April 2015

April 15,

April has brought warmer weather and a lot of rain to Alabama.  It's a good thing I'm building the boat indoors.  I did manage to get the garden in on one sunny weekend so the rain has been welcome.   As for the boat, I've made it to a major mile stone for me.  Exactly half the hull planking is installed.  I have one layer on the port side and 3 layers on the starboard side.  I'll post a few pictures soon.

One issue that I had to deal with is warped plywood.  It seems that there are a few sheets of poorer quality plywood in the middle of stack.  When I use the  machine to cut the scarf joint, the warping would cause a corner to lift resulting in a crooked cut.  I mitigated this a bit by lengthening the hand clamp so that it helps hold that corner down.  This helped.  Hopefully, I used up all the warped plywood and I can get back to the nice straight pieces I had before.

The next step is to build the scaffolding for the port side and start laying down the next two layers.  Money is short right now so that might have to wait a bit.  I can safely start the fourth layer on the starboard side at the aft end of the boat.  It is the bow that will have to wait until both sides are even.  This will keep me working until I can through a few hundred bucks at the scaffolding.

This is an older photo just to remind people what we are doing here.  Right now, it's difficult to take nice pictures.

April 19,

Sanding, sanding, more sanding and trimming.  Getting that starboard side 3rd layer complete.  I also spent most of Sunday building scaffolding for the port side.  I scavenged quite a bit of lumber from all over my shop and was quite surprised to find out how much I have.  I was able to build about half of what I needed and even have the first walk board in place.  I have 2X6's dropped down from the ceiling trusses and anchored to the boat jig by a 2X4 or strip of plywood.  The anchor wood will keep the 2X6s from kicking out.  See the picture below.

Picture showing the scaffolding being built on the port side of the boat.  The blue of the RGB is not operating in my phone camera at the moment and the batteries in my other camera were dead.  I thought the image was kinda cool anyway.

The starboard side of the boat having just finished the third layer of  hull strips.

The filler keel strake temporarily laid in place.

These customized clamps have proven invaluable for temporarily holding the strips in place while marking them to fit as well as the final installation.

Scaffolding on the port side being installed.  The first walk board is in.