Thursday 6 May
The replacement wood for the next keel arrived at my house on Wednesday morning just after I had told Robert Ayliff that it hadn’t appeared. He rang and was about to apologise that his courier Mainfreight, had told him that they didn’t deliver to Denmark, now he’s really confused. I loaded the wood up onto my ute and brought it in this morning just before Adrian arrived followed by Lesley. Adrian got to work cleaning up the newly glued bow stems for boat 2 and Lesley sanded the laminates ready for the stern stems. JP turned up minus the remains of JB’s chocolate cake he was meant to bring in. Veronica started on the removal of tabs from the boat 2 frames while Dr John continued taking the tabs off the planks while Archie investigated the agapanthus in Kay’s garden where something had got his attention.
JP and I tackled the filling of the plank lands to protect the plywood end grains and add strength. The process is called filleting and using the curved end of a doctors tung depressing paddle the idea is to produce a concave or cove fillet. JP found the process very frustrating and it took time to work out how to get a consistent result. Before I started I injected resin into those temporary screw holes in the keel.
The laminates were finished and Lesley put the kettle on but with solidifying tubs of filler, JP and I couldn’t stop. After tea the others set about glueing the laminates.
Adrian had already moved the position of the metal brackets that the laminates are clamped to to form the shape of the stern.
Later Adrian and I did another mix of filler for filleting. The filler is a mixture of resin and a powder which forms an easily sanded filling. We finished without completing the boat.
It’s been a good week and we are making good progress on both boats. Looking forward to next week.
Cheers Dave
