Finished the salon table. Yes, Travis and Maggie, this pic is for you; it’s another result from Parks SuperGlaze. What I can tell you from this learning curve is that it took two tries and it is NOT perfect. The bar we did first was easy – no problems, essentially flawless. On the first round with this table, I think I failed to mix the two parts well enough. We had a bunch of bubbles with the bar (which we popped with toothpicks & they disappeared permanently) and I was zealously attempting to minimize the amount of air that got into the mix this time around. In my gingerness, I ended up with a table that didn’t cure. Although some of it hardened, there were multiple places that were still sticky two days later. Do-over!

Luckily it came up in pretty much one big sheet and required only a minimum of sanding to be back at Ground Zero. 100% acetone is my friend too.

So for Round Two, I mixed much more vigorously, which of course led to bubbles. Brock was a fan of the popping-them-with-toothpicks approach; I was more enamored with the hairdryer approach. Both seemed effective, but there were a lot of bubbles. After about 1/2 hour, the stuff was clearly reaching it’s don’t-mess-with-me-anymore point, so we let it be and hoped for self-leveling anti-bubbleness.

For the most part it turned out OK. For the first several days, all I could see were the flaws (some bubbles became permanent residents & there’s one area that didn’t level out and is a bit of a divot). You do have to be looking for them though, and the overall impression when you walk into the salon is WOW. I think the downside of owning a wooden boat is that you learn to be constantly looking for the problems so you can stay on top of them – and you can miss the beauty of the whole thing if you’re focused on the imperfections. Trying to keep that in mind, I do appreciate how beautiful KJ is.

The dinghy was today’s project. There’s a difference between cleaning and detailing. The little RIB was surface clean, but when I started going over it with a Magic Eraser (my favorite!), I figured out quickly that I would be changing the color of the whole boat before I was done. I will be continuing the project tomorrow on the bottom. It’s very tedious, but will be well worth it when she looks like new again.

Brock has finished installing the aft deck speakers and they sounds great! So nice to have the volume the same both inside and outside, or just playing on one or the other. He’s working on the hot tub again – we’re spraying a final gel coat finish tomorrow. Oh yeah, also had to replace the GPS antenna. The outflow of cash never ends!

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