Sweat Equity

August 21, 2015   Hours spent building to date: 1,337

The New York area has been going through some extremely humid weather, so after 3 pm I am reduced to jobs that don’t fog up my glasses and require minimal effort (like gazing at the plans and plotting next steps).  Nevertheless, it was a productive week cut a bit short because I am taking John on the long trek back to school in Oxford, OH over the next three days.

The deckhouse hull structure is now primed and I can start seriously working on the tanks.  Most of this area will be hidden by cabinetry, but in the marine environment think it helps to have paint on everything, and I hate to see bare wood.  Working at midnight next June I will probably think this was a time-wasting, unnecessary step, but it looks nice now.

I also milled up all the lumber for the forecabin beam shelf laminations and cockpit carlins.  At the end of the day today, I dry-fitted one of the beam shelves, thinking this would make a spectacular picture of a real piece of superstructure.  It actually looks like a stick and clamps, but it fits pretty well.  Because there are no frames between stations 5 and 8.33, however, there is a flat spot in the shelf because there is no structure for it to bend around.  So I will have to make a temporary beam going across the boat to get the curve right.

The pesky job of the week was fitting the sheer clamp to accept the forecabin and sides.  Because the sides flare out, this area started as  an “L” shape leaning out about 20 degrees.  But it needs to be totally vertical because all the side pieces attach to it.  I think the plans say something like “plane to fit after righting hull.”  This actually means sawing, grinding, planing and sanding a half-inch off 56 feet of tough, old laminated Douglas fir.  I did 28 feet in the mornings before it got hot and dread the rest next week.

Because bonding never really ends, I glassed in the heavy plywood “webs” in the motor well that hold the motor mount to the rest of the hull.  The mount is already held in with stainless bolts, epoxy, doublers and stringers, but I guess having the motor fall off would be a bad day.  So this area is now a mass of glass, tape and epoxy.  Is that why they call it a “wooden” boat?