Mon 6th June
Over the weekend JP and I did a bit of work offsite as we needed a drill press to cut the gunwale blocks out of two 3.9m length of 45 x 19mm oregon for boat 2’s inner gunwales. Yes we’re going fancy in order to have somewhere to tie fenders and dry bags etc. In JP’s garage we soon got into factory mode thanks to Mark’s design for a jig which I had copied earlier. We used a 28mm Forstner drill bit to cut the 19mm wide wood leaving concave edges to the 85mm long blocks which when sanded will go between the two other inner gunwale battens as mocked up below.
This morning I dropped into Pete’s shed on my way in to see if he could squeeze in another machine sawing job today. We arranged to cut the 10mm battens which were a bi product of the work we had done before in his shed down to 5mm laminates. These I will use to cover the top edge of the plywood plank to make it waterproof and make the gunwale even more fancy. Later we used his band saw to cut laminates from three battens.
Mark and Veronica got on with fairing the keelson while JP cleaned up the scarf joints which had come out really well from their gluing operation. Then it was on and off with the planks trying to get the rolling bevel at both ends of the keelson right so that we would get a fair plank shape and a maximum contact glueing surface. By the end of the day there was still more to do.
I worked on the inner gunwale batten which JP planed a neat scarf joint on, and then I tried to work out the difficult fit of the first block around the stems.
We had a few of visitors today, probably because it was a public holiday. Firstly Nick Miller of Global Autocoat, who has generously offered to source marine paints for our project and possibly even spray paint them on for us. The second was Peter, a good friend of Colin Morrison who had been sent to have a look at our progress on his way home to Bussleton. The third was Brian Wilson who came for a look and who I knew vaguely through our shared careers in geology and we had some great memories to share.
At the end of the day in the shed JP and I set off to visit a friend of a friend, Tom Hitchcock over in Lowlands who at John Longley’s insistence is restoring another Iain Oughtred sail and oar double ended skiff called a Willyboat. The boat was built 25-30 years ago and had suffered some neglect. Tom was doing a great job in restoring it and hopes to row and sail it with us on Wilson Inlet in his retirement.
We’ll be back at it tomorrow. See you then.
Cheers Dave
PS if you’re wondering how close these Iain Oughtred boats are to Viking boats and how to dress when we eventually go rowing here’s an example from last week’s facebook post on Sail Caledonia. Halfway through this sailing and rowing event across Scotland on the Caledonian Canal and the Lochs there is a dress up day with a prize for the best dressed boat and crew. I bet these guys won it this year.
