Inner backbone

A slow sort of week so far. We managed to get the inner backbone cleaned up and assembled (2 aprons shaped, scarfed and glued to hog and fixed in place).

Various other things moved along a bit but various things also seemed to slow us down. A half day sales/indoctrination visit from W**… epoxy did not help things along. The information would have been useful at the start of the course - but we have already all now built a ply epoxy boat and know the basics of this technology. In addition, trying to talk sense to a ‘technical’ salesman who thinks that post-curing epoxy is a waste of time is a real waste of time. I didn’t even bother to try and talk about solvent balance in CPES sealants.

Everyone else thinks that Seapod is developing well - and fast but it seems that we could be working much better and faster. Anway - here is this week’s picture gallery.

The first reason why the week started slowly - I cycled from Cowes to The Needles (and back) on Sunday. The weather, company (Karen is doing a career change course at the UKSA) and cycle were all great - but I was tired the next day - I’m not used to 60km cycle rides.

The centreboard case got routed through the hog before we glued up the hog and aprons. This will provide us with a template to rout the rest through the keel once the boat is planked up.

After we finish fine trimming the apron profile and honing the scarfs - we get the whole lot glued up - lots of pressure needed for the resorcinol - even against the ends of the (plain) scarfs that we use.

The plan is to use the inner backbone assembly to laminate the stems before removing it and applying the hog and apron bevels on the bench. Once the apron bevels are in place we can line up the ribbands with the rabbet and finish fairing the hull. Sometime during all this we will bevel the outer backbone (stems and keel laminates) and then glue the outer backbone to the inner…. Lots to do next week.. assuming that I don’t get snowbound in Edinburgh over the weekend.