Fretwater Finale

Here are a few shots from the last few days of the '12-'13 building season. We'll start with our creative clamping workshop as we eased the chines onto Jim's Boop clone. Here we have the railroad holding two hanger clamps, which hold the chine up in its approximate location, while a third pulls it back down into precise position.

Here one clamp pulls the chine in to the hull, another pulls it down into position, a third clamp is reversed into a spreader to push it back up to the perfect spot. Meanwhile the Dave Frank memorial pipe wrench grabs the end of the chine, while a piece of fishing twine pulls the wrench down toward the fifty-pound weight, twisting the chine to the proper angle.

Gotta love clamps. We did a few more even higher on the bizarre clamping scale, but were too wrapped up in the process to document them all. Meanwhile Betty Boop came down from the loft to get ready for a float trip and we were able to roll the new hull out for a comparison. Did we get it right? Marieke and Jim seem to think so.

 

Back in the shop we break out the portable precision compound miter box to fine-tune the inner gunwales.

And the portable laser-sight to get the gunwale bolts true.

And the beat goes on. So do the gunwales.

Just in case, we lit up the Boop shrine.

Back on the Rio Rojo side of the shop we discovered that the portable compound miter box is also the 3/16" brass plate cutter. Yikes.

Those last touches really add something.

It's a wrap. We'll give Scott a while to break in the Rojo and do some tune-up a bit later in the season. But for now, she's out the door.

And down the road.

Jeez, what a fun winter.