Injuries 0
Time Spent 5 Hours
Sorry once again for the belated post but after much rigorous right arm action I felt truly unable to type following my day of bottom smoothing on Saturday. Doing her bottom, was not too taxing and much easier than getting around all her nooks and crannies inside and I finally managed to feather out her seams ready for another coating. Hopefully you will of course have guessed that I am talking once again about my favourite pastime of sanding rather than assume I have a new hobby of writing bad porn scripts!
Whilst this is possibly the most tedious of activities I was going to be much rewarded in the afternoon as I had promised myself some construction. Bilge runners and gunwales! Who on earth thought of all these weird names? Fitting the bilge runners (that be the bits of wood than run along the bottom to stop it scrapping along the river bed when it sinks) was a fairly straight forward exercise albeit arms two feet longer would have been useful to be able to work on the inside and outside at the same time. The gunwales on the other hand was another matter. I've read about people making steamers to help bend and twist the gunwales into shape, in hindsight I can see why. Bending an eight foot strip of wood into a gentle curve is one thing but then bending in another plane at the same time and getting it to twist to match the shape of the canoe still at the same time took every inch of strength I could muster. I used all four of my G clamps but could have done with a dozen more and at least twice as many arms that I was born with.
As you can see from the photo I not only succeeded in attaching the gunwales but also turned the patio in the back garden into something resembling a boat yard slash bomb site! Also of note in the photograph are the rather spooky "devil eyes" watching me work. Freaky huh? Still, it was a satisfying day with all planned activities completed. I find it helps to make the plan of activities retrospectively at the end of the day, that way I always achieve my goals and often far exceed them!
Looks like you are using the Wren plans is that right ?
ReplyDeleteI made an open in two halves in a very similar way to you last year.
http://www.songofthepaddle.co.uk/forum/showthread.php?24858-Selway-Fisher-Wren-In-Two-halves
Your gonna have so much fun in your boat.
Budgester, thanks for the comment, I think mine is actually the Raven, but they are pretty similar. I'd love to see some pics of your finished boat. Does the idea of having the boat in two halves work in practice. I'm interested to see how this works out for me.
ReplyDeleteL.