Thursday 17 March
Another day and more cakes to eat. Paul W got in on the act trying to compete with Lesley, the Queen of Muffins. Lesley’s muffins again proved more popular with the delicious passionfruit icing on top. I really hope we are all working hard enough to deserve them.
The main job for the day was getting the stems ready to fit into place. Lesley and Veronica knew what needed doing to the newly glued up mess under the clamps on the jig and made short work of planing it back to a flat surface which will slide through the thicknesser easily. Adrian meanwhile cleaned up the epoxy glue excess on frame 6 and gave it a final sand and JP and I made some final adjustments to the moulds to get the bow squarely in place.
In the absence of Harry, JP was in charge of thicknessing the stems to 50mm with Harry’s magic machine. I had a go at being the catcher on one section and then Veronica took over while I helped Paul W set up the router to bevel the inside edges of the inner stems. We also cut them to length on the foot end and rounded the corners that will be trodden on by rowers eventually. Then it was time to dry fit them to the boat and mark the flat line where the keelson will be glued to them.
Back up to Harry’s other shed to work out how to cut this rather awkward flat surface from a curved surface. We tried Harry’s band saw first initially staying well away from the line we needed to cut. Luckily we did as the band saw seemed to have a mind of its own and we discarded that plan and turned to the much more dangerous looking table saw. Here we were beset by problems keeping the bent timber flat on the work bench and perpendicular to the blade. Clamps didn’t work as they got in the way of the sliding mechanism. So we just had to hold it and gingerly watch that the blade didn’t come anywhere near our hands as it went through. Again we were conservative to start with and it seemed ok so we went for it 3-4mm above our line and just got away with it. The excess was then easily planed away with the electric plane. And presto we had glueing surface give or take 1mm that fitted on the mould and up against the keelson/hog. It was 1.30pm by this time so not wanting to rush into the gluing operation we packed up. Glueing up on Monday and getting the first planks out.
PS: some really fantastic news. We have been successful in our grant application for $5,000 from the Federal Government’s Stronger Communities Programme. This money will go towards trailers for the boats later in the year.
Cheers Dave