Fitting the inwales

This past weekend I epoxy coated the inwales and dry fit them to the boat with wood screws. As none of my C-clamps were large enough to span the width of the outwale, inwale and spacer blocks I purchased two 12" ratcheting bar clamps from Harbor Freight. I also glued the cleats for the breast hook and transom knees to the boat. On Monday evening I began to cut and sand the mahogany planks for the thwarts (shown on the small table). Also on the table with the thwarts are the breast hook and transom knees. These items will not be installed until I have faired the frames, inner bow and lower transom as they will make access to these areas of the interior more difficult. These items along with the inwales are the last pieces of wood that will be permanently attached to the boat. As some of the pictures show, lately I've taken to using the boat as a storage area for tools, clamps, glueing weights etc. I began removing some of these items tonight and will remove the rest of them before beginning the fairing process. I also removed the inwales and trimmed the ends to fit under the breasthook and transom knees.

Sweating the small stuff

This past Wednesday My brother and I glued up the starboard rub rail. Thursday and Friday were spent sanding the rub rail and the top strake of the hull even (there were a few high spots). On Saturday I starting on the spacers between the out-wale and in-wale. I cut these shortly after I picked up the cypress lumber, but they have been stored in a bucket for a few months. I made a template from some scrap plywood and drilled two 1/4" holes in each block in which short dowels were glued when the blocks were epoxy coated. The template was then used to drill the top strake at each block location on the hull. I was able to get ten of the blocks glued to the boat yesterday and finished the remaining blocks this morning, along with a short piece of wood in the bow that will serve as a backing plate for the bow eye. Yesterday I also glued up the mahogany for the wooden blocks into which the oarlock sockets will mount. There are four of these blocks. Each one is made up of three pieces of wood 6"x1"x1 1/4". Today, after I completed the blocks I started cleaning up the excess glue that I wasn't able to scrape off yesterday and cut the corners off the top edge of the blocks . When I sanded the excess glue off the blocks I also removed most of the first coat of epoxy, so they were re-coated this afternoon. The oarlock blocks will be glued to the tomorrow so I can begin work on the in-wales.

Since my last update I spent a week in the Florida Panhandle tarpon fishing. When I returned I began working on the boat again. On Monday I removed the rubrails and clear coated them with epoxy. On Tueday I completed the fillets on the frames. Wednesday and Thursday were spent sanding the roughspots on the fillets and Thursday night I fiberglassed the frames to the hull with two layers of fiberglass tape. O n Friday and Saturday I cut the wood for cleats to glue the seat tops to and also cut and fit the floors to the hull bottom. These floors will be supports for the floorboards. The cleats and and floors were epoxy coated on Saturday night. This morning I sanded the tops of the frames, the bottom of the hull where the floors were installed and vacuumed the dust out of the boat. Shortly after I finished vacuuming my brother arrived to assist. We were albe to get most of the floors, all of the cleats and the port rubrail glued. We had time to do the second rubrail and the rest of the floors but I ran out of C-clamps and weights. Tomorrow I will remove all of the clamps and glue the remaining floors. On Wednesday evening my brother will help me with the other rubrail.