That’s how progress has felt these past 2 days. Case in point, here’s the sum total of Monday’s work:
One board, primed red. I came home, read about celestial navigation for 20 minutes and went to bed. It was that kind of day.
In case you’re wondering, that lovely board is the first of 5 ceilings. The ceilings go up the inside of the hull and form a little wall between you and the frames and planks. They serve to stiffen the boat as well as protect the planks for a poorly placed boot. I know, I know, they should be called wall planks or something like that, but they’re not. It’s a boat, deal with it. Like calling the bathroom The Head.
I can’t really explain why it took so long to produce a single board, other than to say that it involved spiling again, this time on the inside of the boat, and I was a bit out of practice.
I took the opportunity to use another method of spiling that I’d seen over at Jim’s shop. Instead of making marks on a spiling batten, you hot glue little tabs of wood to said batten.
The spiling batten is temporarily nailed in place, and these little tabs of scrap are hot glued onto the batten so that they run along the marrying edge of the outer sole. That defines one edge of the first ceiling plank. I’ve measured down from the sheer clamp along each frame and marked an equal distance on each frame that will leave me a minimum of 2″ width for this plank as well, and that defines the other edge. The little tabs of wood sticking out of the left side of the spiling batten reflect those marks. And here it is along the whole length.
Take this and transfer your marks to a board, just like with a plank…
And you’re back in familiar territory. Batten, bandsaw, plane, fit. That’s how it should work. Fitting took a lot longer than before, and there were many odd little inconsistencies that I just couldn’t figure out. Usually I can look at the places where the spiled plank doesn’t match up and say, “Oh, right, there’s where I messed up.” Not here. The inside curve of the hull may be a problem with this method of spiling since I’m measuring from the middle or top edge of the sole plank, rather than measuring the base of the plank where it meets the frame, but I’m not sure. At any rate, much fitting had to be done.
And fitting a thing that has to be sprung into place is not easy. That’s all I’m a gonna say about that.
Today I moved a slightly faster pace than glacial.
Yes, two, count ‘em, two, ceiling planks. It’s an improvement, but still painfully slow. I made an adjustment to yesterday’s spiling method that saved me a little time. Yesterday I glued the little tabs so that they met the marrying edge of the lower plank with flat edges. Today, I had them touch with their corners only. The advantage of this shows up in the de-spiling.
When you despile this way, you don’t have to mark your board and then connect the dots with your spiling batten. You can rest your spiling batten directly against the tab corners and you have your batten laid out.
Voila! Easy and quick. Nail your batten down, mark it, and proceed to cutting and fairing.
This method went a little faster, and the planks needed less tweaking than before. But still… 2 days and 3 planks seems way too slow.
Oh well, I’ll finish another chapter in my celestial nav book, get up early to work out, and maybe I’ll actually do 3 whole planks tomorrow!
