Man Tools

So, this is what I arrived to find. Dogma out of the water, and 108ft of crusted on limescale to remove. Before we can even think about undercoating with red oxide, and slapping the three coats of black stuff on.


Didn't even pause for coffee, before I got stuck in with the hand scraper. Spent a couple of hours flaking off the gunk, before Peter (on the widebeam 'Big Baloo' next to us) took pity on me and brought out the angle grinder. Wehey!

It worked great. For about an hour. Until I broke it.


The bits that I did get to clean (about 20ft), came up all shiny smooth, ready for sanding down and undercoating. Peter (bless him) popped out with a tin of red oxide and touched up Dogma's rusty patches. I thanked him. "That's what it's all about", he said.

Though my first encounter with 'man tools' didn't go very well today, i managed to clean up enough of the hull to be optimistic about completing the whole job myself. And I got to make a hell of a racket and cause sparks (legally). So, not all bad then.

With a hand scraper, it would have taken me 3 to 4 days to play 'ring-around-the-dogma'. With a grinder (that doesn't break), a few hours. The hull looks pretty sound underneath, given it's age. Three weeks seems adequate time to complete the job. Though, I'll have arms like popeye by the time it's finished.