Injuries 1 (A bad gash to the thumb)
Time Spent 5 Hours
Blood factor 5/10
Hello once again fellow bloggers, readers and boat building buddies. As you can see my followers increased in number this week by a massive two fifths and I'm now confident of hitting double figures before the end of the build. I thought it time to catch up with some updates as once again readers I am behind by a couple of days.
Last Sunday was indeed day seventeen and was largely given over to the creation of the inner gunwales and fitting two of them to half number one the aft section or the fore section...whatever! In addition I spent a fair portion of time cutting to shape the piece of wood that be needed to run across the top of the bulkhead to meet the inner gunwales. This is far harder than it sounds as the piece has be cut and shaped in three directions to take the shape of the boat from back to front, as well as top to bottom, as well as meet the gunwales at the right angle and take into account the slight slope of the bulkhead and...and... and...see, it's a very hard piece to shape! Needless to say I went through three lengths of wood before giving up and vowing to do better on another day.
After a trial fit of the gunwales I had ripped to size on my trusted table saw it was obvious
there was no way on this earth they were going to bend enough to follow the curve and contour of the boat. Being deeper that the outer gunwales meant they were much more resistant to bending. I decided a compromise was needed and so slimmed them down somewhat to make life a little easier. I also routed some sections out of the gunwales which would allow any water left in the canoe to drain out when stored upside down, and it makes them look pretty! Rather handily it also made the gunwales more flexible and I was able to easily bend them into shape. Anyone would have thought I planned it that way! Actually I did but no-ones ever going to believe me. I dry fitted the gunwales into place but they'll have to come off again later to be poxied. The boat is really feeling quite rigid and strong now.
A large part of my day, and I mean over an hour, was spent looking for my countersink drill bit. I only have the one and losing it meant the project was stalled until I could find or replace it. When eventually I did find it I couldn't quite believe how well "sod" had implemented it's long, pointless and ever recurring law. Out of interest, probably to me only, I took some measurements. The gap between the table saw blade and the edge of the blade slot in the table is ten millimeters.
The widest part of the drill bit is nine millimeters! For this drill bit to have fallen in the direction of the slot is one thing. The chances of it landing at such an angle that it could fall through the slot is astonishing and then to top things off it landed inside the blade tilting mechanism and in doing so adjusted itself so that no matter how much shaking, banking and poking it was never going to fall loose. In one split second butter finger moment, dropping my drill bit had successfully disabled not only my ability to drill and countersink the holes needed to fit the gunwales but had also disabled the table saw and hence my ability of cutting the remaining gunwales. The table saw required a complete strip down to retrieve my bit. Please also bear in mind that I had spent the best part of half an hour searching for the damn thing and it was only in one of those "I wonder" moments that I had peered down into the depths of the saw only to see the damn drill bit staring back at me.
The day did not end well either. Todays use of sharps and power tools meant that the danger stakes were always going to be high. A table saw, a router, drill, tenon saw, three different chisels, stanley knife, two different sanding machines... I could go on! So which one do you think gave me the gash across the base of my thumb. A deep gash at that and one which could well have rendered me useless for the day had it not happened right on last knockings. Well readers, I can reveal to you now that it was none of these death inducing implements! Whist clearing up at the end of my day I lifted a box containing some left over papers from my sons paper-round and as I did so a one of the papers revealed it's ugly brutish and uncaring nature and slashed me across the ball of my thumb. I had become the victim of a brutal paper cut attack and once again sod had demonstrated it's relentless desire to implement it's own rule of law!
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