Tuesday 31 May
A great turn up today and lots of jobs got done. On Boat 1 Adrian began the task of filleting (putting a bead of thickened epoxy along the glue joints). Back breaking work but he managed well and did a great job.
We took the clamps off the keelson and Veronica supported by Stuart carved the stern end of the keelson for the first plank landing to perfection. It was her first go on the electric plane and belt sander.
Nick and Dr John got into planing the scarf joints in Boat 2’s planks. Nick raced ahead getting to Plank 3 by the end of the day. Archie seems to have got used to his lot at the shed now and does tours of inspection.
I was trying to get some time to make a start on the gunwales when Paul H turned up and was able to start the process of tapering the laminates for the two ends of the boat 1 down from 45mm to 35mm as specified on the plan. After getting a lesson in sharpening the plane blade from Nick he was ready to go and did a great job.
We had a good break for tea and biscuits in the shade from the sun and discussion revolved around the 27th mass school shooting this year in the USA and the stupidity of their gun laws.
Libby popped in for her Fleecy and Erica came for a good look to see what Dr John and Archie were up to and a cup of tea. Mark dropped his jig off for making the blocks in the gunwale the same length that we will be able to copy.
Great progress had been made by the time it came to going home and as people were leaving I had an “Oh Shit” moment when I realised that JP and I had glued the number 6 frame on the wrong side of the mould meaning we would have reduced the rowing space between thwarts 2 and 3. It was out with the multipurpose reciprocating saw blade and after a few attempts to set it up right I was able to cut into mostly glue holding the frame to the keelson and it came away with surprisingly little damage to either side. I then mixed up a dollop of glue and clamped the frame up to the keelson on the other side of the mould. This mistake was undoubtably the result of a bit of over confidence creeping in to the second build on my behalf, luckily it was detected before we started planking and easily rectified.
JP returned and joined Paul H and Geoff B and myself for a committee meeting at 2pm with one of the discussion points being launch day in November. It would be great to get input from members and friends on how this should be conducted.
I stayed on after the meeting waiting for my car to be ready at Denmark Mechanical Repairs. To fill in time I started the process of fitting and scarfing the first gunwale batten on boat 2.
See you on Thursday for more of these jobs.
Cheers Dave