First blood!

No, the title lies, it is not the first and not the last. It just struck me today how much blood I have put into this boat. I still have not cut my selves on any tools but it is surprising how sharp wood can be and my knuckles are full of nicks, cuts, bruises and scratches. I guess that is what happens when you embark on something like this with soft office hands.....

Todays harvest...

Removed the clamps and screws of the stringer I glued yesterday. Five screws needed some heat to come out but unfortunately I was a little too eager so I broke two of them, luckily they broke deep and as they are stainless I will just leave them.

Fitted the third stringer today, this one bent a lot easier so I did not have to do any "towel steaming". One of them had a "pre" bend so it was relatively easy, the other was more of a struggle. For these I started the fitting at the aft end instead of the middle, trickier to balance five meters of stringer this way but easier to get a good fit at the aft end.

Starboard

Port

I did not need the steaming but I think I prefer using hot towels. More time consuming but less of a wrestling match.

I had to use clamps and pieces of wood to twist and push the stringers in place forward

I think I may have found a way to cut the stringers to the right angle at the stem. First you make a rough bevel in the stem (saw, chisel and plane). Then you cut the stringer roughly at the same angle as the stem, see picture.

Marking of the first cut, aligned with the stem (actually it should be aligned with the outer edge of the stem, not as shown here the inner)

Cut is made and let me again point out that this is a bad example as it should be cut further out

The make a cut roughly aligned with the stem bevel, a conservative cut at first and then cut thin slivers of several times to get a good fit.

Cut to the stem bevel

Sometimes when you are careful this method works fairly well, other times when you are not thinking (perhaps because you are fiddling with the camera) it works less well.....

Reasonable fit

Horrible fit!! I will have to glue something on top of stringer three and plane it down to a good fit.

I will try to get some good pictures to illustrate how it should be done, rather than how it should not be done, when I do the fourth stringer.

Time today: 3h