A while back I mentioned how much I love “kill -3” as a Java debugging tool. Today I decided that instead of having to put a redirection in the start up script for each app in the system, I’d change the logging class so that it would do a “System.setOut” to redirect standard output. And that’s when I discovered the horrible truth – that while setOut redirects things that are printed with System.out, it doesn’t actually affect the JVM’s actual standard output. WTF?
Month: June 2008
Kayak Construction: Finishing the deck wiring
Today I finished wiring the rear deck panels, attached the deck recess plate, and positioned and taped the deck down on the hull, and tightened all the wires. I was going to start gluing the deck seams, but a thunderstorm started as soon as I was about to start mixing the epoxy so I called it a day.
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Kayak Construction: finally some high res pictures
Haven’t been out to work on the kayak today, but now that Vicki is home I can finally take some high resolution pictures of the kayak. This one shows the deck panels up on top of the hull (although they’re just lightly wired and not connected to the hull in any way).
Another view. Note the wires sticking up.
Kayak Construction: Starting the top deck
Oh, two posts in one day! After the epoxy had dried a bit I went to scrape off the excess and I realized it was actually dry enough that I could work with it if I were careful. So I started wiring the deck. And it went pretty well. It was great to see that the lessons I learned from the hull are making the deck work much better. I got the front panels (panel #4) wired together, the shear panels (panel #3) drilled and wired to the front panels, and started on the rear panels as well. Everything is wired very loosely so that I can make adjustments afterwards.
It looks great, and I can really start to see the beautiful lines of the kayak for the first time. It looks exactly as I hoped, a hard chined British-style.
And once again, I am reminded that no matter how tempting it is, you should not put the portable drill down on the battery pack as shown in every catalog picture you’ve ever seen. I’ve now knocked over the drill again and broken a third 1/16th inch drill bit. I’m trying very hard to put the drill down on its side, in the hopes that my last 1/16th inch drill bit will last until the end of this project.
Kayak Construction: Flipping the hull
Today I start on the deck. First task is to glue the back of the cockpit together. That took about 30 seconds. But since once that’s done, the next step is to start putting assembling the deck on the boat. So I took the time to remove the two seven inch high pieces that were screwed onto the temporary frames when I first turned the hull upside down to work on the outside.
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