45.) If It's Possible to Gain Wisdom from Stupidity, Then I'm Going to be One Wise Fellow

One principle behind this blog is transparency. I have to say, though, that I wasn't all that eager to make this particular disclosure: I messed up.  Big Time.  And it's going to take me at least a couple of weeks to undo the mistake.

If you've followed my blog to this point, you might remember the issues I had attempting to vacuum-bag new planks to the hull. The first time I tried it, there were leaks in the bag I couldn't plug. I tried to compensate for the lack of a strong vacuum by placing sandbags into the boat to hold the planks down.  I think I may have even patted myself on the back for a good recovery.

Wrong.*

While finish sanding the planks last week, I decided to test the quality of the bond throughout the hull by repeatedly pressing the handle of a wooden screw driver down hard every six inches or so. When I got to the spot where the vacuum bag failed, I heard a sound.  A snap, a crackle and a pop.  It was barely perceptible, but it was deafening nonetheless. It signified an air pocket between the top plank and the hull--and therefore, no bond.  "I'll have to fix this spot," I thought.

But then I heard the same snap, crackle and pop on the next plank....and the next one, and the next one and the next one.

DRAT! (I might have uttered a different word in real time.)

The discovery meant I would have to remove a large area of planking--mostly by sanding the planks off, but also by chiseling a lot of very precise lines so another set of planks could be added. I was bummed--partly just because I had already started looking forward to the next phase of the project.  I also felt lousy because I realized that the sandbag remedy was a mistake. What I should have done the moment I realize the vacuum was going to suck (or not suck, depending on how you look at it), was immediately removed the planking before the epoxy dried and thrown the whole mess away.  That would have cost me a lost day at most, not a lost few weeks.

But there's no other option now.  If I don't stop to fix the planks, I will cause myself even bigger problems down the road. There's no easier way to screw up something like this than piling one mistake on top another.

Oh well, at least I'll learn how to do plank repair and will further polish my chisel technique. There's going to be a lot of chiseling. The photo below shows what the disaster area looks like now that I have removed most of the the planking that wasn't adhering as well as it could.

*This word is a paragraph unto itself because I want to emphasize it.