The weather this morning was atrocious. Damaging winds and heavy showers lashed the South and West coast of WA. In the shed it wasn’t a day for leaving the doors open, perhaps that’s why we didn’t get many volunteers. JP turned up and later Paul H and we had visits from Veronica and a nervous dog that she was looking after for a friend and Ed W to pick up his fleecy.

The shed was not to this little one’s liking.

We set up plank 2 for scarfing which JP took on with a gusto that soon warmed the winter chills away. Nick had already done one side so there were only a couple of joints to plane. I took the clamps off plank 1 and was relieved to find how easily the temporary screws came out having used soap to lubricate them. Only a couple of the plywood washers were glued to the boat, one doing a little bit of damage as it was persuaded with a hammer to let go. I sanded the screw holes and later JP injected them with resin before topping them up with glue.

JP working up a sweat.
A syringe full of epoxy from nurse JP

Paul and I dry fitted the 4mm veneer of oregon that we are glueing to the top of the plywood gunwales and then had a tea break and a chat about various couta boats that are for sale in Perth at the moment, not that we need any more boat projects! It was into the glueing after that. We had difficulty aligning the planks again because the alignment holes through the scarfs are 5mm out on both end parts of plank 2 and have to be re-drilled. I wonder if this is a problem anywhere else in the world or whether the Australian CNC file has been corrupted. It certainly needs fixing before any more kits are sold.

Wetted up scarf joints ready for glue
All in alignment and glued up

We then applied glue along the 9mm edge of the gunwale on boat 1 and at this point I was running out of time as I had to make a presentation to the Riverside Club committee with Geoff Bowley at 1.30pm so I downed a bite to eat and changed into clean clothes just when I was about to leave JP and Paul were having problems with the use of masking tape rather than clamps to hold the veneer in place. It was slipping all over the place. So we clamped the first end then with a surprising amount of force you can pull down and into place the veneer as it bends around the boat using many pieces of tape (in fact a whole reel!).

Veneer clamped with masking tape onto the gunwale

After the presentation I popped back in and was pleased to see how well the taping operation had gone. Thanks guys for staying the extra time to finish it.

We have the Denmark Senior High School students coming in tomorrow to lend a hand. More glueing and clamping to do on both boats.

Cheers Dave