Frames coming together.

So the last few days have been pretty productive. As well as cutting out all my frame members roughly on a band saw, I have placed the templates back on to them in preparation for sanding and shaping them back into size. I thought it'd be smart to cut them all a few millimetres oversize and sand them in than to go for the perfect fit first time. I've also transferred all the templates of gusset pieces for the frames onto a sheet of ply ready to jigsaw out a little later this-evening when it cools a little, if it cools a little. You can sort of see the ply behind my head.


Wonderfully, I made an amazing (and entirely lucky) $40 purchase on Sunday of a set of removable roofracks for the Pajero, meaning now I can freight my own timber and ply around. Previously I was paying delivery of anywhere between 25-65 bucks a pop, no matter how little I ordered. Needless to say, the cost of less than one delivery for every delivery from this point on has made me pretty happy. Also, as the type I got in as-new condition retail for $265, I'm super happy. Lick-a-kitten kind of happy.

I'm really happy with the hoop-pine timber I bought for the project. It is light and strong, tightly grained and straight grained and seems well worth the $8 p/lm I'm spending on it, considering that bunnings would charge around the same for plain yellow pine which is 1/4 the quality. The other option I was considering (Kauri) was a comparative $22 p/lm for the same WxT, so I think I made a good choice. I've decided to go with Hoop Pine Marine Ply also, seems everyone is raving about it and from what I can see, for good reason.

I'm hoping I'll have the frames assembled and gluing by this time next week!

Exciting. Look Down, Back Up, What is it? It's an Action Shot!

Progress?

Well, well, well. About a month has passed since I recieved my plans and building guide and yesterday I recieved my first delivery of timber. They day was unpromising and fairly drizzly, but given that I'd procrastinated a month or more on a timber choice I didn't want to let the day waste, even if the sky did look like it was suffering some form of depression.


I decided to shorten the lengths of timber from their 4.5m-ish lengths to 1-2m lengths depending on best-fit for the frame members, which are the first things to make. I fiddled around with arrangements for the parts and luckily had all the pieces fit exactly into the amount of timber I had. I did accidently cut the transom frame bottom in half when it is meant to be a solid timber, but I can repair that by epoxying the halves back together and reinforce it with a ply gusset. It'll probably be stronger than before doing it that way, if a little heavier. Given that it's going to have an outboard attatched to it anyway, it's hardly going to break the balance of the boat or anything. Worst case scenario, I replace the timber and cut it again. I hacked the boards into shorter lengths and carted the whole lot off to school.


The great thing about being an art/design teacher at a secondary school is the access to a machine shop that is reasonably well equipped to deal with the kind of project I'm undertaking. In my spare periods today, after getting all my lesson prep done nice and quickly, I pottered around for an hour or so, a lunchtime, and an hour after school and got all the boards thicknessed to 19mm from the raw boards, all the templates transferred to the wood pairs, and roughly cut 3 or so pairs of frame members. The rest will have to wait until monday when I can get back to the bandsaw.


And finally, my meagre successes:


I've started now. It is odd, but those first three frame members up there are telling me I will succeed at this. I don't know why, and whether it is madness already setting in, but they're whispering success at me.

And advice about who to kil......

Success.. Just success..

The start of something beautiful.

Most people who know me know that I get obsessed. Addicted. Chemically bonded to ideas and soft drinks. Mostly ideas. Well, as usual, it's happened again.

Last year I decided to learn Cello and while I can't say that this was entirely a success story, I had a go. It turns out that it is much harder to learn as an adult. Who knew? I didn't and now I do. I'm not entirely giving up on it but it is definitely taking a back seat for the next little while while I do something that sounds less like cats having their claws pulled. Enter, building a boat!

Yeah, I sure do pick them. You heard right. Learn a damn tricky musical instrument? Nah. That's a bit tricky. I know! Build a hunk of wood and metal that goes to sea where sharks live; where they watch their snacks move around before nibbles like so many diners in a fancy oriental restaurant. Surely I can accomplish this and not give them a time delay sinky-snack, right? Not tricky at all.

Anyway, the prattling long story short is, I'm building a Hartley TS 16. For those of you who don't know what this looks like the design looks like this:
At least, that's what the design sketch looks like. More accurately it looks something like this:


The photographs are pretty vintage as the boat was originally designed somewhere in the mid '50s, but the design is simple, straight-forward and largely achievable for someone with moderate skill. At this point in my research after getting my bug bitten my brain did this:

"achievable by the average handyman with moderate skill....."
"Wait!! I HAVE MODERATE SKILLS! AT LOTS OF THINGS"

Then went an impulse purchase of plans and tools, followed by the dawning of a pretty important realisation. My moderate skills are NOT RELATED to boat-making. At all. I'm moderately good at eating chips. I think the advertisement should have been more specific. That said, I learn fast and when I'm obsessed by something as I surely am, I learn a lot very quickly. There is also a wonderful group of people who adore the design and have been a great help with starting questions and tips.

I will keep this blog updated with the progress of the boat, or lack thereof, as I go. I'll also pop in some random other things I seem to do to pass the time when I pass some. I'll try to avoid showing you the things I pass though as I honestly don't know you all that well.

Till then.
Ciao