Ark etype

 

Doreen, a lovely lady from the Mauritius, told me "your boat looks like a little ark".  And by golly, she is right, I can't stop seeing it that way now. And I do feel like a sort of Noah.

I should really be sanding and painting the inner compartments, but I couldn't resist trying the 3rd planks. The good news is they fit pretty well. The bad news is I really can't reach the forward compartments that need sanding, epoxying and painting, so I will have to take the planks off again. Oh well, it was a good morale boost.

I temporarily put the seats and the cockpit sole in as well, and proped the cabin sides up, and had a good sit and a think about tasks to be done. Much easier than actually doing them. The challenge of getting the carlins fitted is looming on the horizon. I bought a more powerful table saw, which ripped the pieces ok, but generated a huge amount of sawdust. I am very envious of Campbell's dust extraction machine.  The charred bannister that Harald up the road gave me is a lovely bit of Oregon under the burned bits. I am thinking I will try my hand at making a birdsmouth mast, now I have the machine to cut the staves.

Chris suggested a sail on Monday, which turned out to be a great idea. It was a fantastic Winter's day sail, complete with a fantastic dolphin encounter. I know it will take longer to build the boat if I keep goofing off, but there will be plenty of days when I can't sail, so I am resolved to seize every opportunity.

Chris made a really nice video of the day:

Learning

 Gerard kindly helped me get plank 2 on last week. I had been fiddling round not making much forward progress, so his help getting over the plank 2 hurdle was much appreciated. 

It's great to see the structure taking on a more SCAMP-like appearance. I dare to hope that this might turn into an actual boat one day.

It sure is a beamy little thing, almost half as wide as it is long.

 I am pretty much finished this round of filleting and cleating. It has been a salutory learning experience and I hope I have learned something approaching patience. The effort today sanding the dodgy fillets that I put on yesterday when the light was fading and I was tired is a good reminder that it's just not worth it. Speaking of light fading, the quality of my late afternoon fillets has improved considerably now I am using a camping lantern and can sort of see what I am doing.

The precision of the cnc kit has really helped with the planks. Even Maggie the Quality Control Officer is impressed. She really likes the boat, something about all the compartments appeals to her cat brain. And on good days we get lovely afternoon sunshine in the carport and she can snooze contentedly curled up in front of the jig.Very companionable. Ozzie is now shut inside while I work, after a couple of incidents where he has taken himself off for a walk round the neighbourhood while I have been distracted with the boat.

Next tasks to finish off the compartments with a few more coats of epoxy and some paint, before they get too hard to access. And put hatches in the cabin sole and side seats.

Works will slow down for a while too, as a trip away and other commitments will soak up SCAMP time, but the project will take as long as it takes, and I am enjoying it.

Garboard and washout

 

To adapt John Lennon's great insight, life is what happens when you are trying to build a SCAMP.  I have made some progress in between outings other commitments though. I put in all the cleats that the seats and cockpit sole will attach to, drilled out and epoxied in the centreboard case bushings, added the mini bulkhead for the footwell and finished off most of the fillets. All of which is almost invisible and not particularly morale boosting. 

Yesterday I drew and then planned the bevels on the garboard planks and got them more or less in position. Jim at the Dinghy Shop who cut my cnc kit couldn't do the bevels, and I have been wondering how it would go. Turned out it's pretty easy to plot and plane them and i can fine tune when plank 2 goes on. 

Good old stitch and glue. The cnc cut planks fitted way better than the panels I cut from plans on my last build, and the Skerry turned out OK,  so despite the odd chink of daylight, I tightened up and clamped as best I could and proceeded to tack fillet today. It is so cold I am not sure the glue will set enough to risk taking the wires out tomorrow. I think I might leave it for tomorrow and maybe start on the rudder. It looks like every pair of planks will take me about 4 -5  days: dry fit 1, tack weld 2, setting day 3, fillet and glass 4, epoxy coat 5. 3 sets of pairs of planks ... I  guess that's the next two weeks lined up.

