Back from vacation

Back from a well deserved vacation in my summer house. Continued shaping the mainmast, it should be done by the end of the week provided the rain stays away.....

More shaping

The rain seems a little delayed so I finished shaping the main. Need to do some epoxy filling in some areas before fine tuning and painting. Will need to sharpen my plane tonight.

Shaping the main

Basically the same story as the mizzen only slightly bigger. There will be rain tomorrow so I will not finish it this weekend.

Glueing the main

Glued up the mainmast, took me almost two hours start to finish, luckily I had a slow hardener...
Very difficult to do alone, I could not get enough clamping pressure in some areas with these thicker staves so I will have to fill a few cracks.

Prepping the main

Was supposed to glue up the main today, but all I had time for was the preparations (before the mosquitoes showed up, no wind today). A word of advice, when you cut the birdsmouth it is better to set the saw too deep rather than too shallow. That way you do not have to clean up the mouth with a rabet plane.....
So I am for glueing tomorrow.

Painting mizzen

The forecast today was showers and thunder so my plans to glue the main mast was shelved. Instead I decided to do some painting, the paint dries really fast. Applied the grey paint and then my daughters suggested a red top and I thought why not.... instead of a white one..
There will be one more layer of red before going to bed.

Mizzen

Shaped and sanded the mizzen. Turned out quite nice and light, even a six year old can carry it!

Footbrace and mizzen

The foot brace was a very tight fit after painting so I planed of one ply on both sides, sanded and repainted.
Cut the birds mouth in the new main mast staves
Shaped the mizzen, took of the corners with the power plane, made it round with the smoothing plane and added some epoxy to a few gaps.

Finally I had some runaway cows visiting.

Oars, cleats and misc...

Many small jobs today:
- Glued cleats to the boat
- Stitched the leather to the oars
- Arranged the up/down haul for the rudder and centreboard
- Cut two more staves for the main mast and scarfed them
- Painted the cleats

More leather

Continued with the oar leathers, greased them a bit and cut to the right size. Then it was time for the holes for the stitches, I put them 5mm from the edge and spaced 10mm. To get them to match up I folded the leather in two and drove nails through it. Stitching tomorrow.....