A quick update

...we'll add the pictures later. Sealing almost complete, cleaned up the shop in preparation for the construction frame and assembly and planking and stuff - but we won't be able to do any more work until next weekend (mumble fritz band mumble mumble thinking...).

Speaking of which, if you're in Winnipeg, come on out to Dylan O'Connor's on Portage, Saturday March 31st, and see Venus Murphy. It's gonna rawk. More after the weekend!

It's looking like spring!

Well, unlocking, anyway. Out to Wavey Creek yesterday for some tech support and boatbuilding - Courtney was put to work on his folks' new Vista machine (yoinks!) while Tara sanded down the sealed frames. We cleaned up the stringers with router and sandpaper (tried some little rounding planes from Lee Valley, too, but they didn't work all that well for this application). The picture on the left is of the sanded frames stacked up against the freezer, with a cedar plank in front of them.

Then it was time for the excitement - can you feel the excitement? - of cutting hull planking. We brought three big 1" cedar boards in from the garage and cut them into ½" strips. The smell of freshly cut Western Red Cedar is wonderful! Here's Tara standing next to one of the boards.

Now, we need a fair bit of planking to cover the hull - something like 13 square metres - and it looks like these planks won't be enough. More challenging, though, is the fact that these planks are only about half the length of the longest cedar strips we'll need.

Which means a whole bunch of scarf joints. Which means coming up with some kind of jig to make it easier. We played around with various possibilities and we think we can slide a narrow triangle against the tablesaw fence for cutting the scarfs. For gluing, we haven't played with this yet, but we can probably build some sort of box (two parallel sides) into which we slide the pieces to be scarfed. We'll figure it out and post pictures later.

Pretty cool to be cutting planking, though! That construction frame might be together by the end of the week. Or not; Courtney's band has been really busy. But the boat is moving forward.

Still here...

Not many posts lately because:

1. Courtney's band is very busy rehearsing for the new lineup's debut performances.
2. The current boat workload is all about sealing. Because sealing involves an hour or two of work every day, it's not really worth driving for an hour each way when you can con your father into doing it. ;-)

The sealing is almost done, though, and we'll be moving to the next stage (construction frame, construct the skeleton, and PLANKING!), oh, next week probably. We'll post some pictures of the sealed frames etc. - they look pretty good.

So, sorry there hasn't been much to see, but keep watching this space - things are about to get a LOT more interesting. Cheers!

Oops, forgot to take pix (again)

Out to Wavey Creek on Wednesday evening... the drive was terrible, 50 km/h from the edge of the city all the way to Highway 67 because the right lane was basically covered in ice. Assorted vehicles in the ditch provided cogent reminders that the intent of the journey is to arrive, not to get there quickly!

Anyway, we mixed up a test batch of S1 sealer and started sealing the CP case interior and frames. Very different from the glueing epoxy we'd been using to date - this stuff is very viscous, spreads and penetrates well. We mixed up a total of something like 400-450 ml and it covered all but one frame and half of another.

The S1 stuff lasts 48 hours in a sealed container, too, so you can mix up a fairly big batch at one time. There's a 12 to 24 hour window for additional applications without sanding, so Dad is probably going to keep plugging away until we can get back out there on the weekend. Hmm, the sealing might be done by the time we get there. ("You're doing a fine job, just keep going like that!")

On a completely boat-free topic, I (Courtney) am right chuffed because my recent regimen of drops and syringes has resulted in finally being able to hear out of my left ear (it's been quite a few weeks since I could say that). Should make band practice easier, not to mention just plain listening to people. Cheers!

Yeah, it's been busy

Wow, it's been a while. Not much boat action last weekend; Courtney was out at Wavey Creek but was busy with budgets ("work" work, not boat work). All of this week Courtney's been busy with his band, so the only real boat work in the last couple of weeks was this past Sunday.

We went out to Wavey Creek and finished (with file, sanders, and finally Tara's great hand sanding) the stringers and frame reinforcements. We're now ready to put three coats of sealer on all the "skeleton" pieces before we put everything together. It will probably take a few weeks, but I think we're still on schedule to have the hull complete and moved outside by (late) spring.

No pix today, nothing really exciting to show. Just... slow progress. We'll put up some pix of frames etc. once they're sealed, though. Cheers!

Progress, now with pictures

Not much work left to do on Sunday, so we had a lazy day in front of the fire. That's nice when it's very cold, and Winnipeg has been VERY cold lately. I think we might have hit -40° last night.

Anyway, we finished epoxying the bulwark reinforcements (earflaps) to the frames - the first picture shows an assortment of frames (they're propped up all over the shop) clamped and curing.

We also finished shaping the transom knee - this supports the angle between the keel (well, the hog, but it's all part of the keel structure) and the transom. It's another very "boaty" piece of wood, lovely curves as you can see. The long straight edge is about 10.5", and it's nearly 2" thick, so it should be very strong.

Finally, we re-scarfed the stringer that broke the day before. There's a bit more shaping to do with the stringers, and we need to clean up the laminated stem, but basically we're ready to start sealing. The frames, hog, CP case, apron, transom, and stringers will get three coats of epoxy sealer (on the surfaces we're finished working, anyway).

Then we'll cut cedar strips for hull planking, assemble the construction frame, and put the pieces together. That's when it starts looking like a boat - we're very excited to have that huge step this close!

P.S. Can you tell I took these pictures with my camera, not my phone? Vast improvement. - C.

No pix today

...but we've been busy. Courtney is house-sitting for his parents (they're fishing in the Bahamas, must be nice when it's like -100° outside here in Manisnowba!), so we headed up to Wavey Creek with friend Ron in tow. Ron did a masterful cleanup job on the shop, and we made a transom knee (pix tomorrow), PLUS we finished shaping the earflaps.

Not only that, but we epoxied half of the earflaps onto the frames. Good thing we had epoxy going, because somebody broke a deckshelf stringer (OK, it's hard to turn a 20' piece of wood end for end in a room that's only about 18' wide...) and it had to be scarfed again.

Really, pix tomorrow. But first, curry!