The United States should have gone cold turkey onto the metric system 40 years ago. Why it didn't was because of either "Freedom", the United Nations or just plain stupidity. I suspect it was the latter of these, given the intelligence quotient of your average U.S. congressman. As a result of this, I have had 40 more years of practice with the US measurement system. Enter the world of Building a Wharram catamaran, in millimeters (teeny little things). My familiarity with feet and inches, ingrained in my psyche for a lifetime, is warm and comfortable. I can readily work with them with ease and visualize any dimension in my head. Case in point: da beams! One beam is 6100 mm and, measuring an 8 foot sheet of plywood, I find it is 2444 mm in length. I need 2 lengths of 2444, that's 4888, subtract that from 6100 and....................................sheesh, I need a calculator! Converting it to Feet, the beam is 20' 8", that's 2 eights and a four foot eight inch length. My mind knows this instantaneously and I can visualize it. With metric, there is nothing in between centimeters and meters (Who uses decimeters?). My weak mind has a little trouble sliding the decimal point around in the metric system. In the US system, I know that half of 4 5/8 inches is 2 5/16 inches and half of that is 1 5/32 inches. The metric system requires math. Here I am, old dog new tricks................So, that said, we started on the beams.
First gluing up double 18mm center webs. We all three worked on this project and I can say that the process was perfect and the three of us worked together in complete synergy. Each web took about 2 hours with the three of us moving in harmony. We decided to work in a fashion where we did each step in order working a different process each day. One beam, glue web, let dry. The next beam, web already dry, glue supports. The next beam, supports glued on, glue and nail tops and bottoms of I-beams. Each beam getting a different process each day sequentially until we finish. Budge's boat is slightly different than mine. He needed triangular shaped supports. Ben and I cut them up.
Starting square
 |  |
And ending triangular.
We laminated the first beam web and let it cure a day. The next day, we laminated the second beam web and used the first web to keep it straight. The third day we laminated another web and glued and screwed the triangular pieces on the first beam.
Top
And bottom. Then the rain and lethargy set in. We needed more wood for the tops, necessitating a trip to Cowtown for wood.
With the rain, we worked undercover planing the wood.
And cutting it down. We will rip it down to 140mm (whatever that is). I can't visualize that in my head. I could divide that by 25 and then know what it is in inches, but why bother.
Friday and Saturday were barely work days. We made and glued hatch reinforcements.
Ben painted a bit more on the mast case.
One side to go!
Beams under this ▲. Phooey!
The Music ♫: Tom Waits "Shiver Me Timbers"
If you like nautical songs, here is one man's playlist of the best. I don't completely agree with him, but it's a start. http://www.boatus.com/magazine/2012/February/boatingplaylist.asp
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