Carving a door knocker in European Oak

As I am waiting for some stuff to arrive for the boat, I have started to carve a greenman door knocker. I found the idea and drawing in a book by Shawn Cipa, on gargoyles. It probably will be a decorative door knocker rather than a working one.

The door knocker is all wood, I am using a lovely piece of Oak, probably European Oak. The greenman is about 6" square.

I have done parts of it so far. Here are some pictures. More to come when I have done some more work.

This is made of two layers glued together at 90 degrees, to make it less fragile

Building the Boat: Fibreglassing options

I am coming to the stage where fibreglassing the hull is the next step. I have a 100 metre roll of 200g per square metre cloth and 30kg of epoxy (expensive!!)

So my options are:

3 narrow sections, lengthways, with the joints running along the fillets
1 metre wide sections across the sides
3 or 4 lengths of cloth across the sides
or go the whole hog and do each side on one length of cloth

I intend to use so called peel ply fabric. The theory is that less resin should be necessary and the surface finish is much, much better, requiring no cleaning of amines, and little or no sanding. That would be bliss, because I seem to have a bit of an allergy to polyester dust and I worry that this could translate to an allergy to epoxy dust too. Also the surface is supposed to be much better for subsequent application of coatings, ie paint.

If I do the whole sides in one go, that would need mixing a lot of epoxy at one sitting but would have no joints and hopefully no sanding.

Decision, decisions...what's the simplest and quickest!

I think I'll wait until I have the peel ply fabric before I make a decision. I have not used peel ply before, and for all I know it may not follow the profile so easily, in which case I will have to do this in sections.

There is a strip of the cloth across the side. It follows the profile quite easily with those fillets.

36ft of it!

As an asides, I bought a lovely pair of taylor's shears from an antique place. Much cheaper than buying a new one. Besides I love old tools anyway, they are most often superior quality and all that was required for those shears was to sharpen them, which took just about 5 minutes. As a bonus, they were made when the Brits still knew how to make stuff in their own country.

Is God wearing rose-tinted spectacles?

I do indulge in a bit of people watching at times. Probably because I am a grumpy old man, my observations may appear to be, how shall I say: a little  jaundiced. I also seem to be developing a way of looking a people as if I was not part of them,  just observing another species among many other species we share the Earth with.

So, that thought came into my head the other day: is God wearing rose-tinted spectables, as far as the human animal is concerned?

I mean, like a yound lady who finds herself deeply in love with a man who, in her rose-tinted,  be-spectacled eyes, can do no wrong, but whom everybody else see for what he really is: aggresive, violent, drunken, greedy, selfish, self destructive...the list could go on.

She hopes against all odds that she can redeem this man, that he will change and become the prince charming she always wants him to be.

I believe some religion sees us as being made in God's image.  Personally I hope not. I think God has made a mistake in creating man, is now wearing rose-tinted spectacles and hopes against all odds that man the drunk, violent, selfish, greedy, will change and become what He intended.

One of these days, God will wake up to the reality, or, just like the young lady, will loose her rose-tinted spectacles. Woe Betide man then.

Now, please gentlemen, don't take this too seriously. I am not intending to insult anyone's faith in writing this. This is more of a light hearted view of my fellow men, whom I tend to look at through my own yellow tinted spectacles, with my "grumpy old man" hat on!