First side strakes on

Its been nearly a month since my last post, and its been a month of frustrations.

Having sucessfully completed veneering the transom and finalised my methodolgy for doing the strakes on the side I set out to get some wood for the purpose.

Took a Friday afternoon off work to get some timber, turned up to find the place closed for stock take.  The place isn't open in the weekend so that was a weekend lost.  Got the timber during the week that followed.  I then tried to prepare it for slicing up in the bandsaw but the thicknesser was really struggling and making a mess of it. 

Took the blades out to find them very blunt (I have had it two years and it's done a lot of work).  I had previously located a mobile guy to sharpen them, but work commitmeent got in the way, and so another weekend was lost.  I arranged to get them sharpened and then the night before he was due to come around he rings me up to say he can't do that type of blade.  So I had to find a plan B. Thankfully the place I found was able to sharpen them in time for this weekend jsut gone. 

So I set about putting a good face on one of the lumps of 150 x 50,  the newly sharpened blades made short work of that.  I then discovered the lump of wood has that same funny grain pattern I encountered early on in the build.  I should have given up on it right there and then, but I continued on and sliced it up.  The first slice went alright until the last 500mm or so,  any way finally ended up with about 6 slices. 

I then put them through the thicknesser and had more problems.  Due to the funny grain pattern it chewed up some of the slices.  It basically destroyed about 1.5 of the slices.

I then set about shaping the first strake and that went quite well. Glueing went well as well.

I then set about shaping and fitting the second one.  Installing it was tricky, really could have used a second set of hands.

Pulling the staples went pretty smoothly.

So now I have about 6m of the first strake fitted.

Lesson of the week,  unless there is a good grain pattern dont bother with it.