The front panels are rough cut....

I spent last night marking up and cutting out the forward part of the panels for the bottom of the hull.

I made up some patterns from scraps of ply to rough cut them (holding an 8'x4' panel against the hull to mark it off is not all that practical)

They are now clamped to the hull, with a few strategic clamps, and a few truckers hitches pulling the plywood into the required shape. I'll tighten them up each day as the wood takes a set.

I still need to scarf the foreward and aft panels together, but the bend is all well forward of the join, so it should not be a problem.

I can see a completed hull in my near future.

Wiley X Brick RX

I do like my eyes, not so much the charming boyish blue colour, but rather the whole seeing thing. It's pretty useful. They are however, not quite perfect, so I need glasses, and when I am working with high speed thingies like routers, or power saws, I need goggles over my glasses, and then it all steams up and I spend more time cleaning goggles and glasses than working on the boat.

Glasses on their own provide limited protection. If you can fit you fingers in behind the frame and touch your eyeball, then high speed sharp things can get in there too.

So I wandered down to the local optician, who had a selection of about 5 pairs of safety specs at about €200 a pair. Ouch.

This calls for a bit of surfing.

I found http://www.opticsplanet.net/ who even listed the temple size for the frames (handy when you have a 64cm head size) and I got a pair of Wiley X Brick RX prescription glasses made up for €120.

They have removeable foam padding for when you are sanding and want to keep dust out, and on hot days when you are more concerned with high speed flying pieces of blindness, you can take out the foam, and they fit nice and closely around your eyes sockets.

Glen L 14 Sailing Video

Not mine, though some day I will finish and I will post sailing videos of my own.....

This is a Glen L 14 in Vancouver

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2oGMgpFavT0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MRHpvXpFFmU

The Bottom

I've started the bottom planking.

2 sheets of 8x4 are now rough cut on the outsides, and fitted at the keelson.

You can see the work in progress here

When you place an 8x4 sheet up on the boat, and try to line up one side with the keel, you quickly notice that since the hull is curved the edge of the ply does not line up nicely with the center of the keel.

A quick snap of a chalk line, or just running a marker on a jig down the side of the keelson will mark the curve you need to cut. Japanese saws are fantastic for cutting long fair curves in 1/4 ply as it's so easy to line them up with the curve as you saw.

I tacked the first panel in place, and then marked the second panel against the first by tapping it down on carbon paper while pulling the carbon paper through the gap. Where the second sheet meets the edge of the first, you get a neat black line to saw to.

I've more scarfing to do, and I have to then fit the forward bottom panels, but very soon I'll have a hull.

Incidentally, this weekend I spent a whole lot of time watching for rain clouds blowing in, covering everything over until they blow by, and uncovering again. A real PITA.

Next boat I build will be under shelter.

I forgot to oil the screws....

When you put in temporary screws to hold everything together while the epoxy kicks, you really should oil or wax the screws so that the epoxy cannot stick to them.

Otherwise you will break off two screws about half way down and leave steel bits embedded in the oak frames well out of reach, and then spend the next hour heating each screw with a gas powered soldering iron to soften the epoxy so that you can extract them. You will find that about 20 seconds of blowtorch setting per screw works. When you have use large washers, they act as a heat sink and you will need more.

If you have not used washers, and the screw heads are in the wood, then a traditional electric soldering iron touching the screw will probably work, it will just take longer.

Perviously I had tried the trend grabit and concluded that bronze was too soft and it would not work, but after reading a review where they emphasised "slow speed" as the key to getting it to work, I tried it again after I stripped a haed on a 2" bronze screw which was supposed to hold down a batten. It was still proud about 1/8", like the Grand old Duke of York, neither up nor down.

Sure enough the trend grabit grabbed it and it came out nice and slowly.

Stripping one bronze screw out of 28 x 2" screws into Oak is a reasonable record.

It's all done now. Though I now have a pair of 1" long broken screw bits in my framing and no good way of getting them out. The deck screws broke in half as I started to unscrew them so the bits are about 1" down.

Glued and Temporarily screwed in place

The battens are now glued and temporarily screwed in place. Deck screws, and large washers pull everything together while it all sets up. In a day or so, I'll pop out the deck screws, and redrill the holes and countersinks, and then pop in the Bronze screws.

I've epoxy coated all the areas that won't be accessible when the skin goes on, and the block and tackles still hold down the ends of the battens to pre-bend them.

Note to self: I still have the limbers to cut.

An hour here and there....

That was about all I got this weekend, but it was still progress.

Here you can see me checking that the ply will sit nicely across the battens, and if you look closely at the outside batten, you can see the end is tidied up, it's curved, tapered and clamped down to induce a suitable curve in it.

I have the last batten sanded on the inside - I won't bother sanding the the outside where it will be glued and screwed to the plywood until I have cut and fitted the ply and I'm ready to get sticky with it.

The battens are all now drilled and held in place by deck screws.

I did remember to unscrew all the blocking that becomes inacessible once the battens are in place.

The next patch of good weather should see me able to epoxy the battens in place, and as with the chines, I'll used deck screws to draw everything up tight and then replace them with bronze when the glue sets up.

Bronze screws are just too soft to try screwing 2" into Oak and pulling a bend into battens as well.

Notch up a few more notches !!

The forward frame is basically done. A decent Rasp makes life easy. And a sheet of carbon copy paper put inbetween the batten and the notch lets you mark high spots for rasping.

I clamped a large scrap peice of ply in place at the forward frame/stem to make sure that it would all sit nicely.

Next I have to glue and screw them the battens in place.

I have a tiny block and tackle in place to pull down the front of the battens. I've clamped some offcuts to them, so that I can pull them down from one side, to introduce some twist as well as bend into them. This will make it a whole lot easier to bend the front of the ply.

I'm not entirely sure how I find the battens when the bottom plywood is in place, so that I can locate the screws. Any thoughts / detailed photos would be welcome.