746.5Hrs – Re-Focus

A very solid weekends work following some thought and planning has seen me re-focus and move forward in a way I haven’t for some weeks. Jacques comments on my last post were spot-on. After turning the hulls I managed to focus on completing the floors but then got lost a bit. I started thinking about upper bulkheads way too early and then drifted about dabbling with fillets and layouts. On the subject of layouts I have, I think, changed my mind about the en-suite facilities in the starboard hull. The majority of opinion seems to be against it and for many valid reasons. Sometime this week I will share with you the comments and opinions I have received from round the world, and make my final decision. As a means to clarify the layout in my head I spent half an hour with the plans and a marker pen and physically wrote the spaces and marked the bunk/locker floor levels on the inside of the hulls, it helped a lot. The exercise highlighted my lack of planning by showing that I had filleted some places that should not yet have been filleted! Having got things a lot clearer I did some more filleting (in the right places this time!) and started pre-coating four more sheets of 9mm ply from which bunk and locker floors will be cut. My main job however was to finally glue the hullside stringers in place. If I had been following the plans I would have done this prior to turning the hulls but concerns about hull ‘wobble’ and the fact that they were firmly screwed in place persuaded me to leave them until now. I’m actually glad I did, I think its a lot easier to see how the stringers sit and to spot the places where they need pulling in more to the hullsides than when they are low  down and hard to see. It is a bit of a challenge handling a piece of wood over 30 feet long but with the aid of lots of clamps I managed OK. The sequence of operation involved key sanding both the stringers and hullsides, pre-coating both with epoxy then pasting a filled glue mix to the hullsides> after that the stringer could be offered up into position, clamped loosely, adjusted for final position, clamped firmly and then temporarily screwed from the inside to pull everything tight. I have one more coat of epoxy to apply to the four bunk/floor 9mm sheets and then I will finish all the fillets that will become unaccessible before starting to fit bunks and locker floors.

I am pleased that I have now regained some momentum and I will endeavor to capitalise on it and move into the next exciting phase of theis projects. I forgot to mention that the temperatures have gone up again and maybe this time they will stay!