How To Be Stupid On A Cold Day

[dougd]

I've posted here about the Rob Roy I have been working on with many failures but many successes. Today though was one of those days I should have avoided. All has to do with temps and wind. After a week or more of treating the second side of the gunwales I was ready to put them on but Mother Nature had a better idea. Let's drop the temps down and kick up the wind for SAG. Well I'm not smart enough to call a day good so went out and started to mount the second set of gunwales which involved adding some Gorilla tape to the cowling with a heat gun. Not a good outcome and will have to take the unsecured gunwales off and reheat the tape to make it good when the temps are better. God Gawd how I long for heated workshop! My camera died in the middle of this process due to the cold and something wrong with the camera as well.

Kinda long video but here's my attempt for today.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q4XmdSWKnBU

And yes you can take the time to tell me I'm not the sharpest knife in the drawer. My numb hands did just that!

dougd

 

[Robin]

When your breath is showing while you run the heat gun that's cold working conditions. Good Try!

 

[sweeper]

That's not as stupid as my neighbor headed up the road in his tractor this morning, log splitter in the bucket and a couple of kids hanging off the back. It was 14˚ F with a 20+ mph hour wind and they're going after an old dead elm the tree service left after clearing the power lines yesterday.

 

[Alan Gage]

That was pretty good. Nothing like a relaxing afternoon in the wood shop working on a canoe.

I had a taste of that myself when I was building cabinets, during winter, in my unheated and drafty shed before getting my new shop built. I setup a wood stove but I was only able to keep the temp about 20 degrees above ambient. 20 degrees outside/40 degrees inside was my threshold as anything below that my fingers didn't function enough to actually accomplish anything.

Today I was painting in my shop so I had the heat cranked up to 70. Had to take off my hat and fleece pullover.

Alan

 

[sweeper]

My first 'heated' workshop had a wood stove in it. It took an hour to raise the temp 10˚ so at night after work it was useless to do anything up there.

 

[dougd]

We had a house fire here three years ago on the 14th. Lost just about everything. I've shied away from wood stoves since then although it is very tempting at times. Love the heat from them but don't miss the work of moving wood around and spending a large part of the summer cutting and splitting a cherry picker load of logs. And like you said Sweeper, it takes a good hour or more to warm up a shop!

 

[sweeper]

We only have wood heat in the house, my wife ripped out the oil furnace during the Iraq war so I'll be cutting, splitting and hauling wood for a while long. Beside that stuff keeps ya young, I keep telling my back.

 

[Guest]

Freaking 8F outside with the wind howling, you can see outside through the gaps in the shop eves, door blowing open in the wind, breath fogging, warming your hands with a heat gun. Good stuff.

I’m not sure if my favorite part was when your fingers got so cold you needed both hands to fumble open a spring clamp or when you finally decided, after 15 minutes work, that it would be easier to stash the next needed clamps near at hand inside the hull instead of down on the floor. The hull wobbling side to side didn’t help with the numb fingered fumbling.

One of my sons wondered what I was giggling about and came to see. I explained your current shop conditions and his immediate thought was that I should fake a video in my shop. Pan to the outside thermometer at 20F, then to me inside the shop wearing shorts and a tee shirt with pit sweat, even if I had to special effects the sweaty pits and moist brow with a mister bottle.

I have no idea where he gets that kind of trickery and deceit.

(BTW, mister bottles and photography; I’ll bet half of the strikingly backlit spider web and “dew” photos I have seen were taken midday with a mister bottle droplet spray. Old ploy.)

Note: It is actually only 58 in my shop, and a bit warmer in my tiny shop office. A long sleeve tee shirt works fine though. I’ll bet Gorilla tape is still sticky.

Next winter, when your new, well-insulated shop is complete and heater furnished you should make a companion video. Maybe one with intercut scenes and commentary from both.

I think viewers should get to vote for favorite commentary, choices including:
My fingers are numb.
My fingers are freezing.
My fingers are frickin numb. (Those are all in the first 2 minutes)
This is a stupid idea.
God that heat gun feels good on my fingers.
Cold. Cold, cold, cold.

My vote for favorite commentary, “Why am I doing this?”

Good question, the forecast calls for 50’s in Penacook on Tuesday and Wednesday.

 

[Alan Gage]

I think viewers should get to vote for favorite commentary, choices including:
My fingers are numb.
My fingers are freezing.
My fingers are frickin numb. (Those are all in the first 2 minutes)
This is a stupid idea.
God that heat gun feels good on my fingers.
Cold. Cold, cold, cold.

My vote for favorite commentary, “Why am I doing this?”

Can we do write-in votes?

"I hate these frickin clamps"

 

[Boatman53]

I have no heat in my shop 95% of the time. I have three spaces that I work in, two have no heat at all the last does have an oil furnace but I'm not allowed to run it overnight. The shop was 28° when I got there yesterday and I was only going to be there a couple of hours, maybe three so it wasn't worth it to turn on the heat. In that timeframe by the time I left it would only been around forty in the shop. My next shop will be climate controlled.
Jim

 

[Guest]

Can we do write-in votes?

"I hate these frickin clamps"

Yeah, but everyone says that.

I wonder if that roll of Gorilla tape had been up warming in the house overnight, or left down on the sub-freezing shop.

8F Gorilla tape adhesive. Who knew?

I was waiting for the still running heat gun, set aside atop a pile of oily rags and newspapers, to burst into flames in the foreground.

 

[Boatman53]

This is what I use to do small glueups in the cold shop. The canvas drop cloth covers the whole thing and the table has holes so the heat passes through.

And here is my hot box the keep glue warm (never thought to keep tape in there).

