Thursday 24 March
Adrian again sent his apologies and hopes to be back next Tuesday. We’re missing your input here. Colin turned up first and tackled the ends of the hog/keelson with his Japanese pull saw, lopping off the ends and getting stuck in with the electric plane from what looked like a precarious perch on the building frame. JP held the vacuum cleaner hose to save us from another dust storm.
Paul W took on the job of making the scarfs on the port side garboard plank and sharpened the planes to get a better cut. He went at the scarfs fairly gingerly to start off with but got used to the idea that you can’t make too much of a hash of it.
My relative, Colin, who was visiting from Perth, dropped in to see how we were getting on. He, like me, does quite a bit of sailing and is building a rowing boat in his garage from plans which adds another level of complexity.
Our next visitor was Veronica to see how the line up of the hog and the stems looked after the glue had set. She declared that the stern stem was only off kilter by one and a half millimetres. Should still go in a straight line then, I hope!
Paul R also came for a gander after I had prompted him this morning when I met him on our dog walk. He was impressed and promised to come back and join in when he gets back from a holiday up in the Kimberley.
I drilled a new pin hole in the scarf joint of the forward plank 15mm from the nearest edge of the plank which worked very well when I set up the string line. Later we were able to put the plank on the boat and see that the marked scarf positions were going to work well.
The hog fairing team had created the continuous curve up from the two stems and were now planing the sides to meet the twisting plank ends as they wrap around onto the stems. I put the roughest grit sanding belt into the belt sander and we shaped and tested and shaped and tested again and again to get the plank to land flat on the glueing surface of the hog which is at a constantly changing angle in all directions. There was once a nasty cracking noise from the tortured plank early on but later it wasn’t complaining nearly so much. I think it will let us glue it on next week.
Cheers Dave