Thursday 16 June
The poor fit of plank 2 had been worrying JP and I since Tuesday. JP wondered if the poor positioning of the locating holes was because we weren’t dealing with the right match up of planks. Had they been mis-labled, or did the plank locating plan have an error in it? We both checked and no, there wasn’t any possibility for either. In the shed this morning Paul W measured out where the plank lands should be on the stems and it appears that Plank 1 goes further up (if the boat was the right way up) the bow stem than it should. Plank 2 has about double the planned overlap on plank 1 at the bow but comes close to landing where it should on the top side even though plank two is about 15mm off landing down onto the notch on the first mould (all other moulds the plank touches the notch as it should). Maybe this is how it’s meant to be. Paul W and I spent an enjoyable day with small jack planes putting the bevels into the plank lands and by the end of the day I was very pleased with the resulting fit. I even managed to reduce the unfortunate bump and dip of plank 1 on the port side near the bow or at least its carryover into plank 2.
Dr John was in early (before me) with Archie the mascot dog. He set himself up scarfing the joints on plank 4 and was really pleased with the results he was getting.
Geoff B was in for a few hours work and started by sanding the gunwales of boat 1, removing the lumps of epoxy left in the clamping process and cleaning up the inner side which had that accidental epoxy application on Tuesday. The boat is looking a little more robust with just one laminate on it.
Harry had been down to the shops on his gopher as Kay was away earlier. He came back with an incredible salted caramel mud cake which joined Paul’s Scotch fingers for morning tea.
After the break Geoff screwed extra clamping blocks to the forward mould and it was at this point that Kay arrived back from Albany with the St John patient transfer bus volunteer and caught Geoff working which she couldn’t quite believe. She said she’d only ever seen him drinking cups of tea.
At the end of the day the stock of planks ready for glueing had doubled thanks to Dr John and we had a good fit for plank 2.
I hope the weather is good on Monday so we can get on with glueing these planks.
Have a great weekend.
Cheers Dave