Stripping the hull-liner

I ripped out 1/4 of the fabric hull-liner in the v-berth. I got rid of about 1/3 of the foam behind that. Rather bad pictures follow:

Pulled the fabric away from the hull. Learned the hard way that dealing with the main fabric, and the staples at the edges, separately, was essential. Bled all over the place.

The corners were tricky; cutting all needed fabric, not cutting wood, not chipping glass, not slashing myself. Whee.

Some of the foam came away naturally. But not much. The rest was glued on well.
After considerable experimentation, I found that scoring the foam heavily with the 5-in-1 was the trick. After that, you could scrape the loose bits off with the 5-in-1 ...
... and get the rest off with a spiral grill brush like this one. 2 things to note about this brush:

1. It’s brass. You don’t want to prep any surface in a boat with steel, because when microscopic bits of steel get lodged somewhere (as they always do), they’ll rust and disrupt whatever surface you put over it. The oxidation of brass is a lot less problematic.


2. It’s hand friendly. The bristled head is transverse to the grip, which lets me cover a lot of surface area without a lot of effort. The handle is wooden, and provides room for both of my small hands to hang onto.
   

The trick to my getting something like this done is to work for a few seconds, sit back and stare at it for a few seconds, work for a few seconds, and so on. It looks incredibly dilatory – even lazy – but the thing is, if I spend about half my time sitting back, I can keep this up for quite some time.

I get a lot more done in a day this way, because I can remain functional for so much longer. And it makes me stronger without provoking bad flare-ups. So far, I’ve been able to beat back flare-ups with ice and one day’s rest. That’s pretty amazing, considering how bad it was a few months ago.

Persistence, I find, is the key to success these days. Sheer blazing effort served me well … right up until it led to multiple arm surgeries. But it was satisfying as hell while it lasted. There’s nothing like tearing into a job, then turning around to find it’s done.

As I dictate that remark, I realize that the satisfaction of doing work this new way is quieter, but a lot deeper. I overcome a buttload of obstacles to do something like this, mentally picking my way through the minefield of that task until I figure it out. And then, as I do it, I refine the process more, until I figure out something that works for me and works for the task.

That satisfaction is subtle, but widely permuted: it’s the satisfaction of several different trains of thought arriving safely at their stations, and of several different physical tasks coming intelligently together to do a better job (in fact) than I had anticipated being able to do:That’s cool. That’s super cool.