Ok whos the joker?

        As I got home from work one night this week I discovered that a very artistic neighbor had deposited their work o fart for all to see.   Note the exquisite detail of one eye being normal and the other having no eye or patch.  It looks kind of like a deranged baby mr. potato head.     

Chines on

 

         The second chine bar is attached and the epoxy is setting up.   This weekend I will be able to take off the braces on the other side and begin to measure and mark the frames for fairing.   After the bottom of the hull frames are faired (may take forever) I will be ready to attach the bottom battens.   I am toying with different woods for the battens.   White Oak is certainly a strong contender, but so is Southern Long Leaf Yellow Pine.   While searching craigslist for reclaimed lumber from old barns or wherever, I have discovered that the sellers of such wood are either brilliant salesman or thieves!   How can old, bug-eaten, worm holed wood be more expensive than nice clean fresh wood?   I'll be festering over this for years to come.   I am all for recycling and certainly love the idea.   However, to pay more money for lesser quality makes no sense to me...  Any thoughts?

Capping it off

      A unique touch
I plan on creating is custom made rose-bronze screw caps.   These will cover all the exposed screw heads on the boat.   There shouldn't be many.   The idea started while trying to come up with custom screw caps for the steering wheel.   Here I started with a chunk of carving wax on the lathe and ended up with a nicely shaped disc.   Next I will use my less than adequate artistic skills to attempt carving an anchor in the face of it.   I have a betting pool going to see how many discs I have to lathe before I get one carved to my satisfaction.    

     Chine number 2 is attached at the stem and hopefully will be in place this weekend.   I also started to fair and smooth the stem, and have a coat of thickened epoxy on most of it.   It sure feels good to work on something semi-cosmetic.   The structural work takes its toll on the soul...

Chine on you crazy diamond

 

After a neglecting the poor boat for a few weeks I was able to get the port side chine on today.   The Oak was pre-shaped fairly well and didn't take too much force to get it into shape.   After the thickened epoxy sets it should be super strong.   The nice part of chining is that I was then able to remove the braces that were holding the frames together.   Now there is much more room to maneuver between the frames while working on the underside of the hull.   The chine is scarfed and ready to go on the starboard side.   Following that ordeal, the arduous task of fairing will ensue.   Not looking forward to that in the least.   Basically fairing is shaving, sawing, trimming, sanding the frames so the hull will have a nice even shape to it.   As it sits now, there is quite a bit of fairing to do;  the frames don't quite allow for smooth lines yet.   Having the chines on will give a good idea of where to start, as the chine represents the smooth line that the hull needs to match.     After the fairing it should go a little quicker.