Tuesday 1 March 2022
New day and a new face. Colin M from Albany turned up just at the same time as I did bearing a packet of ginger nuts and his own tool kit. He signed up to become our 36th member and I learnt that he used to teach woodwork, which is definitely a bonus for us. His job for the day was knocking off those tabs on the thick frames which he went at with a lovely little Japanese pull saw.
Stefan P turned up and after a cup of tea also tackled those tabs on the inside curve of the frames but with a much noisier electric multipurpose tool. It did the job though. Their work was then interrupted by Kay bring in a plate of fresh savoury scones which we knocked off quick smart with another cup of tea.
JP for the second day turned up late and frazzled from trying to source a replacement ceramic plate for his pizza oven which cracked on Monday. We set about preparing a gluing table for the stems and found we had run out of baking paper so JP whisked off down to Supa IGA and bought some.
Then JP and I turned our grey matter to the clamping process on the jig that we have to bend the glued battens around to form the stems. We considered and rejected using blocks between the fixed clamping points favouring clamping the battens directly. We read the instructions on my phone and watched the Geoff Kerr video on glueing up battens for a Caledonia Yawl on Off Center Harbor. Then before the morning ran out we decided to go for it.
We laid out the battens and started pouring on the glue to the dampened and rough surface of one side as per the instructions. The glue didn’t seem to be going very far and I was horrified that we had used over half our supply on this first of four stem glueing operations. We smoothed it out across the planks with an old brush and a scraper. Harry was on hand to spot the areas we had missed or the unnecessary build ups. We stacked up the battens and transferred them to the jig just as Veronica arrived with a box of very useful and timely clamps and a belt sander. She helped cover the gluey battens in glad wrap and then we were ready to start clamping. What a process! getting the bend and keeping the edges flat on the bench and trying to close the gaps in between the jig mounts. Then you realise that the glue is magic as it starts to foam and fill all those gaps. We obviously had overdone it as it started to look like a scene from an old Doctor Who set with bubbling glue pushing out everywhere. Luckily we had wrapped it in cling film.
They say the beauty of using polyester glue for this process is that it easy to sand and plane off afterwards. I hope they are right! We’ll see on Thursday.
Again we had visitors today. Ian O came in to see how we were going, nursing a twinging back and Geoff B stopped by for a quick look. Then we had a visitation from the Denmark Men’s Shed guys, Mal and Doug to see what all the fuss was about.