The Patchwork Boat: Bungs

This weekend Mariah finally got relaunched after sitting on the hard for two weeks. We thought we only had to replace the stuffing box, but complications ended up making us pay the yard to replace the entire propeller shaft, stuffing box, and cutlass bearing. Mariah does have a nice new coat of bottom paint now, so she should be nice and fast when I finally find time to sail her.

Randy has put two of the new Yellow Cedar planks on, so I got to fill in the screw holes with "bungs" (little round chunks of wood). Filling in screw holes is a necessary activity because the screws will corrode and the surrounding wood will rot if they are left exposed to the elements. Also, having a bunch of little holes in the side of the boat would just look ugly.

Putting bungs in a plank involves several steps, the first of which is dipping the bungs in epoxy glue. This is a rather unpleasant part because epoxy is highly toxic (or carcinogenic, or something), and you really don't want to get it on your hands. You have to wear rubber gloves, which feel disgusting. The second step is to put the bung in the screw hole. That part is pretty self-explanatory. The third step is to hammer the bungs into the holes. This sounds simple, but it takes some finesse to hit the bungs hard enough to go all the way in, but not so hard that they split or shatter. The final step is wiping up the epoxy drips, which also involves rubber gloves, and is therefore also rather disgusting. Luckily, the feeling of accomplishment from filling in a few hundred little holes outweighs the unpleasantness of rubber gloves, so putting in bungs ends up being kind of fun.