Steaming the Chines

I had planned to use a drain pipe. But a little reading led me to the inconvient truth about PVC. It starts to melt if you run steam through it, and it collapses under its own weight. So this is Aluminium Air Conditioning ducting. It arrives compressed concertina like and you simply stretch it.

Without a little insulation, it would not keep the wood hot, so some cheap attic insulation and a bit of cord and we are set. I just used a steam wallpaper stripper as a steam source and left if cook while I got on with some other bits and pieces.

Here you see the two chines clamped roughly in place. There's still work to do, but progress is progress.
Oh, yes, heavy gardenning gloves are your friend here, the Aluminium is hot, the steam is hot and the oak is hot.

It seems ok....

The CB case seems to have glued up ok.

I tidied it up today, added a few bronze ring nails for good measure. An oversized nail set allows you to smack these down flush without leaving hammer marks all over the place.

There was a hole to be drilled through the Oak at the forward end of the case the would have been whole lot easier to drill before I put it all together. The main problem was not drilling the hole, but cleaning up the break out from the drill bit. Since the line to raise the Centerboard is deadended through this hole, a little rounding of the sharp edges was required.

It's amazing where you can fit a dremmel.

Next step is the keel. I need to clamp it in place, and tidy up the CB bed logs to fit. Then I have to cut the slot for the CB through the keel.

That's one of those jobs that if you mess it up, there really is nothing else to do but start again with a new peice of wood. An a clear 4" x 1 1/8" x 12' is an expensive peice to mess up - never mind the time it took to cut and plane it.

Again, wish me luck.

Epoxy - A batch gone off

I started to glue up the Centerboard case today. I sanded the Oak and precoated it with epoxy.

Then I mixed up a batch of epoxy and filler, but while I was working on one side of the CB case, the remaining epoxy and filler was just getting warmed up.

When I went back to the mixing cup, it was hot, really hot, and had a big solid lump in the middle.

By now I had a half glued up CB case, and no epoxy ready. I mixed up a second smaller batch as quickly as I could, but still making sure I stirred it enough. So now I have to wait until tomorrow evening until I can see if it glued up OK.

Wish me luck.

I now have a scaffold

You know, in spit of reading Steve Henry's advice on the GlenL Forums, I went and built the scaffold and then looked at the the frame sitting by the wall and thought "Ah fiddlesticks*, Steve warned me not to do that.".

One of the frames has a cross piece and needs to be in place before you screw the scaffold together. A little bit of dissasembly followed.

I now have a scaffold, the transom is mounted, one frame is on the scaffold. I need another good sunday to position the frames properly. Then we get our kitchen back.

I built the scaffold about 6 inches higher than the diagram, to make it easier to work on.

I suspect that I will need to shim some of the frames to make sure that everything is level, since there are a few individualities in them, but that should be easy enough.

Pic's will follow once I have all the frames set up.

* "Fiddlesticks" may not have been the exact word that came to mind.