Wait... $5/pound!?

Turns out Chuck was right - the tank indeed was monel (a copper-nickel alloy), and monel scrap is valuable - $5/lb in fact.  So the 50 lb that I took in to the scrappie was a nice little windfall (I'm sure it will get absorbed quickly in boat work of some kind).  Now I really regret that the first 15-20 lb of tank pieces made it to the dumpster before I took Chuck's advice and called around.

Ignorance is expensive.

Moving on (and trying not to think about the dumpster), the project itself is nearly done.  I have scraped and cleaned the walls of the compartment and painted them - the space is much more cheery now.  That said, it was easier said than done.  There is room for my svelte body down there, just.  But hardly room to swing a paintbrush.  And of course, I couldn't do the floor while I was squatting on it, so that had to be done lying on the cabin sole, working at fully extended arm's length, brush grasped with fingertips. 

Remaining to be done:

• Make and paint a floor board for the exposed opening in front of the generator
• tie off those hoses and cables.  Now that the tank is gone, you can see them.  They've always been there, loose like that, but hidden beside the tank.  I am uncomfortable with leaving things like that tho - I guess you could say that it offends me, in some nautical, shipshape way.

That won't be enough to make a blog post about, so please go ahead and assume that it's done.

I'll never tell.

And don't think about the dumpster.

Wait... $5/pound!?