Back to the boat.

Well it's been a hectic week. Last Thursday, a week ago, my wife went into the hospital for surgery for a female issue. When she came home she had a complication and the next Tuesday was back into the hospital again for a "revision". Two surgerys in just five days. It has been a rough week for her. Leave it to be known there wasn't much time for boat building.

So now that things are less hectic, it was time to visit the garage. Not much in the way of accomplishment to show for the time spent but progress nontheless. At this stage building a boat is more about making the parts needed to build the boat. So let the pile of parts increase.

I set to draw out the stem and one of the centerboard case sides and the packers.

This is the starboard side of the centerboard case.

After drawing the case side, I taped together several sheets of tracing paper and copied the out lines of the packer pieces at the bottom of the case.

Tracing of the packers on the bottom of the case side.

I captured both of the packers on paper and can then transfer either shape at will to the necessary thickness plywood.

Next I tackled the stem drawing. On the plans John has drawn the shape at quite a distance from the edge of the ply sheet. So a little time with the calculator has adjusted the distance to bring the stem closer to the edge to help save on wood waste. First I set the water line and then adjusting all the measurements to it.

Laying out the stem with pencil and nails.

Then after marking out all the points, connecting the dots. In the process I made a bit of kindling for my son and daughter in law's previously mentioned fire pit, while trying to fabricate a flexible batton for bending around the nails. Making the curve at the bottom of the stem outside edge wound up being a two part affair as I was unable to come up with a suitable batton to go around the entire stem in one shot.

Failed candidates for battons that didn't make the grade.

I wound up starting at the top of the stem and bent down to as far as it would bend at the bottom of the stem and the mark it to there and then go to the end of the spine and work back to the mark just made and then fair the two marks by hand at the joint.

Next visit I will try to cut out and clean up the stem and then draw out the two packers for either side of the stem using the stem as the pattern. If there is any time left then I'll turn to the centerboard case and work on that also. Oh well, more bits and pieces for the parts pile.

Until next time.

Geoff