.... something of a nightmare when it came to plumbing, horning, and levelling, and/or a combination of all three.
We now have the moulds in and succeeded in running a batten around the sheer before we finished on Friday, so actually not so much of a nightmare in the end!
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| This was how the week began.... |
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| We then put the transom in place and riveted it to the stern knee using 4" copper nails, driving them through a 1" oak plank and a 1.5" oak laminate presented some difficulty, but we got there in the end. |
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| The moulds were then put in place and we had something beginning to resemble a boat shape |
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| The Team at work, me on the left and Ben on the right constructing a sort of wooden cats-cradle to hold the moulds vertically, horizontally and laterally, not I can assure you the easiest of tasks and there was a considerable amount of re-working the frames to achieve the goal. |
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| Clearly something wrong with the bubble... the idea is for one person to hold the mould in position while the other screws it to the world! |
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| Fortunately we have Ben who is left handed, with a left hand brain thought process, and I'm right handed with no brain process, it does however mean that between us we can get into the awkward corners to screw things up.... let me rephrase that, secure the frames. |
These last two photographs show the completed mould arrangement, and in the previous photograph you can see the batten that runs around the sheer line of the boat, the top plank. It was at this point that we realised what a large boat we are building.
So a quick resumé of the process to date since we arrived in the ground floor workshop. We constructed the keelway; laminated the Keel, Stem, Apron, Stern knee, and Transom from oak; scarphed the Keel and Hog; cut and shaped the Deadwoods and morticed it into the Keel; routed the centreplate slot through the Hog and then through the Keel, in the latter case we had to route from both sides as the Keel is 3'" deep and while the plunge on the router would have coped with the cut the cutter itself was chattering in the cut ( Mike our tutor had a colourful expresion to describe it - but this is a family show!). Careful measuring meant we hit it to about 0.5mm; we fitted the cheek pieces to the Keel adjacent to the Centreplate slot to re-inforce the Keel; cut the Rabbetts on the Keel and shaped and cut the Rabbetts on the Hog, Stem and Apron; Cut the Stern knee and Apron to length, jointed the Apron and shaped the ends of both components.
We then glued the whole shooting match together with thickened epoxy; fitted the Transom which is more traditionally bedded and riveted using mastic and copper nails and roves; marked up the stations and fitted the moulds around which we will plank. This latter process proved to be extremely involved and was definitely a learning process, we found quickly that errors are cumulative and a 16th here and a 16th there quickly mounts up. In addition, I have already alluded to the necessity to ensure that each mould is correct, vertically horizontally and laterally, this is a complex enough process without taking into account that the moulds have to withstand considerable pressure and are required to be absolutely rigid. Needless to say there was a degree of reworking as we went along. Lastly we were able to run a batten along the sheer line and get some idea of what the final shape will look like, we have already made some adjustments to give her sweeter lines and the process of lining-out will take place Monday and tuesday to ensure that the strakes run fair and that she looks the part.
More to follow...
