The Tardis Project

Jan. 31, 2015,  Hours spent building to date:  620 After the crescendo of putting on the last plank, we are now in the diminuendo of filling and fairing — troweling on a mixture of epoxy and filler at any possible low point, then sanding 90% of it off, trying to get to a perfectly even surface. Over and over again.

January 25, 2015  Hours spent building to date:  600 Ray and I won the Battle of Okoume Bend after a pretty tough fight deploying  big clamps and big screws, finally getting 1/2-inch plywood around Tardis’ shapely bow. Actually it wasn’t all that bad, even though I initially thought we were staring at a tactical disaster coming into

January 18, 2015  Hours spent building to date:  562 Ray and I installed two forward topside planks.  The chine will still need some epoxy sculpting, but it still looks okay. Filled and faired the fore-and-aft bow planking and began fastening it on.  I decided to use diagonal planking for strength and because it tends to

January 12, 2015  Hours spent building to date:  535 Port fore-and-aft planks went on without much drama, except…Ray and I took pains to make patterns from the planks that fit pretty well on the starboard side. But when we put them on the planking stock, we forgot to turn them over.  So the scarfs were all upside

January 8, 2015  Hours spent building to date:  521 Put on two more side planks yesterday with Ray’s help and started the bow planking.  The bow has a lot of twist and curve to the planking and has to be done in two 1/4-inch layers.  Aside from getting the plywood to bend, this is a

January 5, 2015  Hours spent building to date:  506 It took some big clamps and big screws, but two more planks are on the bottom, up forward where they really have some bend. To assume a fair curve, they lift a little off the stringers at station 10, since the stringer is unsupported and a bit flat