White paper masks may make you feel like you are in the latest episode of Grey’s Anatomy and that you are performing some kind of life saving operation but let me tell you that they are useless when it comes to stopping sawdust from getting into your nose!
I am sick of sawdust. It covers our clothes, it gets in our nose, it is in our cars, in our beds, in our hair, in places I am not going to mention and it is persistent. We will work all day Saturday and still have sawdust appearing out of nowhere on Wednesday.
But the absolute worst part of sawdust are the dry boogers. For days afterwards it feels like someone has lined your nasal cavities with a thin layer of concrete. We have tried white paper masks and respirators, and almost anything else you can think of to no avail. About the only thing left is peeing in a handkerchief and covering your face with it. (Apparently that is a way to make it through tear gas)
Thankfully, oh so thankfully we are almost done with sawdust for the most part. Our gigantic pile of wood to sand has been reduced to 2 piles, one in our basement and one in the cockpit. Considering these piles required 5 truckloads to move each way, I think we have done an amazing amount of work. Okay it only took a year of sanding on Saturdays, but it is still a lot accomplished.
We have this almost down to a science now. We have all of the “To be sanded” items on one side of the cockpit. Andrea and crew, if they are there, sand in the middle of the cockpit. The pieces then get moved to the other side of the cockpit as they are completed, or handed to me inside to install.
There is also the cut and ready to install pile, where each piece is stacked next to its former self. For the most part these only need the edges sanded wherever I have made fresh cuts.
And lastly is the plywood scrap pile. Not that any of it is scrap and I am sure all of it will eventually be used but a pile none the less.
I find that old plywood has a rather bad smell to it in some cases and any piece that we can replace without major difficulty is being replaced. I also have a strong belief that we have reduced the overall weight of Akupara substantially as 40 year old plywood just seems heavier.
We managed to make a lot of progress yesterday and it feels good to be back in the swing of things.
The admiral and I were both feeling the same way at the end of the day. Thrilled to be approaching the end of the wood sanding, but scared of the next stage which involves sanding the cabin liner and the decks.
Never mind Grey’s Anatomy for those jobs, we are going full Breaking Bad! IF there is anything worse than sawdust boogers it is fiberglass boogers!!!
