Tuesday 14 June
A much more pleasant day today, weather wise. However boatbuilding didn’t go to plan. Firstly JP found that one of the aft scarf joints had slipped under the clamp but not irrevocably and when we laid it on we could see where adjustments were required to make the stern fit. But it was the forward end that has given us a real headache as it doesn’t seem to fall into place on the bow stem. We remembered having a similar problem on the first boat and having to reshape a bit of the plank to get it to fit. We put this problem aside for the time being and Dr John got on with scarfing the joints of the next set of planks.
Adrian, Stuart and I stripped the masking tape clamps off the gunwales in boat 1 and planed and sanded the veneer to be flush with the edges of the plywood. We were preparing for the High School students to come in and glue the first inner gunwale laminate into place. The laminates were sitting in the boat when they arrived and I got them straight onto wetting up the surfaces and preparing for glueing. They were pretty enthusiastic today, Three of them got gloved up to paint on the resin and off they went. Then we made up some glue and again we buttered up one side of the two laminates. Unfortunately when we offered up the laminate on the starboard side I realised that we had the port laminate. It then slowly dawned on us that we had put glue on the wrong side of the laminates so after a couple of mild expletives from me we scraped the glue off them both and re-applied it to the other side. This time it worked out OK but there was glue on the surface we were putting the clamps onto so the students did a great job of taping the pads of the clamps so they would not become a permanent feature of the boat. This had delayed their departure which meant they couldn’t call in at the Shell servo to get chips on the way back to school as they had been scheming to do. Sorry lads – next time. I was left to clean up the excess glue and all the tools and trays we had used with vinegar.
JP meanwhile was back on the plane scarfing the next planks.
We had visitors from Augusta Rowers today, Trevor and Linda Kent who showed us pictures of the progress they are making on their latest building project of a 17 ft Acorn two man rowing boat. It’s another Iain Oughtred design but with a flat transom. The plan is to offer this for the odd crew number days when they take their boats out. I quizzed Lindy about their launch day proceedings as we have to start planning ours.
Cheers Dave
