Plodding onward

Ah, 'twas a day of marvelous procrastination. None of my helpers could make it today, so I kept finding very important things to do. But I finally got some work done on Moe. Cutting and grinding the edges of the floor to near-perfect fairness with the sides was a hellacious project, but it's done. The magic two-o'clock sunbeam from the stairwell is illuminating my progress here.

And a couple of the scarf joints, which were a little rougher than I chose to leave on exhibit, are now faired out.

On the original WEN, most of the screws on the side panels are exposed. Which makes it very easy to do repair work should a fellow need to. But since we countersunk Moe's screws pretty seriously, I went ahead and put some ultralight spackling over the ones on the transom and sides of the boat for aesthetics. I think the enamel with stabilize the cheezy spackle enough to hold it in place and look good, but it will still be easy enough to poke it out of the way if I need to remove the screws for repairs. Not that I plan to be doing a lot of repairs. But the damnedest things happen sometimes.

A light sanding in the morning and it will be ready for its undercoating. We still have around a hundred feet of three-inch-by 3/8-inch oak skid strips to screw onto the bottom before we roll her right-side up for decking. Moe is going to be the beefiest boat I have ever rowed. Heavy white oak frames skinned with 5/8-inch sides and a 3/4-inch bottom. And 3/8 of an inch skids blanketing the bottom to boot. Look out rocks.