Appologize for no pics. Just by way of a report.
The estate shop (where I wirk) has a $4000 set of Festools built around the biggest vacuum they make. The System, and it is a System with a cap, is an installer' /remodeler's dream. Remodeling in an upscale house usually means removing all the furniture and taping/drapping plastic on everything.
You can trundel this vac and a stack of modular boxes containing your selection of tools (saw, sander, router) all clipped together into any room, plug in, open the boxes and start right in. Well, it's almost that good.
There is a kind of annoying germanic precision and hardness and hardedge personality to this extremely expensive set of tools. There is no funky to this grey and green clip and formfit tower of power. All tools have the dust and chips sucked up right thru the tool. Hardly any of it gets away. The sander I used you grip by the barrel - I can't get my mit around it, what do smaller hands do? "Ve vill hav NO Komplaints!" I really worked the tool - NO heat buildup. Vac going for hours - NO heat buildup. There's a huge bag in the vac - time to change it, finally?
NO complaints from the fine dust and glass. Opened up the vac to check the bag - the inside of the vac is compleatly clean, the huge bag doesn't need emptying yet!
Took the vac and one of the 5" sanders, the most powerful, but not the 6" that Jamestown and everybody else has been 'discounting' recently down to the boat and went to work without a mask INSIDE. What a joy!
No clean up! 5 minutes with the Makita grinder the dust is in every nook and cranny of the boat, and in the hair, up the sleeves, between yer toes, down the back.
It was difficult and time consuming but I used 24 and 40 grits disks to remove the gelcoat on the decks adjacent to the coamings. (Coamings removed.) This is where I had the epoxy fail on me. That's personal! So I took it down to the green. Actually blue, the mysterious blue first coat Pearson sprayed on some of the gelcoat befor they glassed. This narrow alleyway of deck has a 'reverse camber' in it, a sunken look, that's why I decided to level it - this is also where there is no balsa core. From the end of the cabin back is 'solid.'
Seems radical removing the gelcoat rather than trusting some dewaxing solvent. But I don't yet know what the problem is? Why didn't the first attempt to level the deck stick anywhere? Wax IN the gelcoat?
I'll do a small test today.
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