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Sunday, December 10, 2017

This could work

So far so good. The hull came together beautifully. Now the bottom must go on. Since it is designed to run commercially, I have elected not to do the standard inner chine log, due to how annoying they are to fix once the boat is inevitably crashed. So we are putting in a heavy duty fiberglass one. 


We notched the ribs ever-so slightly in order to be able to lay in a couple layers of resin-impregnated biaxial fiberglass. And we screwed on a temporary light outer chine to hold the sides in a fair curve while the fiberglass bonds to the bottom.


With the bottom held in place, Cricket is managing the biaxial glass into place.


The inventory from my moribund publishing company has found a use. Books are heavy.


So are railroad rails.


Meanwhile it's time to mill out gunwales for this boat and for the two aluminum sister-boats being built up in Moab. The mountain of ash we bought this spring is thick enough to rip the gunwales of vertically, making for beautiful strong vertical grain.


Sometimes my brain wakes me up at night with an idea. Usually they are dumb. But this time I thought, why not plane and grind the scarf bevel of all of them at once, side by side? Here is Janek doing that very thing. And since it's just as easy to make a flatter slope, we are going with a stronger 12:1 bevel rather than my usual 8:1. Why not?



Here's a sideway movie that, for the life of me, I cannot seem to rotate into the proper position. It just turns black. So rotate your head.




Hurrah. The glass chine held! Now we grind the outer chine into its final shape.


We put on a layer of glass tape to make double sure nothing comes apart while we do the interior work. And steam-bend on the first two pairs of gunwales.



Here's another movie. This one is right-side up.


So is the boat now. Damn, she's big!



With her shape fairly well established, we take off the bracing and a couple of the unwanted floor ribs



In goes the plumbing. The two passenger footwells will drain into the boatman's footwell, which in turn will get pumped back into the river by a high-volume bilge pump.


This thing is really starting to look like a boat. That's a good thing.

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