Monday 3 October
Starting with visitors, Jeff and Laura dropped in to see how the boats are coming along. Jeff is an old work colleague of mine.
JP was the first to get started pulling out his orbital sander and an amazing range of sandpaper discs to go with it. He made short, if noisy work of giving boat 1’s planks a light sand to allow the paint to key in. Chris, our esteemed treasurer, followed up with a manual sand where the disc couldn’t touch.
I mixed up the filleting resin for Geoff and Duncan to apply in boat 2. They were uncomfortably bent into the boat filling the plank lands to protect them.
JP moved on to glueing the metal rowlock pins into the Jarrah thole pins which the woodturners had made for us.
Chris also moved on to painting resin on the rudders after we had had morning tea. Geoff supplied us with some home made cinnamon scrolls that he made while watching the Singapore Gand Prix race which he was able to to describe to us non followers.
I was tinkering away cutting the joints on the gunwale blocks that fit up against the stems. It was the most difficult 3D process but I got better as I went along.
I then had a play with the oar blades which are currently clever blades restricting which side of the boat they can be used on. I want to make them symmetrical and so I made an MDF template from the smaller side fo the blade and then marked where we should cut the clever part of the blades off.
Another little job I tackled before shutting up shop was to use the router and a guide to cut grooves into the cox and bow seats to be filled with black glue to emulate traditional decking on old boats.
A little bit more sanding and filleting tomorrow and some painting.
Cheers Dave