Tuesday 5 July
It was wet and cold this morning so I thought we needed a fruit cake to cheer up whoever turned up and picked one up on the way to the shed. JP was at the shed when I arrived but it looked as if we are going to be on our own until Veronica turned up.
I started cutting the angular ends of the inner gunwale laminate to fit the stem. Half way through I thought about matching the grains in the wood as the bow section mainly has blocks and laminates with the top narrow edge cutting along the closely spaced grain in the wood. Looking at my four wood laminates I realised I had three like that and one cutting the grain in the opposite way. I juggled them around and worked out where I had to trim them to avoid the knots then started cutting again. I cut the scarf joints in the middle and later JP and I planed them to a neat angle.
JP went straight into glue up mode for plank 6, the final plank or Whiskey Plank on boat 2. The string alignment system works very well on the last two planks and is easy to use. I can thoroughly recommend it and the Off Center Harbor video on how to do it in Geoff Kerr’s building a Caledonia Yawl.
Meanwhile Veronica removed the clamps on plank 4 and marked up the plank lands for plank 5 before removing the excess glue lumps and planing the plank lands on the boat.
There was a little glue left over from JP’s scarfing and as it was cold there was little chance of it going off in a hurry so we had a cup of tea and some fruit cake with Harry. Veronica mistakenly picked up JP’s mint tea and put milk in it and was wondering what odd tea it was when JP grimaced over his cup of black normal tea. The sad thing was that that was the last mint tea teabag.
After tea JP and I quickly planed the scarf joints in the gunwale laminates. I had again used an angle formed by a 100mm long scarf through the 15mm laminate of oregon. We then worked out a setup to glue them in a straight line and on top of each other like we do with the planks. It unfortunately limited our access to the tea prep area and the mug box.
I finished the day by joining Veronica in planing the plank lands and frustratingly trying to set the blade on the small block plane to the right depth. We just need to plane the end lands on the next plank on Thursday and we should be able to fit it.
Last night we had our first Annual General Meeting and on a very cold night 12 members attended at the Riverside Club. After the formal proceedings Peter Kovesi entertained us with pictures and route maps of his sail from Matilda Bay, in Perth to Cape Naturaliste on the SW corner of Western Australia in his 15ft sailing dinghy. It was scarily fascinating and entertaining.
Cheers Dave