First dry fit of side battens

Marked out the positions of the side battens tonight and clamped the battens to the frames. The instructions call for the battens to be equally spaced at each frame. I was a bit concerned that the battens wouldn't easily follow those lines, but they did and without force.

From doing this I can see a little bit more fairing is required on some of the frames towards the aft.

It also shows a minor flat spot at around frame 4. I think this is yet another consequence of frame 3 being off centre. I don't think it will take much to deal with it.

Bottom battens finished, sheer faired

Had a pretty progressive weekend. Permanently attached the last two bottom battens yesterday. Today I took to the front of the battens with the plane to fair them into the stem.

Also scarfed another 3 battens for the sides, got 1 to go.

Lastly took to the sheers with the power plan today. I thought fairing the sheers was going to take a couple of days worth of effort, but it only took about 2 hours. They are now looking pretty enough to notch the battens into. Everything is going to get a final fair once all the battens are fitted.

My brother loaned me his crawler which folds up into a small stool on wheels. This was absolutely brilliant as I could push myself along and make big sweeping passes with the plane.

7 batten fixed and a new sander

Pretty good progress today

This morning I glued and screwed all 5 battens on the port side bottom.

Then a session with the bench saw to scarf a new piece on to the end of the broken batten, plus prepare some side battens for scarfing as well.

Then a trip to Bunnings to by a new sander. Got a Bosch 5" rotary. I'll puts it's details in the tool page.

On returning home I glued down to battens on the starboard side, glued the scarf to repair the broken batten and glued the scarf on one of the side battens.

All in all I am very pleased with progress today.

New sander is cool !!!!

Got home from work on time for a change so decided to finish preparing the repaired batten for fixing. As part of that I got to try out my new sander. I was very surprised as how low vibration and noise it was. Seems to do a good job as well.

I also prepared another of the side batten scarfs ready for glueing.

Broken batten, broken sander, but nearly ready

Spent much of the day in final preparations for glueing and screwing the bottom battens.

Had a couple of set backs, my sander broken so I have been hand sanding. The sander hadn't been working very well all day, and by the time it finally died it was quicker doing it by hand any way.

Then, just as I finished sanding a batten, it broke. Oddly enough it broken in a place were the batten is dead straight. So first job tomorrow will be fixing that. Better it broken now then cracked after being glued in.

I will have to go shopping for a new sander tomorrow. Ordinarily I don't mind buy tools :-), but it will eat into what I have saved up to spend on ply wood.

Due to the order I have to put the battens on, which is dictated by access for my power drill to put the screws in, I won't be able to fix all the battens tomorrow, but I'll do the ones that I can.

Chine is fixed

Well my fix for the over twisted chine worked beautifully.  I took to the glued on spacer with a power plane and then the belt sander and it came out much better than I had thought I was capable.

Also scarfed another couple of battens together.

I have also applied the same fix to the chine on the other side, although it wasn't nearly as bad.

I wish I had taken a before and after photo.  I can take an after photo but its a bit pointless.

I am hoping to next weekend push through and get all of the bottom battens glued and screwed.  I have just looked at my schedule I published in Jauary, and find I'm starting to slip behind.  I am supposed to be finished the battens by the end of July.

I'll be lucky to finish the bottom battens by the end of July, and I still have the side fairing / battens to do.

Battens and fixing the chine

I think I mentioned in an earlier post that I unwittingly over twisted my chine and so it does not blend nicely into the stem. So today I glued a 10mm thick piece on with the hope of being able fair it back and correct this error

Also spent more time on preparing the battens. Marked out a bunch more holes, router-ed the top edge of another 4 battens, and cut to length the two battens I scarfed the other night.



Slow progress today due to lots of non-boat jobs needing to be done

New glue

Got some 205 hardner the other day and last night glued the scarfs in two battens.

205 makes the epoxy a bit thicker, it seemed to take less glue powder to make the batch.

Was a bit worried last night as it hadn't even started to get tacky after an hour and a half, but by this morning it was all set ok.

Temperature was 10 deg C when made the glue.

Battens....battens....new saw

I finished the notches on the starboard bottom. I have also got 2 battens dry fitted, and a 3rd half way there.

Really need glue. Hopefully get some this week.