Leather

Preparing the leather for the oars. I have an old cow hide that has been used as a carpet for the past 20 years or so, it still has some fur on it. It may be on the thin side but I will give it a try.

More paint

Finished painting the spars, seat etc. Then it was time for the boat, pulled it up in front of the house, sanded and painted areas that needed a touch up. We also had the first swim in the lake for the year, veeeeeery cold!

Red, Grey & holes

Painted the last layer in the oars, drilled a few holes and started painting grey.

Second coat...

... on the oars

Red paint

Primed the boom, yard, sprit and the other side of the seat and foot brace. I also put on the first coat of red paint on the oars.

Paint again

Started painting again, today primer on the oars, rowing seat and footbrace. Have had a lot of problem finding paint. I ran out of paint just before I left Poland so I tossed the cans, big mistake as it turns out...
First I tried to get the same paint as I had in Poland but could not find a supplier (or get a response). So I decided to go to my local paint store. We had long discussions on which paint to use all the way from two part garage floor paint (does not work outdoors) to house paint (maybe not abrasion resistant enough) finally we decide to go with a window paint that also is used for outdoor wood stairs and patio furniture.
Then it was time to find the right colour and this is where I could have used the paint cans from Poland as they had the colour code printed on them.... I found the colour code for the red paint on this blog (no trace of the grey though) but as it turns out I must have made some mistake as that colour does not exist???
So I brought the rudder (grey) and the tiller (red) to the paint store to try to find out the right nuance. Could not find the exact match but hopefully close enough. This is what I got:
Red - S 2570-R
Grey - S 2002-B

Sanding oars

Just sanding the oars getting them ready for paint.

Fixing the centre board case

As you may remember I had some center board troubles last summer, so I decided to fix it today. It was simpler than I expected, I just cut of the excess case and glued on some new reinforcements. The only tricky bit was not cutting into the centerboard uphaul plate.
I also planned to glue on some of my cleats but we were hit by a swarm of small black beetles (no idea what they are called in English, we call them rapsbaggar) so that will be another day.

The start

Half way there

Cutting done

New reinforcements glued in place

Time today: 1h

Mast disaster

Disaster might be exaggerating a bit. We were supposed to glue the main mast today, but as it turned out at least two of the staves were too bent to be used. We could not press the thing together to make a mast. So I will have to buy some more wood!

Mizzen....

Glued up the mizzen yesterday (could not sort out my computer yesterday enough to do the update), a lot of glue in a short period of time. Luckily my mother is here and could help me sort things out....

Dry fit

All the pieces in place

Now with glue

The bottom end

Also made a futile attempt of straightening the main mast staves by a primitive steam box, towels ht water and garbage bags

Bottle weights

Tried the spars with the sails, decided to replace the 36mm solid mizzen sprit for a cut of broomstick....

The main

Time today: 2 h

Preparing for mast glue up

Did a few small jobs today, the most importnat was to prepare for the mast glue up this weekend by doing a small (really small test piece).

Test piece

Trimmed boom, yard and sprit to the correct length and rounded the ends

Took a break and did some fishing, didn't catch anything....

Testing the oars

Successful test piece

Time today: 1 h