No I haven't missed a couple of days, we have been catching up on some aspects of the curriculum that we had missed.
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| Stem scarphed and clamped onto the keel |
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| The scarph requires clamping in three directions, vertically, laterally, and horizontally. |
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| Different view of the joint with the basic shape of the transom cut out on the table behind. |
Yesterday was a good day, the stem is now scarphed to the keel and the elements of the deadwood have been cut out and are ready to be jointed into the keel. Oak is a very difficult wood to work and time consuming, if, as in my case, you are new to it all.
Incidentally I did refer to clamping horizontally in the above caption... well it is very difficult to clamp something 6 metres (19 feet) long so one has to get creative. The creativity involved the use of a 6 kilo pig iron. Having clamped the joint laterally and vertically you give the end of the keel a sharp clout with the pig iron; this closes the final small gaps, believe me! I should of course have used a hooked scarph but I opted for the 'wussy' solution.
