Tuesday 16 August
I had a surprise when I got out of my ute this morning as an old sailing mate from Perth, Ted K pulled in to the parking bay. I was expecting him next week but wasn’t sure which next Tuesday he had been referring to. I hadn’t seen him for several years because he had moved to Aukland, NZ. Over there he had got into rowing St Ayles Skiffs and has some great memories of exploring the coast around Aukland. He had heard that I was involved in building St Ayles Skiffs in Denmark and came and had a look a few weeks ago and has now returned to join the Association and get stuck into building our skiffs for a couple of days.
JP joined us and started by cleaning up the glued up keel while Ted started cleaning up the glue on the frames of boat 1. I made a couple more wedges to fill the gap under the gunwale on the middle frames. When JP was ready we all three took off to Harry’s other shed to use his bench saw to shape the keel. Luckily Harry joined us to guide us in how to set up the saw and shift things around so we had room to push the 5m keel through the saw. There was a bit of nervousness in getting going but we soon got the hang of it and it came out really well.
Back in our shed Dr John and Archie had joined us and he also took up sanding the frames in boat 1 with the multitool sander. He wasn’t around for long before he got a call for help from home where there was a plumbing problem.
Ted, who has been following this blog, endeared himself to the team by bringing in a packet of Tim Tams for morning tea which we had with Harry.
Roger had also joined us and with JP set about cutting the keel timber to scarf it into the two stems. He was in the process of showing us the Japanese technique of sawing down the slightly mismatched scarf when he put a nick in his finger and proceeded to christen the boat with his blood. Veronica dropped in between callouts for the St John ambulance with a clean uniform. She was a bit sad to see that her job of fitting the stern stem had been completed by JP yesterday but then stayed to supervise the all important second scarf joint cut and trim up.
The Denmark Senior High School boatbuilding students joined us after tea break and took over from Ted and Dr John sanding the frames. There was a lot of chatter and noise as they worked away but a lot was achieved in a short space of time.
I took up where John I had left off in shaping the rudder to get a finer trailing edge. using the belt sander.
Ted sanded boat 2 where I had added glue fillets the other day.
When the students had departed and the keel timber was getting a final shaping by Roger with a plane blade and then the router, JP and I got out the sheoak table top to cut into planks for the thwarts.
I firstly cut the 50mm thick table into 205mm planks and then after Ted and I loaded it into my ute, I took it around to Pete Wilson’s shed. Pete used his table saw and ripping blade to cut the 50mm planks into two 22mm planks. This was achieved by doing two passes with the table saw, one from each side and then finishing off with the band saw.
We then used a thicknesser to trim the planks and also ran them through the table saw again to make them 200mm wide. I took them back to the shed where we will trim them to fit.
Another long day but we are certainly moving forward well with both boats.
Cheers Dave