329 Hrs – In A Sweat!

A tough three hours put in tonight and I have now glued the third bow section in place. I started easily enough just removing the screws from yesterdays work and, initially at least, the bow section seemed to be going well. It’s not easy handling this section on your own. It’s nearly 4.5m (15ft) long and, thanks to the good quality ply, pretty heavy. It also has to be bent quite severely to meet the stem. Anyway, using my horses, blocks of wood, and some wedges, I got it ready to go. Whilst I was mixing up the epoxy the temperature seemed to go up, it went dark, and we had a heavy thunderstorm. I was already sweating trying to get all the epoxy mixed and applied and then, when I started fitting the panel I noticed that the butt joint to the centre section had moved and I couldn’t butt the panels because they were too close together. I couldn’t risk taking it off and re-positioning because I had quite a lot of screws in, and the epoxy was going off so, as I just needed to trim  a few millimetres off, I got out my little exact saw and, levering the panel away to give me some clearance, lopped off the necessary to get a fit. I was dripping with sweat, I got the saw and me covered in epoxy and generally I got in a right stress. Anyway it did the trick and I eventually got everything in the right place and looking good. It took me ages to clean up though!  I will have to go up to the barn early tomorrow morning and remove the screws because I have a work function tomorrow night and I don’t want to risk leaving them in until Wednesday night.