if the results aren't great.