Somes Sound - Midpoint of build?

Been busy lately on the internal fit out and getting to the stage where my boat is beginning to take shape. Some days I seem to make great progress, others you spend hours seemingly getting nowhere.What does seem surprising is the amount of wood I still have left over - yet there doesn't seem to be that much more construction to be done.   Initially,...

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Front deck and side lockers

Making some progress on the decks and side lockers.  Using John Brooks advice in specifications, I used a sheet of fabric to measure out the deck.  I managed - just to get both sides of of one 8 x 4 sheet of 3/8" ply.  In doing so, I had to shorten the side deck panel by about 1", which will simply mean that the Sapele solid deck will...

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Internal Fit Out - continued...

My next step was to build the aft bulkhead and install the aft deck beams. The plans call for 3/8" ply (I'm using Robins Elite Sapele) which can be fitted either as one component or two halves.  I elected to fit as a single component and so had to first scribe a vertical line on the inside of the hull where the bulkhead was to be positioned. I...

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Internal Fit Out

Having completed the mast, I have resumed work on fitting out the hull.  I deciphered the plans for the mast step and installed these components between the mast bulkhead and trunk. In order to shape the supports for the mast step,  I tried using a spiling stick (or jog stick?) which gave reasonable results, in two dimensions, but when creating...

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Birdsmouth Past Mast - Day 6

Birdsmouth Mast - weighed a hefty 45lbs this morning - 7 hours later plus lots of elbow grease, it's now 34lbs!  That's 11lbs worth of shavings which were created by hand by your truly...Today the planing was more successful, accompanied by several trips to the Japanese Waterstones. The plane worked effortlessly taking of shavings some of which...

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Birdsmouth Mast - Day 5

This morning I unwrapped the mast from its overnight coat and was pleased to see that the epoxy was well set.  So I enthusiastically set about planing back the mast  - first removing the epoxy coat from the wood was quite a struggle - even my trusty farriers file was baulking at the challenge.  I alternated between it an an old Anant...

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Birdsmouth Mast Day 4

This morning, I cleaned off the epoxy from the inner plugs using my trusty farriers file....easy!The plug for the bottom of the mast seemed a little oversized and I had to plane it quite a bit to get a good fit, especially at the base of the mast where it is tapered down from the gooseneck.  Brian made up the solid plug or the top of the mast...

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Birdsmouth - Day3

I read where someone created their birdsmouth mast in 5 or so hours...well this is Day 3 and still not finished, but steady progress nonetheless.Rather than fiddling around with taper jigs for the tablesaw, I took advantage of the clement weather and fired up my Quansheng Foreplane and tapered the staves by hand.  In fact it was quite a fast operation...

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Birdsmouth Mast - Day 2

Today I managed to clean down the scarf joints armed with my Farriers File - Thanks Andrew for the hint!  The scarf joints turned out well and the staves dead straight, thanks to the aluminium ladder which I rigged up hastily as a bench.The duck tape worked fine to hold the scarf joint together while the epoxy set over night.  Additionally...

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