Tuesday 3 May
All my thoughts this morning were on how to keep a class of Year 11 boys from Denmark Senior High School busy when they visit today. I decided on a glue up of the boat 2 bow stems. We needed more baking paper to protect our table tops first and I nipped down to the little IGA for that before opening the shed. When I got back Adrian and Stuart were ready to start closely followed by JP and Lesley. Stuart and Lesley sanded back the excess glue on the keel while Adrian and JP attempted to get the temporary fixing screws out. The long screws felt weak and my soldering iron wasn’t cutting the mustard (or epoxy) so JP went home for his soldering iron and a mini blow torch to heat up the screws. After getting the screw driver very hot and singeing the wood they finally managed to unscrew the bow screws. I then had some success with my drill/driver before inevitably breaking a screw off. Two more screws were broken in the process but the rest were retrieved with patience and heat.
John S and Archie joined us and got back into his tab removal work. I tried to work out how best to make and fit bilge runners to protect the planking but I couldn’t concentrate on the task so we had a tea break at Lesley’s suggestion. After tea there was a change over of sanders from Lesley to Veronica and John S and Lesley had to leave as did Stuart a little later. Veronica started cleaning up the laminates for the new stems and was joined by the school students who really got stuck into it and had them ready for damping down and glueing in no time.
We had a visit from Kay to see how we were all going and I reckon the slogan on her jumper is something she certainly lives by. She gave the lads a rev up and had us laughing.
The lads donned gloves and got to work spreading the glue on the laminates ably helped by Cam and Patrick, their teachers. With the time running out for the students, JP was assisted in wrapping the inner stem and then the outer stem in clingwrap ready for clamping to the jig. We set the first few clamps and said goodbye to the lads who had been really great. They are keen to come back again soon and we look forward to it.
We were finished by 1pm and so we packed up the shed and went our various ways. Back again on Thursday for that filleting with filler on the hull that didn’t get done today and more boat 2 work.
Cheers Dave