Varnish - step one

 Step one is really sand the heck out of everything, but we'll pretend that's step 0.8 and 0.9...

A bit of a hairy dog story, but Friday, on what was a brutally cold and windy day, I made my last big 'wood run'.  Not having a pickup or van, I hooked up the trusty utility trailer to the Volvo, and headed off to Forest Products for a stack of plywood.  Several dollars later, and I was on my way to the shop to rack and stack everything, and make a couple of re-cuts that were necessary due to my screwups in properly placing panels on the CNC - (which really stands for 'create new compostables'...)

On my way home, the trailer got hit by someone trying to drop in right behind me on the cloverleaf!  The trailer lost a clearance light, their car didn't fare so well.   They were nice about it, the young guy in the Smokey Bear was nice about it, so I just headed home.  I can replace a clearance light.

When I got back home, I had a great UPS 'present' waiting for me.  As I'd mentioned in the last post, I have become increasingly nervous about delivery times on components. So as I have finalized my choices, I'm ordering 'stuff'.  The ICECo VL45 cooler seems like a solid choice.  I knew I wanted a plug-in cooler, and after a fair amount of research, I decided on the VL45.  It'll be plenty big for a weekend's beverages and a steak or two :)

Tonight was spent laying down the first coat of varnish on the interior walls.  Mostly because of past experience with the vendor, I chose to go with TotalBoat light amber gloss varnish for the interior.  It's a couple of bucks more than some of the other products, but the quality is excellent, plus Jamestown and Totalboat stand behind their product.  

I chose to roll on the base coat with a 1/4¨ nap 6" roller, and then tip it with a 3¨ polyester/nylon brush.  I can still feel a little roughness in the surface, which will get knocked down by the next sanding pass (320/400) and we'll see whether it needs 3 or 4 coats!

Panels drying in the finish room