Pushing through the cold.

Its the season to be sick, cold and flu have both gotten me. Luckily the latest (a cold) i can pretend isn't there. Except for the sneezing and nose blowing. I like colds more than the flu, a cold you can tell to f$#@ off, the flu tells you that.

Enough on sickness, lets see where the boats ended up this week. It has been one big spiling party. Planks getting fastened and everyone has a project, these two boats are really hitting their stride.

Here is the bow section of the second broad i installed. In order of apperaence here are the tools of the trade, 1.5inch chisel, spoke shave, low angle block plane, #3.5 bench plane, backing out plane, and a scrub plane. These are all tools used in tuning up (fitting) the plank. Once your at this point in a planks life most of the work has been done. So it is time to steam it into place.

All three of these planks are mine, garboard (top) first broad, and second broad. You can see that we are past the serious twist so the port-a-power was not needed to fit this plank.

 Now that is a fit, no corking bevel but a great fit.

 Lots of clamping as the plank cools and takes the shape, i can see so many applications for stem bending i wish i would have realized what a fantastic tool this is years ago.

 A hundred screws later and the plank is almost there.

 Here is the plank in place, and if you look closely Juce Box is being "cool". Oh i remember when i was "cool".

 So that's the week, tune in next week when i take spiling and scribbing to the next level. This pic is where a shutter plank is to go, no wild edge, its got to fit the first go, no clamping, friction fit. I can't wait!

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Where i left off...

***To See Larger Images Click On Them!***

When i left i was plugging a huge knot in the planking. 

 The glue went on and that was the end of that little project for the day.

A little post mortem. The  lumber is going on, hulls are beginning to finally see shape. It's slow but.,,. reveal is sweet!!

 So here is the best pic o' the day, look at that focus, ha!

And we plod along.

Ok, ok, lets make up for some lost photo time shall we? 

The last two days have seen some sun, and some rain. So it goes here in the PNW. 

I started off making the first broad (the plank that sits just above the garboard). Ben had me try a different type of spiling, the edge along the garboard is scribbed and fitted while the wild edge is tabbed like all the rest we have done. This allows for unfairness in the edge of the garboard.

As with any other plank the work (and fun) comes in bringing the plank down to the lines describing it. You can be very accurate with a band saw, but you cannot put wood back.

We have a lot of lovely oak, but there are some spots that are knot so lovely. This is how i took care of one of them. Here you can see it before anything was done.

 First i clamped a piece of scrap on top of it.

Next i drilled out the knot making sure that the center of the hole was below the clamp line.

A little magic mixture and...

The plug is now fixed.

Trim and fair.

After i installed the plank i took a quick look for the plug and couldn't find it. so it seams to have worked very well.

Getting a plank on is never as strait forward as you would like. Here we are using hydraulics as a force multiplier to solve our clamping issues.

With the plank in place i climbed up onto the boat so i could get a better look at the seam. Its critical that the fit is perfect. Bless the scribe/spile method. Right fit first time!

If the boat was finished and flipped over here is how it would look. Keel, garboard, and first broad its gonna be sweet.

Knot everything was peaches and cream with this plank however. While milling it to thickness this little beastie appeared.

 I routed out most of the bad wood to create a good bonding surface for a plug that will be installed after the wood has a chance to dry a little more.

Finally here are some nice pictures of shavings and such.

What a week.

It has been quite the week, i apologize for the lax blogging but not only did we loose in the GC lotto but i was struck down with a fairly horrible stomach thing. In fact just when i thought i was better it came back with a vengeance. So i'll try and fill in some of the gaps.

Planks have been going on. As they do you will notice that the back rabbit to the bearding line has been coated with a red led substitute (the orange stuff) and Dolphinite (the vomit green stuff). The red led will help prevent the oils in the Dolphinite from soaking into the apron thus extending the life of the bedding compound. The rabbit to the back rabbit has been left raw to better except the cotton corking.

There is a hell of a lot of twist in the garbord planks. We put a small split in one of them. Ben is cutting a channel so that a spline can be glued in place to stop the split from running.

Here we have the prep work for the garboard i have been building. It takes more clamps than you would think to get the thing into place even after it has been steamed. 

  

Red led and Dolphinite in place time to screw this sucker down. 

As the plank goes on the clamps can be leapfrogged  down its length as the screws go in. With one of the garbords on the boat it really beginning to look like the lofting.

Just about here, after i had finished installing the garbord round two of the funk hit. It was off to bed and general misery until this morning. Hopefully next week will be better for both this blog and my gastrointestinal tract.

A grand disappointment.

It will be a few days before i post again. I need to sit back and lick my wounds after loosing the 2014 Grand Canyon Lotto. I had high hopes, well everyone does.

If anyone else knows somewhere else to get a twenty two day dose of wilderness rivers and spirituality i'm listening.