Station molds, wood choices.
Back in the workshop after a week vacations.
While “idling” during the break I was evaluating options for wooden parts and color scheme of my boat.
I want to make sheer strake from solid mahogany and keep it bright: probably oiled with Owatrol or varnished. To match that the transom would also be mahogany.
False-stem would be made from oak, same with gunwales - adding a bright accents into mahogany.
Centerboard case would be trimmed with mahogany or walnut, if I have enough of the later in my shed.
As for hull color, initially I was leaning towards Roger Barns’ style of boat: mostly dark (black even!) hull.
I still fancy this configuration but there are drawbacks of dark hull on epoxy-glued boats. Mainly strip-planked boats suffer from excess heat but lapstrake hull will also get warm, possibly causing problems.
The opposite option would be light-color hull, even white, with dark, mahogany sheer strake. Also pleasing to the eye.
Both configurations will look good with red-tanned sails, wouldn’t hey?
Well, I still have time to decide.
The stem assembly is glued, I removed masking tape and roughly cleaned excess epoxy. I’ll posh it tomorrow, before I use it as a mould for making false stem.
I took closer look on my scarfed planks. Not all joints came out perfect, there are a few planks where scarves did not line up perfectly flat, resulting in ca 1 mm proud edge.
After watching a series of boat-building videos on Off Center Harbor I realized my mistake: when clamping the joint I placed the weight only on one (top) part of the scarf while I should have uniformly press both parts. This would spread the pressure better and result in more even joint.
Well, I’ll have to sand it flat, probably risking exposing some plywood veneers from deeper layer. The hull will be painted so I’m not sweating about it but it feels stupid now to miss this detail.
Next steps:
cleaning scarves on all planks
cleaning stem assembly and preparing it for moulding false stem
ripping oak slats for false stem and oak battens for CB-case
fabricating CB-case
gluing false stem
beveling the plywood stem
fabricating the transom
Once the above is done I can finally build all stations on the strongback.
I look so much towards this stage that I jumped ahead of me a bit and started placing first bulkhead supports and station molds on the strongback.
I leave the middle part of the girder to serve as a working bench for gluing CB-case and the transom.
Again - hats down for Francois Vivier for designing and Alec Jordan for preparing this kit. I had to only round a bit plywood edges, for easier installation, and all parts went onto the strongback with a nice, tight fit.
Rubber-mallet with dead blow was handy to drive these stations into their slots.
For doublers on some stations I use white wood glue - quick and clean, water based glue. These parts will not be part of the boat so no need for expensive epoxy goo here.