New linky

Kind words and a link from bdillahu over at craftacraft.com. A quick glance (I am supposed to be working) suggests it's worth checking out in depth. Thanks Bruce!

Sealer coat is on

Sanded the fillets and applied the first coat of S-1 sealer last night. The stuff has a pretty long pot life so I mixed up a decent batch and will put on as many coats as possible before it hardens in the jar. Pix coming soon.

Douglas fir is splintery

So I'm sanding away on the keel, and the sanding block lifted up a big splinter which proceeded to enter the tip of my right thumb. Somewhat painful, some blood, but worst of all, a delay in the sanding while I glued the splinter back into place.

Then the band was off on a road trip, followed by a bunch of gigs back home, so the boat took a bit of a back seat. I'm pleased to say that I got back to work last Sunday, completing the epoxy fillets along the edges of the stem, keel, skeg, and bilge keels. Assuming tomorrow's sanding goes without a hitch, I'll put the first coat of sealer on the remaining bare wood tomorrow night. A couple more coats of sealer, final sanding on any stray epoxy drips, and a good wash, and it's painting time! Good thing Tara's home.

Oh, and I'll try to be more diligent about posting now that we're back to work.

At last, fresh pix!

For a variety of reasons, it's been a while since we posted pictures, but here are a couple to illustrate progress. The first one shows the stem and keel along with the bilge keels, which will help keep our Shilling level when she's on the hard. Constructing the bilge keels was interesting - they're laminated into a curve and then fit to the hull, which involves complex curves of its own, so the fit was a tricky iterative process.

The second shot shows the bilge keels from the stern, and also the skeg, which projects up (well, down, once she's righted) from the keel. As you can see, we still have to fillet the joints and do some final sanding and sealing, but the bottom structure is basically complete. Painting is tentatively scheduled for mid-to-late June, as both Tara and Buster will be out of town until the middle of the month.

Real progress, though--W00T!

Actually, pix THIS weekend.

I decided to hold off taking pictures until the bilge keels and skeg are in place, which is the last assembly job before we paint. In the meantime, we've chosen a colour scheme: Blu-glo White with dark blue bulwarks. Here's a rough look with the chosen colours:

Yep, she's gonna be pretty!

Quick update without pix

I'll try to post some pix this weekend; we've installed the keel and stem and laminated up the bilge keels and skeg.

Colour schemes

Per my last post, we're getting close to painting the hull. This calls for some serious decision-making, and being that kind of bear, I decided to whip up some graphic treatments of various colour schemes to make the choice more, um, reality-based.

All feature the same gorgeous BC background, sails textured from photos of actual sailcloth, and colours from the paint company's colour charts. The Photoshop work is quick and dirty, and there are no fine detail lines - we're just looking at topsides colours at this point. Oh, and I left the cabin, rudder, masts etc. white 'cause I'm lazy.

I know there are millions and millions of people reading this blog (heh), so I have decided to post these for your amusement and feedback. So, without further ado, I give you... Six Scrummy Schemes for Sturdy Sailboats!

1. With tanbark sails (kinda traditional in the land of the Shilling):

Dark blue with Hatteras off-white











Dark blue with buff











2. With white sails:

Hatteras off-white with dark blue











Blu-Glo white with sapphire blue











Blu-Glo white with buff











Off-white with sapphire blue











There are lots of other possible combinations, but these are the ones I like best, so they're the ones you get to see. If you have other suggestions, though, I'm happy to entertain them. Oh yeah, two more things: you can click the pictures for a larger version, and the colours look their most realistic if you actually print the pictures.

So, what do you think, O Mighty Blagsphere? I'd love your feedback!