Finished Planking!

I just realized that I hadn't posted in a while. I figured it had been a month or two...but SIX MONTHS?? You'll probably think I have completely abandoned the project, but you would be wrong. We had a cold Wisconsin winter that seems to be dragging on as even in late April, it's unseasonably cold and windy. I worked in the garage as much as work, family, illness, and other commitments would allow. So let me give you an update. I'll do this as a series of small posts so that in the future, it will be easier to reference the various stages of the build.

First off, I finished the planking in the beginning of December 2014. I took the hull off the building jig and cut the various boards down to size to build a little cradle on casters, so I can move it around the garage, and out the door to work on it during nice days. Also, as I begin to move into the finishing stages, it will be better to do all that nasty sanding outside where the dust can blow away and not coat every tool and clog up every corner.

View on the cradle from the port stern quarter. She looks good from far, but far from good! 

At first glance, the sheer looks pretty nice. as you get closer you can see that some of my mis-measurements and bad cuts make her a little less attractive. Lesson learned: Fair your planks before you attach them to the boat. I thought I could use an edge planer to smooth down those little humps and valleys once I had the plank attached. It's not as easy to do as one might think.

View from the port bow quarter. I tried some of the phenolic micro-balloons in an epoxy mixture to make a fairing compound. You can see the brownish purplish smudge on the bow in an attempt to make my first gain-cut look a little better. The top plank where the edge meets the stem didn't turn out as nice as I'd like. But once the false stem is attached and the bowsprit is in place, I don't think anybody will ever notice.

Nice sun-flare of my phone-camera. View from the starboard stern quarter. 

View from dead astern. Pretty symmetrical. 

'Mid-ships view. Love those Welsford lines, and the nice little bulge in the belly. Just like the builder!

Then the snows came and she never saw the light of day for another 4 months! Before moving her back inside, I muscled her off the cradle into the grass and rolled her around a bit. I wanted to get a feel for how solid and strong the hull was at this point. One of my friends asked where I planned to sail her. I told him Lake Michigan and maybe Superior. He balked at that and said he wouldn't be caught dead in my little pile of matchsticks on those bodies. But I have to say, as I man-handled her around, she didn't squeak, crack, or groan. She felt very solid indeed. Once we get all the 'glass and 'poxy and decks and such in place, I imagine she'll be a right solid little boat.