Tuesday 24 May
Adrian arrived and was just as happy as I am with the weekend’s election result. He got back in boat 1 and continued with the heat gun and scraper. Later Stuart joined him. I had to keep asking them to go gently on the boat.
Veronica and Lesley had also turned up, although Lesley had to leave again. Veronica confidently got on with routing the inside edges of the frames and with the help of Dr John sanded them ready for mounting in boat 2.
Archie was on his best behaviour today sitting outside well away from all that horrible noise we were making.
JP and I took the newly glued up and remarkably straight keelson round to Pete’s shed where I left them to thickness (or rather width) it down to 100mm. As soon as I got back to the shed JP rang to check that measurement, teasing me that it was already down to 90mm. They both brought it back and it fitted on top of the moulds like a glove. Dr John and Veronica then scribed the centre line and the line of the plank lands along the edge.
JP got out the inner stems from storage and battened the outer stems to prevent them straightening before we need them later. We marked up the positions on the inner stems where the top and bottom planks were going to sit and then worked out the excess that we could cut off so that we could fit them on the moulds. Then we handed them over to Veronica who shared her new router skills with Dr John to cut a starting plank land of 45 degrees on the outside edges.
JP cut depth indication marks with his Japanese pull saw into the keelson so that we could plane off the correct angle for the garboard (first plank) land on it. We then set the keelson on the bench and set up to use the electric plane to get through the timber quickly. My trusty old and secondhand upright Dyson vacuum cleaner tried to cope with the out flow of wood chips from the planer but alas it choked up and required surgery. After that JP was careful to empty it when it looked like it was getting full. I’m sure he’ll bring his new whizzo vacuum cleaner in on Thursday so that we can finish the job without constant interruptions.
Sometime during all this we stopped for tea and fruit cake and Harry joined us with his instructions for tomorrow’s presentation that I’m giving to the Great Southern Zone Meeting of the Men’s Shed on our project. After the meeting the attendees are being invited to visit Harry’s shed and view our progress.
We’ll be back doing more of the same on Thursday and I hope we get another great turnout like today.