It's an old mini fridge with it cooling works removed and a Golden Rod heater installed. It keeps the box 40° or more no matter what the shop temp is.
Jim

 

[Guest]

I have no heat in my shop 95% of the time. I have three spaces that I work in, two have no heat at all the last does have an oil furnace but I'm not allowed to run it overnight. The shop was 28° when I got there yesterday and I was only going to be there a couple of hours, maybe three so it wasn't worth it to turn on the heat. In that timeframe by the time I left it would only been around forty in the shop. My next shop will be climate controlled.
Jim

(I really like the mini-frig heater idea; I’ve hauled a few mini-frigs to recycling, one in the last few weeks)

The best home renovation I have ever done was to thoroughly insulate and seal (and expand) my shop. The original shop was well built, but poorly insulated. The roof was uninsulated; so much for heating that space, although I tried. Even in mid-Atlantic area winters it took too long and cost too much to warm the space to a reasonable working temperature. If this was an after work effort I’d be asleep before the shop was warm.

Climate control now is as simple as two electric radiant oil heaters, one if the shop proper and one in my shop office. Even with outside temps in the 20’s I need to turn them both down to low settings after a few hours.

Second best thing was to enclose a small (8x8) shop office in one corner. I love using 8 foot dimensions when building.

Third best thing was to include an outside window in that shop office, and an interior window from the office into the shop. When I work with stinky/nasty stuff I can open each those windows just a touch and run an exhaust fan in one of the shop windows for one-way fresh air flow through my office.

The little 8x8 office space (64 SF) heats up quickly and easily, especially since the volume is filled with desk/chair/computer, book shelves and file cabinets. There is just enough room to fit me in there.

That little clean space/office space cools off quickly as well. We do not have AC in our home, but I stick a window unit in the shop office in mid-Atlantic summers which, with open office door and interior window, cools off the shop agreeably as well.

I’m not happy shop working in sub freezing temps, nor in a Chesapeake summer when it is 100F and humid as heck with sweat dripping off my nose into my too quickly kicking pot of resin. I really appreciate the ability to control the shop temperature (and humidity), especially when doing large epoxy or varnish jobs. Working in a warmed (dry) shop, with temperatures falling slightly after resin applications seems to help prevent outgassing issues as epoxy sets up.

Yeah, that’s it, it’s all in the name of good epoxy work, not my comfort.

The above is intended to get Doug moving on a new, purpose designed shop space before next winter. So is the below.

Well insulated. Big enough to house two in-progress boats at a time, with tool and bench space. Gobs of shelving storage. Small corner office with windows. Lots of lighting and electrical outlets. Large door for canoe access/egress, small door for personal use. Cat door if you have a shop cat.

A carport or extended overhang for “outside” work in summer. Gawd dang but I wish I had built that for summer sanding and washing, rain protection and shade. It is awfully nice to work outdoors and immediately adjacent to the shop and tools.

I like my shop. I love this one:







I so envy those carports and extended overhangs.







Hey Doug, once the shop is finished get to work on the outside bar and bunkhouse (I’ll still sleep in my truck thanks).





I’ll come up and add the decorative flourishes.

 

[Alan Gage]

Since we're talking shop heat I'll put in a big plug for overhead radiant. Love it. We've had that in your repair shop (5500 sq. ft?) for 20 or more years now. Reznor. No repairs required. It's also what I put in my own shop when I built it a few years ago. It's great. I installed the heater over my main work area. It's like working in the sunshine. I leave my thermostat in the low/mid 40's (there are things in there I don't want to freeze) and when I go out to work will turn it up to the mid-50's. After just a few minutes those warm rays are beating down from above, warming the floor, equipment, tools, and me. Despite the cool air temp it feels quite comfortable under the heater. Just like standing in the sun on a cool spring day. And despite the fact that the heater is at the far end of a 40+' shop the other end of the shop, the end with the huge overhead door, stays virtually the same temp. Hands down it's the best kind of heat you can have in a shop, especially one that's heated intermittently.

In slab radiant heat was on my radar for a while but I decided that with such a huge mass to heat up I wouldn't get to feel very much heat myself when I went out to work in the evenings unless I turned up the thermostat when I was home at lunch.

And absolutely build that shop as big as you can. No matter how big you build it it won't be big enough but it's better to realize that after 5 years than 5 months. Insulating the slab makes a big difference too. Less energy to heat, warmer feet, and no sweaty floors in the summer, which keeps the humidity down and your tools from rusting.

Alan

 

[Alan Gage]

Way to stick with it, Doug. And thanks for sharing the adventure with us, both the highs and lows.
Hope you two have a great summer together.

Alan

 

[dougd]

Well, somehow trying to add pictures mucked everything up on my post so I'll start over. Thanks Alan, think it will be a fine summer with the Satan boat and yeah, it was a long process but am glad I kept with it. Still have some more to do which I envision steam bending again. Here's a few pics of the gunwales finally installed as well as the thwart. I have spend some time adding the back band, maybe an hour or so and the move on to the deck plate. Any resin work, skid plates, will happen this spring. That's maybe two hours worth of prep work and then a few days of curing to call it good.

 

[yellowcanoe]

Kerosene Monitor Heater here.. but the ideal shop would have a floor radiant heat system. The shop is in its own building.. Its back to below zero.. We go with the smallest space possible for those winters for heating efficienc..While most of the country has basked in hot weather I have been watching my home town.. Except for a few days of about 50 its been right around freezing.

Insulating the slab is a good idea.. Feet always get cold..

We are back home to zero tomorrow and significant snow.. Spring HAH