One down!

Its been really dusty here in the shop, so a mask is the name of the game. Unless of course you wand to blow oak buggers for days and possibly do damage to your respiratory system. The only problem i have with it is what a pain in the ass talking and drinking water becomes.

Despite the mask i have been getting a lot done. I made up thwart blanks, uninteresting pieces to be later turned into the thwarts of the boats. I have also been building the out-whale, rub rail, or bash guards. For one of the boats. You can see them in the background of the above picture.

I tried to shoot a small video of the process. The rail is shaped like a upper case D. The idea being that it is easy to grab from above but if the rail is coming down on top of an object, rock, boat, general what not, the rail will not catch on the object it will be pushed off.

So its a lot of long shavings that make up the creation of a rub rail.

With some long-board sanding they turn out great and are taken to a warmer dryer shop to dry until they are needed.


Meanwhile the planking on one of the boats was coming to an end. While this means a whisky plank it also means a huge amount of fairing or sanding, depending how you want to put it.

 Here is the last plank on the starboard side of the first boat. With the fastening of the plank the fairing begins.

 Lots of planing gets the seams closer and closer to fair.

 Then long-board sanding....

On the other side of the boat the last plank was going on and the whisky plank was announced  One boat planked up!

The crowd arrived to celebrate the passing of the planking milestone for one of our boats.

There was some shots drunken and some shots taken. Ben had the dubious honor of playing Powell on the planked inverted hull.

The other hull is getting closer and closer to completion.