Sunday, 22 June 2014

Cutting pieces of wood and gluing them to other pieces of wood.

This weekend has been pretty busy. Basically I joined bits together with epoxy, so now I can barely lift the boat.

I started by using a scarf joint to join a couple of bits of 90x19 Tasmanian oak, that'll be my keel plank. Scarf joints have been used since their first appearance at the Melbourne Cricket Ground in the eighteen eighties... Anyway this is a 6:1 scarf, and makes my two 2.4m planks one 4.8m one.

I was careful not to clamp too hard, to get optimal squeezage. That's a technical term. A quick bit of planing, and it looks quite nice.

While waiting for epoxy to go off, I joined all the bulkheads I've made to the spine, and attached the centerboard case as well with screws. I also added bits of 19x19 Tasmanian oak as bracing.

Then I cut a huge slot in the keel plank for the centerboard to poke out of, and screwed that to the spine/centerboard case combo. Mogget is impressed.

It looks kinda cool now, with the centerboard poking out.

2 comments:

Oldbikerider said...

This is looking dangerously like an actual boat!

Suzy said...

Dunno if it'll float yet.