The original oars in our Drascombe Lugger ONKAHYE had been overhauled by Capn Jack over 25 years ago, they had split grainwise along the blades. He glued them back together and added a metal strap around the tips, partly to hold them together and partly as an abrasion guard. He put on a nice coat of white paint with red and black at the tips, he may have been confused from hi airplane propeller painting days. They held up well with light usage. Fast forward to 2018 and we needed to spruce them up (No pun intended) for a photo shoot. One of the tips had a chunk missing, so we cut a piece of cypress to rough size and glued it into place with epoxy. We left the chunk fat on the sides so we could shape it after the epoxy dried.
I had bought some TotalBoat THIXO Low Viscosity thickened epoxy to try, I thought it would pump and mix easier out of the mixing tip. Pump easy it did, and as advertised the viscosity was low. Most of the epoxy ran right out of the oar tip onto our deck. I wanted thickened epoxy to fill a void in the tip and to provide a nice protective surface for the tip, plus act as a surface to fair. What I did at that point was dispense the epoxy into a cup and mixed collodial silica with it to thicken it to my desired peanut butter consistency, Not all was lost form the first round of epoxy, all the surfaces were wet and the thickened batch set well. I got the new cypress tip positioned and smoothed the ends with a coat of epoxy in prep for fairing While the epoxy was drying we sanded the looms with 120 grit, just knocked off the big chunks.
Tips ready for the 60 grit belt sander and 120 grit random orbital sander.
Shaped the tips then applied 2 coats of Rustoleum Marine Topside Oyster White and Bright Red. Tips were still tacky so the black had to wait. Our Lowes sells the Rustoleum and so does Jamestown Distributors.
Log of ONKAHYE.
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