Walpurgis Night

Celebrating the arrival of spring, 'pagan style'....

Oars

I realised that I will not have time to build the oars before summer so I picked up a pair of nine foot Finnish ash oars.

Garden

Lovely weather yesterday, so most of the day was spent taking care of the garden, fixing the kids bikes and generally enjoying the sunshine.

Did a tiny bit of boat building, I whittled a securing pin for the rudder stock.

I also got some questions about what I actually was doing last weekend..... All these long strips of wood will make up the masts and the cuts I made will make them line up to make a hollow mast. I think a picture explains better.

Birdsmouths

The big day of cutting birdsmouths to the mast staves. Spent a lot of time setting up the table saw, rollers etc. Then it went very smooth with the actual cutting, some of them need a pass with the rabet plane before glueing up.

Feather boards

Fence and feather board setup

The whole setup

Test cut for mizzen....

... and the main

One of the mizzen staves had a knot in it and broke, luckily I only need eight staves for a mast and I had nine for each.

Some of the staves have taken on quite a bend over winter, I hope I can pull it together to make a mast.

All I need now is to find out how I will build a straight jig for the glue up. Unfortunately I had to leave my strong box in Poland so I will have to build something new.....


Time today: 2 hours

Beach, seat etc

Went with the kids to the beach today, the ice is breaking up but still some time before it will be possible to launch.

Fitted the reinforcements to the rowing seat and built a new fence for the table saw (so that I can start with the masts tomorrow).

The general idea

After roughing it out

Glued up

The new fence, we will see more of this tomorrow

Time today: 1h

Spring..?

It seems spring might be finally here, most of the snow is gone and we are above zero (celsius) both day and night (still ice on the water though). So I unwrapped the boat today.

My daughters playing pirates

Did some odd jobs, mounted the oarlocks, fitted the rowing seat, foot brace and finally mocked up the push-pull stick.

Oarlock. Yes, they are high, I am tall and if they are too high I can always cut them down a little.

Marked where the seat reinforcements will go.

Had to modify the foot brace quite a lot to make it fit.

Testing a piece of oak to see if it is useful as a push-pull stick, and yes I think it will be.

Lets hope te weather stay so we can see some progress.

Time today: 1 h

Rudder gear

It has been a really long time.... hopefully I  will update more frequently now that the weather is getting better. It is still below zero at night (celsius) and a few degrees above during the day.

Tried to adjust the rudder gear today, after fitting it last year I found I could not put the rudder back on the boat. The pintles and gudgeons are such a fine fit that just a few degrees off make it impossible to put the rudder in place so today I tried to refit it......

Pintles in place

Rudder stock nailed in place

All done!

Time today: 30 min