Lying down on the job

Spent just about the whole day flat on my back, but hard at work.

I now have the first layer of both sheers in place. At present they are only clamped on. Hopefully tomorrow I can glue/screw them on.

Speaking of clamps, I went satisfied my clamp addiction by getting another fix in the form of 8 new clamps. Needed them to have enough to clamp both sheers in place.

I have read in a few places that when building a wooden boat, anything metal you put in is bound to get in the way. Well I experienced that a lot to day. Had to remove completely one of the deck beam bolts, and in several other places had to remove the nut and washer to complete a cut. So I am going to end up with lots of washers with a flat ground in them.

No photo today, as I can't get a decent shot of the sheers installed.

First Sheer almost fits

Got a couple of free hours today to work on the boat - Yee hah.

Spent the time bevelling the sheers notches to suit the curve of the sheer.   I have got it very close to right.  I bit of fine tuning with a rasp should see it finished.  Then I get to do it all again on the other side. 

Couple of things I have observed. 

1.  As everybody says....the forces on the frames are quite severe, with the sheer only on one side it pushes the frames sideways by probably 1/4 an inch.  It wants to push further but the extra bracing I put in has stopped that.  I will definitely get the other side notched out and the sheer clamped in place before glueing this side to try and keep the forces balanced.

2. I had one notch that seemed oddly out.  I studied it for a while then decided I need to cut more out.  At the time I had the sheer clamped into the notch on the frame either side.  But the sheer past there was only loosely held in the remaining frames.  Well I removed the sheer, but it didn't feel right so I put the sheer back on, but clamped it at all frames, and to my surprise, the one I was going to cut now fitted perfectly.  Moral of the story is with these long pieces of wood, they have to be sitting correctly all the way along.  This is a bit tricky, as until you cut the bevel they are in the wrong place, but once you cut the bevels it affects the frames adjacent.  You can chase your tail is your not careful.

Little progress

Still too many other things getting the way.

Only got a few more notches cut out and I also did a bit of scarfing on the sheers timber.

At this rate it will be July before I get the sheers done.

More sheers

A little more progress on the sheers. Cut the basic notch in another couple of frames and beveled a couple of the existing notches.

Pushing the sheer into the breasthook is still causing it to twist so I also added yet more bracing.

It still needs more work but is starting to take on a pleasing curve and nestle into the frames nicely.

Sheers

I have caught a cold so not a lot of progress today.

I got the notches for the sheers cut out on about 4 or 5 frames on one side. Excitement got the better of me so I gave up cutting notches and grabbed a length of sheer stock. I sprung that around and the shape just jumps into life.

I spent a bit of time adjusting the notch in frame 8 before the fever of my cold got the better of me.

The photo shows the sheer sprung in place, but it's a bit hard to pickup amongst the clutter.

Chines are done - Yeah !!! - Now for the sheers

Finally glued on the second lamination of the second chine.  This had started to become a mental roadblock.  There was nothing hard about it, it was just taking time and time was something I haven't had much of lately.

So while that's drying I have moved on to the sheers.  I was having a bit of trouble visualising them so I cut bits of paper out to mark the notches with, and these are currently taped on and make it much easier to see how the laminations will lie and twist as they go aft.

Just checked the rime table I published in an earlier post, and despite the chines seemingly taking for ever, I am still a couple of weeks ahead of my schedule.

One thing I have noted is that my schedule is missing the fairing step that needs to be done once the sheers are on, and before the battens go on.

Chines and sheers

Glued and screwed the first of the second laminations on the chine. Drilling the screw holes was a little scary, just a but wary of the chine snapping, but nothing happened.

I finally conceded today that my battery drill had done its dash; so went and bought a Bosch 18v LI drill. It's funny how you don't realize how bad the old one was until you get the new one.

Then rounded off the day re-sawing a 2" x 8" x 16' into strips for the sheers. After cutting the strips I had to resaw the width several times to get the worst of the kinks out and it's left me with a reasonably tidy stack of sheers. I still need to run them through the planner to tidy them up.

It created a huge pile of saw dust.

Got a transmission

Last week a deal too good to be true came up, I have managed to secure a re-conditioned 71B 1:1 transmission for $NZ400.   I finally got to pick it up today.

I am going to take it to a guy down the road that specialises in marine transmissions to get him to give it the once over, but I'll do that a bit closer to when I need it.

Knowing when it's wrong - that's the trick

I glued on the first lamination of what will be the port side chine the other day. This was done after successfully applying the first lam on the starboard side and being quite happy with the result.

After removing the clamps, I found a significant dip in the chine towards the keel between frames 0 and 2, with 1 being the low point if the dip. I have to say that when I glued it on it didn't feel right but I couldn't see anything wrong.

The long and short of it was primarily that the chine notch in frame 0 was wrong.... but it looked right. It needed to be deeper towards the keel, but on doing that the chine now sat too low in the notch.

This led to some head scratching for a while. It turns out my transom is not quite square. The port side is slightly lower than the starboard. This frame was attached a couple of months ago now and at the time looked ok. On closer examination I can see its wrong. Part of the issue at the time was restricted access due to a bookcase that was in the way. I have since moved it, but should have done so back then.

So anyway I ended up cutting the chine off for about 4 frames, fixed everything up and it's ready to glue back on.

The transom is another matter, after considering it for some time, I have decided to counter the problem at fairing time.

The problem, finding the solution and the effort involved doesn't particularly bother me, what does worry me is what other mistakes have I made that are not going to show for a while. At the stage it's not a biggy to remove something as it will largely be hidden below deck. It's when the mistakes start to be closer to the surface I will start to worry. Hopefully I won't be making too many mistakes by then.