Fruits Of My Labor (A-113)

[Commander227]

Tony,
how about the heat cable for roofs and gutters. you could tape it in zigzags to the outside of the hull and cover it with Ebb's moving blankets. It would be like having in floor heat, and little worries of explosions.
Mike

[Tony G]

Well here are the preliminary shake outs. The shop stays "relatively" warm overnight if I go there for a couple of hours after work consiering the outside temps. The ambient shop temp was 45 degrees at 7:15 a.m. with the outdoor temp down around 17. The hot box was 69 degrees, which was the 24 hr. low temp., with just one light burning overnight. So the hot box will work for gluing or coating or what have you. It appears the limiting factor is going to be it's limited volume and in response we will have to make a racking system that glue and epoxy doesn't like.

The boat was a bit different though. With three 100 watt bulbs going over night the high temp was 60 degrees at the level of the side deck turn-out from the cabin trunk. That was the temp when I left her the previous night in a pre-heatd shop. The low temp recorded, and the temp I found the following morning was 52. Not good enough. So I fashioned a stable stand and adjusted all three reflectors to shine on an area of approximately 2' x 3' of the hull and set the thermometer slighly off center of the "hot spot". The following evening the shop's air temp was close to 50 degrees (outside temp of nearly the same!) and the thermometer's low recorded, high recorded and present temp was 79 degrees. That would work. One problem I see is fashioning a stand that will allow the reflectors to be aimed with the propper orientation.

Tony,
how about the heat cable for roofs and gutters. you could tape it in zigzags to the outside of the hull and cover it with Ebb's moving blankets. It would be like having in floor heat, and little worries of explosions.
Mike

I really like this idea, Mike. I had completely over looked the concept. You saw the Moorhead store when you picked up the Ensign hull. That building taught me a lot about winter water pipe "maintenace". I had also used heat tape and a variable rheostat in one zone of our reptile room for an under-tank heat source. Coming up with a way to hold the tape against the hull is important as contact is necessary and the heat will probably over power the tape's adhesive. I keep going back to the idea of gluing it to a blanket of insulation and then tying or strapping that to the hull. But the more I look at he curves in that area it would take quite a network of lines to hold it in place. And I can't overlook the fact that there is a good deal of cost involved to build it. Ok, less than $200 but that will buy a lot of light bulbs! But there is a certain "elegance" to your idea and I keep weighing the results of my light/thermo tests against the heat tape idea.

As an aside- I was completely baffled and thuroughly disgusted that the second curved plywood corner came out of the form nearly flat! WT... I certainly had checked the flex direction before cutting the flat stock and had that right. I double checked the off-cuts and verified that the orientaion was correct. But it was just flat out stubborn. It wasn't until I held the two pieces side by side that I noticed that they were two different products. Both were sold as 1/8" Baltic birch plywood but one had face veneers that were twice as, if not three times as, thick as the other. Crap. So hopefully Black Friday will find me at Valley Hardwood with the correct stock in hand. I just hope he doesn't have a stack of super thick veneer sheets.

Hey, have a wonderful Thanksgiving all!