After repairing all the damage I spent a long time ensuring that the stringers were correctly aligned. A process that nearly drove me nuts. I was talking to a guy at the nuts and bolts shop and he used to work for a boat builder and said that sometimes on a warm day that could actually see the frames bending as the temperature rose. I think that was what was happening to me.
What I did was clamped the two stringers together, ensuring the two landing points on the taper were perfectly aligned. I then using a marker pen scored 4 lines acorss the stringers at roughly equal intervals. I then bolted one stringer to the building form and then using a straight edge and square checked that the stringers where square at each of the 4 lines. I would get he front lines lined up then work my way done the stringers, and by teh time I got to the end they where 5 mm out. I would then go back to the start, and sure enough it was 5 mm out. So start again. This went on for an hour before I got it close and bolted up. Even now they are about 1mm out.
So I have since reattached frame 6, which is on and looks ok, but was a bit of a mission. Re-using existing holes was more trouble than it was worth. So now I am gluing up all the holes and will re-drill as required. The problem I see with this is that the coach bolt heads are going to struggle to penetrate into the epoxy. That's going to my next mission
I also put on frame 7. This didn't go too bad, had to do a bit of fine tuning to get things square and looking ok. The glue was taking a long time to go off today as it was fairly cold. We are having a crap summer here in NZ.
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