We've started planking!

Minor emergencies (like Tim's emergency appendectomy, not to mention a wedding Courtney had to play and kind of forgot about) notwithstanding, we were actually able to start planking tonight. No pictures yet, they're coming soon. PLANKING, WOOHOO! That is all.

Summer and distraction

Well, it's been a busy summer. Lots of stuff happening with the band, and various people involved with the Shilling (most notably Tara and Buster) have been out of town. Tara visited the UK for several weeks, and actually got to spend some time with Phil Swift at Willow Bay Boats - how cool is that! No Shillings like ours on site at the time, but she did get to have a look at an open Shilling and check out the Willow Bay shop.

Buster was out on Island Eagle for a few weeks, and life is always busy, so we're just getting back into boat-building mode... well, Shilling-building mode, anyway. I (Courtney) trekked out to Wavey Creek for some Shilling work today, but got distracted: my nephew Tim has a new boat!

Buster and Tim whacked together a little hydroplane - it may not have a Tara-grade finish, but it goes well enough. Tim took it out for the first time, with Buster manning the oars of Mud Cat and me snapping photos. Check it out:

It's pretty fast, but I don't think I'll take it for a spin; it's got almost no freeboard with Tim in the cockpit, and I probably outweigh him by 150 pounds!

Good fun, though. Shilling construction resumes this week.

Ready for planking

Regular readers will probably notice that we've added a line drawing of the Shilling to the right-hand column. Here's a link to a full-size scan of the line drawing. She's pretty!

Not much to report on the progress front, at least not with pictures. Courtney and Buster finished beveling the frames and apron, and also tested the plank scarfing jig (I'll post a MIDI later, heh!), so we're basically ready for planking. Things are on hold while Courtney's parents are out of town, though... and then Tara's away in the UK for a while... and there's the Folk Festival... and lots of gigs... and maybe a trip to spend some time on Island Eagle...

Basically, what I'm saying is, progress is going to be slow for the next while. We hope to start planking in a couple of weeks or so. Talk to you then!

The stringers are on!

Yes, all four stringers are on. Courtney and Tara once again convinced Ron to help paint the fence, er, build the boat, and finished attaching the stringers this past weekend. Buster took this shot of them working away Monday morning.

It was good to have six hands for the job, too, for a couple of reasons. The first reason is that fitting the stringers works best if you have two people to hold a stringer in place and another to mark where the frame should be cut out.

The other reason... well, it's like this. There's this blade you can put on an angle grinder, and it has teeth rather like those on a chainsaw. Great for quickly roughing out, say, slots in the frames. Also good, as it turns out, for quickly roughing out slots in your thumb, if you get a bit careless with it. This left only five hands to work on the boat, or maybe 5.5 depending on how you're counting. Not the world's worst injury, and Courtney can still play guitar in his band, but it was enough to require a quick trip to the hospital.

Anyway, enough mit der sad stories - don't the stringers look great? You can't really tell from the pictures how neatly they're recessed into the frames and the transom and the apron, but it's a reasonably neat job, with the cracks all filled in with thickened epoxy. You can see Tara and Ron filling cracks in the last couple of photos.

We still have to pull the screws we used to hold the stringers in place, and then we have to bevel the frames and do a bit of trim around the hog, but the next big job is planking... and that is exciting!

Got the other sheer stringer on

...last night. Took all evening. Fiddly stuff. The deck-shelf stringers should be easier. Must stop telegraphese. (Only you can stop telegraphese. You can make a difference. Send money now!)

Good heavens, the avifauna at Wavey Creek! Hummingbirds, finches, doves, a zillion species of sparrow (well, it seems that way, anyway), blackbirds, cowbirds, woodpeckers, wood ducks and mergansers, to name but a few. No orioles this year or last, though, after a few years with dozens of them. Makes you wonder what's going on with their habitat, down south a ways.

Tempus fidgets.

Sometimes it's hard to find the time to update this blog. For the benefit of our regular readers, we haven't forgotten about you, and we are working on the boat; we'll have proper pictures when we hit the next milestone.

In the past week or so we:

• attached the transom;
• beveled the reinforced portion of every starboard frame;
• beveled most of the apron; and
  
• dry-fit and attached the starboard sheer stringer.

It's fiddly business, but now that we know how to approach it, the port sheer stringer should go much more quickly. The deck shelf stringers should be even faster, because they're recessed into the frames and held top-and-bottom... so they can't fall off.

Don't ask. ;-)

Pictures when we have all the stringers on!

We have backbone.

Yowzah, do we have backbone. This thing is going to be solid like Russian tractor, minus about three wheels.

We had threatened pictures, and here they are. Regular readers will recall that when last we left our heroes, they had put the last three frames in place, but hadn't taken pictures. The first picture shows the aft frames (6 through 8) in place.

Last night, Courtney and Buster epoxied and screwed the hog into place. Everything lined up very carefully, by Wavey Creek standards anyway. Admire the lovely hog in the first two photos. Look at the second photo in particular - see how straight? Ooooooh. Aaaaaah.

But wait, you say. What's that thing sticking up forward from the hog, you say? The thing with all the clamps on it? Well might you ask. It's the apron, epoxied and clamped and happy to be where it belongs. You can get a better view in the next picture.

Isn't that awesome? Note how nicely frame 1 lines up with the centre-line. That took a bit of doing. The joint between the apron and the hog was a bit fiddly too, but it came out OK. A bit of fairing, maybe some bolts through the joint just to be extra safe (we'll see though, Buster thinks that will actually weaken it), and Bob's your uncle. Well, actually, Bob's Courtney's uncle. Hi, Bob!

One more picture, this one taken from a ladder (this is what happens when Courtney gets a camera in his hands, folks) on the starboard side. The skeleton of our boat is almost complete - doesn't it look like a little whale? We like to think so.

The transom is next; if you look closely you can see the transom knee in the first picture, just roughly clamped in place. Have to consult with Buster before tackling the transom, though, so that's it for this weekend. Cheers!