Posted by Civilian Rafael Torres (Resident) in The Quill & Parchment- Second Chances

Posted by Civilian Karilan Massat (Owner, Quill and Parchment Books) in The Quill & Parchment- Second Chances

Posted by Civilian Rafael Torres (Resident) in The Quill & Parchment- Second Chances
Posted by… suppressed (4) by the Post Ghost! 👻

(snip)

Raf actually grinned and used his index finger to give something of a salute. He found a pair of coveralls and soon was applying the paint stripper with precise motions evenly over the surface. He simply started where his hand had been and went from there. But the focus required felt good. His mind couldn’t drift elsewhere and it was just him and the work. He stood back now and again and surveyed the work before continuing. “How long are you expecting the rebuild to take?” he asked curiously.

~Rafael Torres

Karilan had climbed on top of the ship and was stripping the protective paint off in long, narrow srips that rolled up as he moved. “By myself, with my schedule, I was looking at around three years to get it ready for flight testing and another one or two to make it fully ready. Ive ready put in a year. With your help? Teaching you as we go? I think we can do it in a year and some months. Maybe a little less. Thst work for you?”

Karilan

“Got no other plans,” Torres said, as the paint peeled off cleanly. He had learned with this sort of task that once you found a rhythm with it, that you needed to just stick to it and not think about it too much. Otherwise it just went wrong or got more difficult than it needed to.

“After we strip the paint, what will be next?”

~Rafael Torres

Karilan grunted a bit as they cleared a particularly difficult piece around a mounting bracket. “Well… after we get down… to bare metal… we will do a full integrity scan of every square millimeter of the hull, mark any weak points, check the welds for integrity, and then figure out what needs to be repaired and what needs to be replaced entirely. That should take us a couple of weeks, at least.” They finished the top of the ship and climbed down next to Torres and looked at where he was working. “Not bad. So you see these little bits left behind from your passes? If you oscillate the frequency up and down as you go, you can knock those off without having to go back. May I?” and they held out their hand for the stripper.

Karilan

“Sure,” he said, handing the device over to Karilan as he studied the small remnants. It would have just taken more time, but if Raf didn’t have to spend that time fiddling with those potentially annoying bits, he was happy to know a better way.

~Rafael Torres

Massat took the device and held it in his off hand. He put it against the metal hull and started to move it along; but with his other hand he adjusted the frequency modulator up and down. “Keep it between 10 and 18, and it will strip everything and not start vibrating your hand and bouncing off and skipping. Try it.” and he handed the device back.

Karilan

As he would tell anyone, he was not book smart, but Raf could follow something when he saw it demonstrated. He nodded and took the stripper back, moving to another section that needed cleaning. He began the next pass, toggling it just as Karilan had shown him and deeply focused on making sure he was getting each bit off. Raf turned the tool off and ran his hand over the bare metal that was now clean. He actually smiled. Not a big one or anything, but it was about the biggest reaction he’d show thus far. “Nice! That’ll save a lot of time, even if it’s a bit fiddly. There should be a setting on this thing that does the oscillation for you. Allow you to be more precise.”

~Raf Torres

Karilan nodded as he watched Torres work. “Its a good thought. Had the same one myself. Problem lies in the varying types of paints. For standard hull coating, 10 to 18 works. For mount casings and things like that, the range is a lot finer and varies based on who manufactured the paint. And don’t get me started on some of the non-conductive inner coatings. When we get to that part, we’re spraying chemical stripper. Its a lot messier, but we’ll save loads of time cleaning up versus trying to scrape that stuff off.”

Massat