Thursday, Jan. 28: Great progress the last two days.
The current phase of the project involves attaching the sides to the stem, which forms a big V, and then bending the sides around the molds and attaching them to the transom. If that sounds like a one-man job, I'm not the one man.
Yesterday I epoxied and screwed the stem to the starboard side panel, and then screwed the port side in place with Mrs. Strongback's help, being careful to align both sides the same way so the stem doesn't twist to one side when the sides are put on the mold. Then I pulled the screws on the port side and put the two side panels inside the house; If I had left them attached to the stem outside overnight I would not have been able to protect them from the weather; don't have a big enough tarp.
Today I had the help of my friend Capt. JT. We epoxied and reattached the port side panel to the stem. Wrapping the sides around the molds went fairly well. We discovered that the stem was cut at a little too wide an angle, so the sides complained at being bent. But the error was just small enough that we could get away without planing off one side of the stem. The hard part, as I expected, was bending the chine to fit inside the side planks and flush against the stem and transom. After a lot of clamping and grunting, we wrestled the starboard chine in place and screwed it to the side. After stepping back and looking at the result, I cringed to see that the transom had shifted before we cut the chine to length, so the chine ended up about 1/2 inch too short at the transom. But all is not lost. The chine does not attach to the transom anyway; the side does. So the gap is not structural. We moved the side/transom joint to the right line, and screwed it in place. I'll fill in the gap between the chine and the transom with a sliver of wood later, and hide the mistake with epoxy. No one will ever know except those with internet access and the perhaps somewhat smaller number who read this.
I am very happy to know that the chines and sides and molds can be made to match up, however much persuasion it takes. I was worried about that. It may turn out to be the hardest part of building the boat.
Tomorrow Capt. JT is coming back and we'll fit the port chine. That should go faster with the experience we gained today. Then we'll take it all apart, apply epoxy to all the joints, and reassemble it.
Thought for the day: Every problem in life can be solved with epoxy.
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