Tuesday 7 May
It was really quiet and slow with just me in the shed to begin with and I’d been late, it must have been the cold weather. I got the rudder out and a print of a photo I had found of an unpainted shaped rudder with the ply laminates acting as contour lines around the hill like bulge concentrated on the forward side of the blade. I then stuck the patterns of the rudder section supplied blown up and printed by JP at 1:1 scale to a thin sheet of MDF and using a compass began to make pin holes along the patterns for joining up and cutting later with a jigsaw to make a pattern for the shape. JP took up this task later in the day.
Dr John and Archie joined me and he was soon planing another scarph into the gunwale batten.
Stuart and Harry arrived and I set Stuart the task of sanding the blocks for the gunwale which he was able to do while Harry chatted with him.
Veronica came in to continue to finesse the keelson/plank fitting with a small block plane that really made a difference. and when we dry fitted the planks at the end of the day we knew that we would be glueing on Thursday.
I did some really fiddly sawing of the bow blocks on boat 1 which butt up to the corner of the inner stem at some really tricky angles. I was struggling to concentrate on marking the correct cut lines and did a trial run on an off-cut before committing to the oregon block. It worked but I forgot to take a photo.
An old friend and local, Deana, visited us today, she is a well travelled sailor as are her son and partner, Ben and Leana who are currently on holiday from their work on tour boats in Norway. Deana brought Zen her Spoodle to stir up Archie who was further animated by Dr John playing drums on the side of boat 1.
Dr John (before he was called away for a stuffed mushroom lunch), JP and I finished the day by glueing the scarfs on the two battens for the inner gunwale. It wasn’t easy to get them to stay aligned and straight but we got there after a lot of adjustments of the clamps.
We really will glue those first two planks in place on Thursday and start making the second set of planks. Lots to keep us busy.
Cheers Dave