Friday, November 9, 2012

Boat Project Disasters

The weather here in Georgia has finally cooled down to the point that I can tackle boat projects.  Yesterday's temps were in the upper 60s,  sunny, no wind, and low humidity.  Perfect for painting.


We had the leaky old teak decks fiberglassed over.  Resin got smeared on the gunnel and cabin sides, so that needs painting, as well as non-skid paint on the decks.  It's a big job, but something I've done before on a smaller scale.

I got mixed the two part Interlux Perfection paint into a plastic bowl and started brushing away.  As I painted, bristles started coming off the brush and I had to keep picking them out of the paint.  It happens, especially when one uses cheap throw away brushes like I do.  As I painted, more and more bristles came off the brush.  I tossed that brush away and got my last one.  That one lost bristles too, way too many.  I stopped painting.  I dumped the paint back into the can.   I hied myself to the local hardware store and bought myself a $15 China bristle brush.


I guess I'll give it another shot this afternoon after taking the dogs to the beach.

Since I couldn't paint, I thought I'd take a shot at another project.  Getting the hallway light between the forward and middle staterooms to work.  First, I got out my multimeter to see if I had power at the switch.  I turned on the meter, and as it's done since I bought it a year ago, the number display bounced all over the place.  I decided to call Amprobe to see what I was doing wrong.  Long story short, their tech support said it was defective and transferred me to their service department to see about getting it fixed.  The lady in the service department said they don't repair the Amprobe ACDC-100, they replace it for $86 plus my old meter.  For less than $86, I can buy a Radio Shack unit like my old one that lasted for 20 years.


So my advice to you is to avoid cheap paint brushes and expensive pieces of crap like Amprobe clamp-on multimeters.  Buy expensive brushes and cheap electronics.

1 comment:

  1. Buy an Extech from Amazon.com -- best of them is:
    http://www.amazon.com/Extech-EX330-Autoranging-Multimeter-Thermometer/dp/B000EX0AE4/ref=wl_it_dp_o_pC_nS_nC?ie=UTF8&colid=2CBIQBGPO0M1B&coliid=I3KDFKV289FEMA

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