Got my first cold Friday, just in time for the weekend. I'm sure it will be gone just in time for work on Monday.... Still managed to get the stems tacked in place. I say tacked because I'm not dead sure they aren't going to need to be moved a tad. Gardner calls for stems that are 3 by 2 9/16. His drawing shows the taper on the front edge that is where the planking lands. Unfortunately, the way he describes the taper is with an angle measurement. Would have been easier for me if it just said "measure x this way and y that wahy and draw a lilne" like most of the rest of his instructions do. Nevertheless, I think I have the bevel cut correctly. We'll see. Another issue with the stems is that he doesn't really say exactly where they land. Hard to describe, but suffice to say his description is a bit amorphous on this. But I think I have it worked out. More later.
I have a ton of mahogany pieces for builiding this boat, but none measure up to 3 x 3 for stems, so I had to glue mine together to make up the thickness. Since this wood is recycled, it needed to be planed flat to glue up well. Since I don't have a surface planer, it was time to break out the old smoothing plane. Love that thing. Couple passes crosswise followed by a couple lengthwise were all it took to remove the slight cupping on most of the boards. One set didn't turn out right, then I messed up the bevel to boot, so I ended up making three stems to get two. Live and learn. Other than that,. the only issue was a hidden chunk of a nail that dinged my plane blade. Darn it!
In order to put the stems in, I also needed the keelson in place. So I ripped down one of my 15' long 1x3.5 mahogany boards. Lots of fun trying to rip a 15' board in a 16' garage!! But it worked. And more importantly, the keelson fits inside the notches in my molds perfectly. When you work the way I do, that doesn't actually happen all that often, so it was quite satisfying.
Another aspect that was pretty gratifying is that after I got the keelson in place, I measured out the offset for where the keel should end and how high above baseline it should be. Surprisingly (to me) it was dead on. Not that I'm surprised Gardner's measurements are accurate, but I am surprised that I managed to reproduce them faithfully enough to land dead on without modifications needed. Pretty cool.
In this shot, you can just see a batten clamped in about where the sheer line will be. This is my first concrete look at what the actual outline will look like! Also, via the batten, I was able to confirm that my stem placements are likely about right, and my bevel is about right too. May take a little tweaking here and there to get it perfect though.
I have to put the chines in next, then I will be able to start putting the planking on. Because of my uncertainty in my work, I picked up a couple sheets of luan at HD the other day. For 20$, I will be able to do a "draft planking" of the sides and make sure everything is kosher before I start cutting up 160$ worth of marine plywood. Probably unnecessary, but pretty cheap insurance anyway. I'm not worried about Gardner's measurements, but I am still worried about mine (despite the in-progress confirmation that, so far, I'm still on line).
Hopefully I can get the chine cutouts done today and at least have the strips that I will laminate the chine together from cut out. Then I'll be able to work in the evenings to get it all in place.
