Here we are, two years into this miserable marshy mush bog of a blog where all has been stripped from out psyche. Philosophy: dead, pretense: dead, perseverance: dead, prognostication: dead, patience: dead, prevarication: dead, plodding: barely alive (I ran out of P-words- Phew)! We chug on putting one foot in front of the other. I don't remember my 100 odd something posts. I don't remember my as many musical posts. I may repeat myself.......who cares? You two guys that read this weekly pablum probably have forgotten also (your brain being sufficiently turned into said pablum by reading this). With boat building you are always on a learning curve. We start building something, screw it up 4 times until we get the process, build the thing, . Once the process is learned and (semi) perfected, you will never need it again (we live with the screw-ups). You forget about it and move on to the next learning curve. I am at that stage in life where my brain is full up with everything I learned. If I have to learn something new, I have to forget something else so there is room in my brain. Usually that bit of knowledge I lose is where I put my car keys. Did I say this before or is it just deja-vu? One must be balmy to build a boat outside in temperatures over 100°! We discovered that it's like boiling a frog. If we go out early, the weather warms gradually and we get used to it. If we go outside after being in the air conditioning for a few hours, it's like walking out into a blowtorch. We would be in the shade and a breeze blowing and say "it's not so bad". Then we would look at the thermometer= 102°!!! Oh, God... I ramble. Wednesday evening Ben and I sat outside and watched for meteors. We saw a few and one quite spectacular but we saw mostly mosquiteors. So....... on to whatever we did this week. Maestro, photo, please! allez-oop!
Ahhh, shade, glorious shade! We were on a few projects thus: first was the goddamn stern hinge notches. Ben made them a bit too deep and we decided to provide a bit more space for the rope hinges. We started over again. First the bad hole drilling job
Filling them in with epoxy and plugs cut to fit,
Goop in holes................................
Plugs in goop......Happy happy Ben! So we decided to cut the notched a bit deeper and to beef up the notches with e-pox-e. Stay back, Myrtle, this be technomological stuff!
We glued on a frontspiece to bring the notch to level...............................over and over.....round and around.
And filled it in to give us more beef for the rudder lashings. Then we started over by cutting the notch edge back 1/8" to accommodate our 1/4" rope. We will cut the corresponding rudder notch back the same 1/8".
First cut a buncha saw cuts to the correct depth.
Then level out the notches with chisel and sanding blocks. Next: after glassing the botched notch, the dreaded drilling of holes . Oh, yeah, we did other stuff like filleting the undergunnels (gunwales) on the starboard hull. Do you know why the call the right side of a boat starboard and the left side port????? Me either. Look it up! I'm not doing all the work here, folks.
Fine forty foot fillet.....fantastic!
We still have to do the port hull.....then paint. What color? Stay tuned, fans and fannies. I worked on tillers and gaffs, too. I routed (rounded) the edges and put a coat of epoxy on the tillers. The two tillers are joined together with a bar between them, creatively named "the tiller bar". The placement of the blocks to support this bar is measured 1500mm from the aft beam. These plans are not consolidated in a manner conducive to building a boat. Simple things, like gaff design are scattered in a couple places so you have to seek out the measurements. if you know where to look. Ben was looking at another Tiki website that had a picture of his plans. Ben discovered a measurement noted on this later set of plans for the notches. They were not on our set of plans!! Were we notified of their change? Noooooo. I think the proto-hippy designers must have think we know what we are doing and can read their aura or something.! Damn, there goes my endorsement from the official site..........again!
I had to drill two holed in the gaffs to support some blocks. Easy......naw! The gaffs are curved, so drilling a quarter inch straight line through 8" with no reference points proved out the difficulty of said project. The drill came out off center just halfway through. There was no way that a straight rod would go through.The solution was to drill big ass holes.
Then stick some 1/4" brass rods and fill in the holes so that everything was straight (ha ha).
Then, using as much bowelship language as humanly possible, drive out the brass rods. Mostly worked OK....................maybe.
Ben also worked on the rudder support blocks whut gets glued onto the base of the stern so the rudder is supported.
We had to make a quick trip to a big city, so we picked up some boxes to hold all those screws we bought. You're looking at $300.00, folks. First thing I did was to cut off those two carrying handles so I won't be tempted to carry them around like a briefcase. The latch that secured the top is not strong and opens up under pressure. Do not ask me how I know this! Now one must carry these with two hands. Picture of screws???? My God! This stuff is incredibly boring........even to ME!!
!The Music♫: Lightnin' Hopkins "Baby Please Don't Go"
Another Texan. Blues guys and baseball players have great nicknames.
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