The Tardis Project

February 15, 2015  Hours spent building to date:  684 The plans call for a fiberglass band all around the boat at the chine for strength and ding protection.  I thought it would be a good chance to practice fiberglassing, since I have only done it twice.  It turned out to be very tricky, so I’m glad we

February 11, 2015  Hours spent building to date:  669 One of the major reasons I build boats is the magic moment when varnish, or epoxy or solvent of any kind hits the boat and brings out the grain and color. After even more sanding (interrupted by the inevitable New England snow storm),  Ray came over and we

February 5, 2015  Hours spent building to date:  640 To be brutally honest, the level of finish I would like on Tardis is the kind that gets that horrible, backhanded compliment from folks walking the docks:  “Is your boat really wood?  Looks like fiberglass.”  No builder of wooden boats will EVER say that to another,

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

December 29, 2014  Hours spent building to date:  486 Put on two more planks and patterned a couple more over the past several days.  No drama — this is a easy part of the boat and the scarfs are nice and flat on both sides, the chine looks good, etc. I think what I wanted to