Tuesday 28th June
Another quiet day on the boat building front, but a good day for concentrating on the gunwale blocks. Lesley was in and keen to get started as she was going to have to leave early. She picked up a plane and started planing the plank lands on plank 3 and was later joined by Dr John (and Archie).
This left me to work out the spacing of the gunwale blocks on boat 1. After my realisation that I needed two extra blocks per side due to a miscalculation from the plans to my initial measurements, I improvised with the 4 blocks that were seconds. I also realised that long blocks under the rowlock positions were not going to bend to the curve of the gunwale and would have to be cut down and shaped. I chose to halve them and leave a 20mm gap where the Thole pin will go through. I then had to juggle distances between blocks based on two factors. Firstly the position of the thole pin (rowlock pin) with respect to the thwarts. This required making a decision on where the thwarts are going to sit in the boat. I have gone with the recommendation in the building instructions to spread them out as far as you are able to allow for long legged rowers. That done I could measure the distance from the boat frames to the thole pin. Then secondly I wanted the top of each frame to intersect a block. This required shortening the gap from the roughly 150mm between most blocks to 100 at the forward frames. I kept measuring and repositioning well after the others had gone.
Cheers Dave