I pottered around today doing bits and pieces. I sanded the top of the forebeam and made preparations for the anchor bridle blocks. I have a very solid cedar block that I can glue into the beam to hold the U bolts in. I will shape the block to the inside shape of the beam and glue it and glass it in. The shaping is a big job and will take me a while. The outside of the beam top and bottom needs to be sanded before it can be glassed on the outside. It will be sanded again after it is glassed and bogged, but this sanding takes off all of the uneven and sharp glue dags and also takes the sharp corners off the planks to give the outside a smoother rounder finish for the glass to stick to. Strip planking is basically a series of flat pieces shaped around a curve and the gaps filled with glue, but you still have the sharp edges to smooth down, for Australians imagine a 50c piece, if you take off all of the corners you will end up with one of the old round 50c pieces, well strip planking is a bit like that. I read somewhere that there is no such thing a a curved line, and all curves are made up of ever decreasing straight lines anyway. I am not sure if this is true but that’s how a curved section is made from flat pieces.

I also read somewhere that cedar dust is quite dangerous even though it smells nice, so I always wear a safety mask when sanding. A combination of glue dust and cedar dust gets into the air and then settles on everything. Here you can see how it got on the back of my head. Tomorrow I will sand the bottom half of the beam and once glued together another sand will be needed before it can be glassed, then while the glass is green it will be bogged so it can be sanded again.

I have also made the first step in strip planking the sides, I have glued the duracore 300mm sheets into long planks that I can strip down into the thin planks needed. Duracore for those that don’t know, is a similar product to the duflex that the hulls and bulkheads are made of but instead of glass on the outside of balsa core there is hoop pine veneer. The edges have scarf z joints the same as duflex with a longer lip. Be careful with your stack of duracore because there are 2 thicknesses in the kit, 16mm for the deck curve and 19mm for the cabin top. The joins are not structural as they are on the duflex because the planks are really just a core for the glass that will be applied to it inside and out but it is still a good idea to use pine strips to pull the joins down tight so that you end up with a fairer strip.

Tomorrow I can set a fence on a circular saw and start to rip 40mm strips off the 300mm planks ready to plank on the boat. I also have to trim the mdf temporary bulkheads down so that I can use the curved sections only and trim the rest off. I will sand the other half of the forebeam and perhaps start to fit the temp bulkheads back on the boat on legs and braces. Not long now and I can start the exciting part of this stage. At some point I also have to make and fit keelsons into the sections of the hull that do not have a web.
While I was gluing and sanding, Jo did a lot more cleaning up and then decided to wash her car. Whilst washing her car she had to fend of a rather cranky and belligerent bush turkey that was somehow offended by her washing the car. In the end we chased it off by squirting it with a hose. We are not supposed to use hoses here because of the drought we are still in but I can assure you it was a very quick spray! We had a good laugh though. We are going to have to keep the place a bit cleaner because Jo isn’t happy about how we are keeping the place.