Thursday 12 May
The weather has changed from warm swimming weather yesterday to cold and wet today. Thus it wasn’t surprising that we needed an early cup of tea to warm us up to start work. Adrian and JP started by giving our beautiful skiff a light sand and then a clean up ready for a second coat. I tackled the job of organising the planks for boat 2 into a neat pile in the order (from the top) in which we will be needing them. A few still had to be edge sanded and later when John S and Archie came in he finished this job for me and moved on to the frames.
Tomorrow is Harry’s birthday so I had brought in a cake from the Denmark bakery to celebrate. When he came in we downed tools and boiled the kettle so that we could enjoy the cake with him.
JP had started on building a frame for the first boat when we turn it over next week. He nipped out for bugle head screws to hold it together and wet and dry sandpaper for a finer sand of the hull on Monday. Thorntons is struggling to keep up with all sorts of supplies including wet and dry sandpaper it turns out, so JP had to buy a mixed box set. I’m sure we’ll use it. Meanwhile Adrian, Harry and I took the stems for boat 2 up to Harry’s other shed to run them through his thicknesser and get them down to 50mm. All went well with Harry guiding us.
Veronica and her son Simon, who was recovering from an operation, turned up and got on with the job of cleaning up the tabs on the frames with a combination of a small plane and the multitool.
JP and I abandoned the building frame in favour of painting on the next coat of resin. With Adrian on the roller and me on the brush and JP mixing we gave it another gleaming coat. JP had brought in measuring cups to speed up the mixing process by not using the pumps to measure the mixture, as the resin pump, in particular, takes a long time to refill especially on a cold day like today (12 deg C may not sound cold in Scotland but it is down here).
While JP was in Harry’s other shed he noticed Harry’s stash of jigsaws. Ideal for a rainy day like today.
Final coat of resin on Monday and glueing up the boat 2 frames as well as the keelson and completing the building frame for boat 1 to sit on. Have a great weekend.
Cheers Dave