Tea Count 1
Injuries 0 (very surprising given the power tools involved)
Time Spent 4 Hours
Well well well, after an enforced break of nearly two weeks I'm back on boat building duties. A particularly nasty bout of man flu lasted much longer than necessary and meant that sanding and sawing wood was not possible or advisable. Thanks go out to all my Facebook friends who were overwhelmingly sympathetic and the kindness of their MUP comments has not gone unnoticed!
So, more wood arrived last week, or more to the point I collected more wood from the timber merchants. American Ash was my chosen breed for the centre bullhead supports and who'd of thought you could measure wood in so many ways.
ME: "How long's that bit mate?"
WOOD YARD CHAPPY: "3 metres pal." We've only know each other a minute and a half and it's like we're blood brothers already!
ME: "And how wide?"
WYC: "six inches"
ME: "eh? you just said it was 3m long..."
WYC: "Well it is...and six inches wide!"
ME: "Err... ok" Now my head was spinning. Working in imperial and metric at the same time was going to challenge my estimating skills to their limit. I stared vacantly at the equivalent of my fag packet design sketch but nothing came to mind.
ME: "OK now I need to fathom out what depth I need." Now I thought it was quite clever to throw in yet another unit of measurement but no, not even a flicker of recognition of my intellectual quip! Never mind! I paid for my wood and left!
Once home all I had to do was turn my 3 metre by 6 inches by 0.0820 fathom plank of America Ash into several metres of 50mmx25mm to support my bulkheads. This meant power tool time. Table saw and cross cut saw to the ready. Now, a previous encounter with the table saw had left my garage with blood splattered ceiling and the disappearance of the end of my finger. I was keen to avoid a repeat performance and considered putting some plastic on the ceiling in anticipation, but that would surely be tempting fate. It'll be fine!
Squaring up rough cut wood is not an easy task but with lots of careful measurements and setting of guides, I soon had a large collection firewood... and some nice square bulkhead supports. Now for the tricky bit. Each end of these supports needed to be cut at a different angle to follow the line of the bulkhead. Not easy but I was up to the task and carefully cut each piece to match the previous.
Voila, almost perfect and within ten minutes I had all the pieces glued up with epoxy and stuck onto the bulkhead. I say "all"... my cutting list got very confusing. True to form based on a lifetime of mismeasuring and bad estimating, I was three pieces short. No matter, that will give something to do next time. So the first bulkhead is sticky, soon to be set solid, next time I'll be gluing up the second and hopefully making it match the first.
That’s all for now, thanks for reading! Still only two followers:-(
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