OK...

Sorry to have been off the air for so long but there is only so much you can say about the process of nailing planks onto a boat without becoming 'Mr Boring'.

However this week we have, between learning how to renovate old boats, started work on the mast and spars for the ' Rose and have put one of my birthday presents to work with quite fantastic results.

Two 17' lengths of Sitka spruce that will be tapered and then hollowed out prior to being stuck together and then faired into a mast.

Planing up the stock using a leveller plainer, 4 kilo's of tradition adding its weight to a razor sharp honed steel blade, slices through the timber like a hot knife through butter...

THE BEAST at work!

It is amazing how much umphh you can get behind a plane that weighs in the order of 4 kilos it really does produce a beautiful finish and while there are steel soled equivalents they don't have the same feel.  Incidentally the test of whether the iron is sharp enough, or not, is to shave hairs of your forearm, the ability to hone the iron to that sort of edge is also a measure of the quality of the steel... this one is very good. (I have a bald patch on my left arm where I got carried away.)

As to learning how to renovate boats this has involved lots of action with an angle grinder, hammer, and skill saw, none of it pretty.  However, we have succeeded in learning a great deal about removing random planks from a clinker boat.  Ironic really, as the sole focus of my life at the moment is trying to get planks onto a boat not taking them off!

Back to the 'Rose we are now something like half finished on the planking and 15 days behind schedule, I refuse to panic however.. really I refuse to panic... Mr Mannering...  There is still a great deal to do but I remain confident that we will be finished on schedule, well we will meet the finishing date the schedule went out the window several weeks ago.

Steaming the end of a plank prior to fitting

One of the complexities that has challenged us has been the tuck at the transom and the difficulty of shaping the end of the planks; it has involved considerable torturing of wood with the application of steam and large screws!  The other difficulty has been cutting the geralds at the transom to achieve a smooth transom shape that reduces the danger of snagging lines etc.  This is the problem with having a wine glass transom and planked deadwood.

Over the next couple of weeks I will be ordering the sails and trailer and starting to look seriously at the rigging, so we will be running a number of things concurrently to try and catch up.

So that brings you upto date with the current state of play and I promise to be more diligent in keeping this blog current.

Next update tuesday