And then there were Five

It's been a while since I posted. Life got in the way, Exams*, holidays in warmer places, Family Stuff.

I have cut and assembled the last and final frame.

As always I have learned a little, and the frame could be better, but most of the improvements are trivial.

Bronze REALLY is soft. I had been laying out the parts on a marked out plywood board, drilling holes, applying glue and screwing things together. This meant that I could not clamp all the parts together as I could not reach all parts of the frames with clamps. So I just trusted the screws to align everything nicely.

Maybe with a Pine and Steel screws, but not with Oak and Bronze. If things get out of alignment, the screws don't pull it all back into shape, they just shear off when you try to tighten them.

What I should have done was to cut holes in the ply to put clamps through. Hold everything in place while the glue sets and add the bronze screws later. I tried this with the cross piece of the frame and it worked perfectly.

Luckily, the frame is out by about 1/8^th of an inch, so it will either be faired, or shimmed. And also, the sheared screws, along with the additional ones that I added later, are conveniently hidden from sight.

My next job is the center board case. I think that since I have not done any real epoxy work, and this needs to be epoxy glassed on the inside, I will make a small mockup first. See how it all hangs together.

* Some people think that I am a little crazy trying to do a Maths Degree in the evenings, and Build a boat while coping with the changes in life that a one year old child brings. Some people use another word instead of "little"