Monday 30th May
Before we start on today’s activity I’d like to go back to Friday when I took the Oregon timber around to Pete Wilson’s shed at Handhewn on Middleton Street, Denmark, otherwise known as the boatyard where JP is currently renovating his Couta boat, SallyAnne. The job we had to do was to cut rough sawn 3.9m planks of 200x50mm oregon into mostly 15×45 mm strips for laminating the gunwales and some 30×60 beams to support the thwarts. We started by thicknessing the planks so that at least they were square and clean on the outside. Then we cut two of them into 45mm widths. Pete started this with a hand held electric saw with a fence to set the width, but quickly realised that it would take a lot of time and create a lot of dust so we moved to the table saw and changed the blade to get the thinnest cut possible (2mm).
The dilemma came when we then had to get three 15 mm thick battens out of the 45mm lengths minus the saw blade cut. I decided to go with one 15mm and halving the remainder which gave us anything between 10 and 14mm which can be used in the end sections of the boat where the plans call for tapering battens down to 9mm. This also changed my plans for the blocks which were to have come from the ends of the 15×45 battens. I could now cut enough timber off the remaining 3.9m plank to make three 30x60mm lengths from which to make the beams and the remaining 25mm could be cut to 45mm wide to make the blocks. I’ve probably lost you by now. Not surprisingly as I was lost a few times during this process and had to call a halt to cutting to make sure I could work it out before I made a terrible mistake with our rare and expensive oregon wood. In the end Pete did a fabulous job and we had bundles of battens and beams for two boats worth of gunwales and a slab of wood left over if I have made a terrible misjudgement.
Today JP, Nick and I worked on the last preparations before glueing the Keelson into position on the frames and the inner stems of boat 2. Firstly a final sand of the frames and the stems, followed by a tricky time trying to align the stems so that we didn’t end up with a banana boat. This involved a bit of messing around with the stems and their attachment to the building frame at floor level. Meanwhile Mark gave boat 1 another sand.
Before glueing operations we stopped for morning tea of warm scones kindly provide by Kay and fruit cake kindly supplied by Nick.
When we removed the dry fitted keelson for glueing JP could properly see where the alignment of the stems was going wrong and further adjustment to the bow stem was made. Nick wetted out the joints and the Mark and JP applied copious amounts of glue to ensure a strong bond.
Tomorrow we’ll be shaping the keelson to receive first planks, setting up a jig to cut the blocks for the gunwales and filleting the inside of boat 1. Hope to see you there.
Cheers Dave