Interesting and Unimportant

When we looked out the window this morning we saw a car hauler parked in front of the house. This was quite exciting because we don’t get out much and are working on the official designation of ‘nosy neighbours.’ There was one SUV parked on the top deck of the hauler and a couple of vehicles we didn’t recognize were parked on the street. We watched from inside for a few minutes and then Richard, coffee in hand, went out to talk to the guy working around the rig.

He said he was from Cape Breton and when Richard replied that he was born in Newfoundland, the guy said that the Cape Bretoners and the Newfoundlanders used to throw grenades at each other. The Newfoundlanders would toss the grenades and the Cape Bretoners would pick them up, pull the pins, and throw them back. They both laughed. The guy said he did a lot of single deliveries of vehicles and was kept quite busy.

As we watched he attached the ramps that led from the trailer to the ground. Then he took off the chains that secured the wheels of the SUV to the trailer. With that done he got into the vehicle and started to back it up off the trailer. I was quite alarmed when I saw the vehicle lurch and thought, at first, that one of the wheels had slipped off the tracks. When I looked more closely I saw that the wheels had settled into a kind of a sling made of chain. From there with another lurch they moved out of the sling and onto the lower track. Richard told me it had something to do with getting the right clearance for various types of vehicles.

The hauler has a separate motor to control the hydraulic arms that raise and lower the various parts of the trailer allowing vehicles to be parked above each other for transport. As the driver manipulated the various arms it reminded me of a grasshopper stretching first one leg and then the other. We thought he was delivering the SUV to someone in the neighbourhood but when we looked out later, the SUV had moved from the top of the trailer to the bottom and two other vehicles that were parked on the street were now on the top deck. The last vehicle to be loaded was a tundra buggy of some sort. The whole process took several hours and when we looked out in the middle of the afternoon the car hauler and its cargo was gone. Why, we wondered, had the driver chosen our street to shuffle the positions of the vehicles. Where were they headed and wasn’t it possible to pick them up in a last-on-first-off order? We will never know but for a while today our front street was more interesting than YouTube. As I said, we don’t get out much.

The second interesting thing today has to do with the current ukulele build. Because of the stage I am at in the build I have three different kinds of epoxy on hand. Mostly I use the 5 minute variety and when my old stuff expired i.e. became rock hard in the bottles, I bought a hardware store version before I got to one of the tool stores in town to buy a brand I like better. In addition to replacing my regular 5 minute epoxy, I also needed epoxy with a set-up time of more than 5 minutes. I tried Lowe’s and Canadian Tire and found only a marine epoxy. I almost bought it and then realized that it would dry white. Nope, that wasn't going to work. Using good old Google, I tracked down a local source for slow cure epoxy that dries clear but, according to their website, they were sold out so I resorted to Amazon. Once the long cure epoxy came, I happily went about the repairs that required an open time of more than 5 minutes.

Today I was chasing a few minor imperfections and picked up the resin and the hardener bottles of epoxy. I mixed up the two parts and applied it. I went into the kitchen to get a cup of tea expecting to find the epoxy had hardened when I went back to the shop minutes later. Back in the shop I found it was still tacky. I stood puzzled for a moment; then the light dawned.  I had picked up the slow cure variety so instead of waiting 5 minutes I had to wait 60 to 80 minutes. Oh well, better to pick up the slow cure when you expected the quick cure than the other way around. I did, however, take the opportunity to label the slow cure bottles with red tape so that the next time I’m too lazy to read the containers I’ll have a clear reference.

I think it should be cured by now so I’ll head into the shop to see what other imperfections I need to find and fix before I can proceed to sand the instrument and put finish on it. I didn’t used to like the process of finishing wood because it takes so much time and patience. Now I’m looking forward to seeing the wood grain pop as I progress through successive coats of finish. I haven’t made enough instruments at this point to have a finish perfectly dialled in so it will be a bit of an adventure.

Stay tuned.