Tuesday 22 March
Adrian had sent his apologies as his son was awaiting a Covid test result and thought it best if he stay away. Thanks Adrian, very good of you to put the team’s health before your enthusiasm for being here. We had a nice number of people rolling through today. Nick S and JP were the first to get started. JP tackled securing the stems in place for mounting after he had planed down the filling battens that he glued to the hog/keelson yesterday. I helped Nick get started on planing the scarfs for the first plank and the John S arrived in time to partner up with Nick.
Lesley went to work patching up the tape on the moulds to prevent the glue sticking to them later. Then Veronica arrived brandishing a refurbished First Aid box kindly donated by St John Ambulance Denmark.
Lesley got called away by some exciting news about the imminent arrival of a grandchild and John S went off to an appointment so we decided to have a cup of tea and think about how we were going to glue the hog to the stems and the frames. Tea break didn’t involve the usual huge intake of calories as there were only a few, not too good, choc chip cookies in the jar. To help set the scene for glueing the hog, I pulled out my computer and played the Off Center Harbor, Geoff Kerr video of him doing it on a Caledonian Yawl. The tip seemed to be lots of glue but we couldn’t see how we could move our stems up to a fixed hog especially as we had 4 frames to glue up as well. So we put the stems and frames into position and Veronica wetted them with resin then I buttered them up with plenty of glue mixed by Nick and clamped the hog down onto them. There was plenty of squeeze out of the excess glue to have to clean up afterwards.
Then we tweeked the alignment of the stems as we clamped them up and I think that we got a pretty good straight boat for our first attempt.
First plank scarfs will be glued up on Thursday.
Cheers Dave