Yippie Ti Yo Ti Yay

At 11:30 this evening I got the big old monster chines affixed in place. Woo hoo! There are so many little details that go haywire when you're bringing together an untried set of plans, especially with an untrained nutball carpenter like myself. But if you stare at the crisis long enough, a solution always seems to present itself. Like how to clamp converging, compound-bending, feisty, 2" thick oak chines together. For this I had to forsake my favorite one-hand squeeze clamps and pull out a few old-school pipe clamps. (Did you know that my mother was the only woman in Tompkins County that owned 29 pipe clamps? And could use all of them at once?) The big squeeze here required a double whammy, putting mondo torque from above and below, then through-bolting the sumbitch with a big fat carriage bolt. Sometimes the delicate art of boatbuilding is more about crude brute force.

In order to remove the clamp swarm from the boat, I had to make a few dozen angle-irons (actually they are angle-aluminums) to fasten to each fin of the mold to hold the sproingy monster chines in place. Which required a lot of time down on the floor. Which required inventing a new tool, which I think mechanics call a butt-creeper. The tool catalog wanted $129 for something that would do what I wanted, but about 20 minutes of inspired found-object coalition produced a suitable substitute for $0.00. Somehow this photo seems to imbue personality to the new creeper and its mischievous friend the trusty old Dewalt. They're up to something.

Although the last blast of espresso was still twitching in my veins, I figured I better walk out of the shop while the getting was good. Running loud power tools after midnight makes the neighbors suspicious. Tomorrow, floor joists. Or whatever they're called.

Note severe added bracing on the snout to combat the massive torque of pulling in the recalcitrant oak chines.