Hey gang,
Here is a picture of my next little experiment. Sorry its not a great picture. I used a little digital camera that was freebie with the new scanner. Its not great, color isn’t fabulous etc, but should get the idea across.

I found this rock a bunch of years ago on a beach. It was about the size of a fist. Dry it wasn’t much to look at, wetted out it was really pretty. I hauled it home and varnished and put it on my coffee table, thinking some time I’d use it for something other then..... holding down my coffee table and giving me something else to dust.

Well this project looked like the right thing. The Thule culture has a history of using Jadeite or Greenstone for both art and tool making and I was trying to put some of the feel of that culture in this boat. The Greenstone seemed to do nice things with the walnut. So it was time to clear the coffee table

I used a diamond saw (marble and tile flooring tool) to rip this into a strip width, same as I would do for wood. IT was cold work. Saw spitting cooling water all over. Doing it in winter helped keep the diamond blade cool, but .....me too. After I had the slab I cut the shape right. Then used emory paper to smooth the rough spots but not to smooth. I want some rough to give the epoxy a place to hold.

This piece is just an accent piece to fill the hole at the bow that goes with filling the football. Thought I do a proof of concept before I went stripping in rocks all over the rest of my boat.

Rather then sand the rock to fill the hole (difficult) I sanded the wood to widen the hole till it fit perfect. I used some real stiff epoxy that had been sitting around for a 3 hours to tack it in place.

Next I backed that part of the deck with a garbage bag in the hull and a taped the seams closed. I poured fresh batch of epoxy through the seams to wet everything.

I used adhesive tape to build a little triangular coffer dam around the whole thing. Then I made a batch of epoxy let it sit at 18 degrees letting the bubbles sort out. Then I turned up the heat and let the epoxy thicken a bit. Then I poured the whole thing into the the coffer dam and dropped the temp to below 20 to let the bubbles sort out some more. I let it sit over night at 20 degrees. In the morning I drove the heat up to 70 and let the epoxy finally kick and droped the temperature fast to 50. It took 4 days to let the whole thing cure. However it sealed into the seams and and over the rock in a triangular block with nary a bubble or froth in it.

I am planning on turning the boat over and do a small pour in the deck to back the piece

IF you look at the picture you can see an edge to the epoxy block. I am planning to fiberglass to that edged and then use sand paper to make the edge seamless.

IT seems to be working so, I am planning to use what I have left of my rock strips to strip in carved greenstone seal harpoon heads, animal eyes etc. So the piece in the bow is an accent that will be a repeated theme through the whole of the boat.

Any ways, I finally did it I started building a stone boat.

!RUSS

http://216.136.200.194/auction/Mar/20023194550978133996062.jpg