I took the Skerry up to Yarrawonga last week for a planned trip with some WBA members down to Tocumwal, but a lot of rain upriver saw the river levels rising, Parks were advising groups not to head down, and the weather was pretty bleak. We settled for a day's rowing on Lake Mulwala.

There are channels marked through the forests of dead trees. Coming back, Jim from the WBA and I tried the acquatic equivalent of bush bashing, and picked our way directly home past submerged and barely submerged stumps.  I managed not to hit any, Jim was not so lucky and got stuck on a few. The larger trees make great nesting spots for sulphur crested cockatoos. As you row past, pairs of proprietorial heads pop out to watch you closely till you are out of range. 

Gavan had engine problems, dinner at the pub disagreed with me, it was bloody cold and it rained a lot. It was all a learning experience. I think I will focus on the SCAMP till the weather warms up a bit.

 

Stemmed

 

Once again, the boat building gods smiled upon this project, and delivered a splendid sunny light wind morning for the installation of the stem and front 3 bulkheads. Gerard offered to help for a couple of hours, which was fantastic as it is a complicated operation and the prospect of the  epoxy going off adds some pressure. Before we started it looked like the pic above.

Thanks to the laser level, some cursing, and Gerard's assistance, we managed to get all the bits in and as far as I can tell, close enough to where they should be, all glued in neatly.

It feels very solid, and it looks big!  It is creating some interest round the neighbourhood too, people walking very slowly past having a good sticky beak.

I gave myself today off to let the glue set. Anne was announcing the winner of the Peter Carey Short Story competition today up in Bacchus Marsh, Oz and I drove her up there and then went for a bush walk at Pyretes Creek State Park. A dangerous place according to the signs.

And they weren't kidding. You really would not want to fall down one of those.

But we managed not to tumble down a mine shaft. The rain cleared to a lovely sunny afternoon, and we found a spot off the road to make a cuppa and have lunch.  

It was a good recharge. Poor Ozzieis all tired out tonight though. And Ifeel much the same. Back into the SCAMP tomorrow!

The boat looks worried

 

Well, bulkhead #3 looks less than thrilled about how this build is shaping up. I hope I can get a bit faster with jobs like making hatch doublers ... these ones took me a fair bit of two days, and they were still a bit rough. 

I am nearly finished filleting the back section though, and can move on to getting #1, 2 and 3, the mast box and the stem fitted. I used my dad's scratch gauge to mark the lines to plane to for the bevels on Bulkhead #1. It was exactly the right tool. 

That stem really is very floppy ... I will need to think of a sturdy brace for it before I go too much further.  

Solidifying

 I've been dancing round the challenge of getting bulkheads 4 through 7 and  the seat longitudinals installed and glued. Howard Rice, who has had a hand in building more than 80 SCAMPS, suggested building cb case and longitudinal as a separate component. I tried this, but managed to get the inner side of the case a couple of mill off. Those self tappers, it is easy to miss your pilot holes. Took me a a day of stuffing round to get it all to sort of line up. 

Dry fitting is reassuring, but it throws into sharp relief the problem of how to get glue in all the joins and assemble the structure. It requires slotting multiple unweildy pieces together simultaneously, with glue in all the joins, and all at the right angles. The SCAMP Camps have lots of hands to do this step, single handed is a bit trickier.

I did a lot of internet scouring, and planned a process that would give me time to make small batches of epoxy and be reasonably careful with levels and angles and clearing up.

I made a gig to hold #7 in place, then another to hold #6, then #4, then I fited t the centreboard case longitudinal and #5. I  was able to check as I went with a nifty little right angle that I picked up at at WBA Swap meet. I think it belonged to Alan Chinn, one of the founding fathers of the WBA. It is a very handy tool, I hope Alan is pleased it is seeing another boat true into the world.

This morning I started working through my list. At the end of a long, intense day, the structure looks much the same as it did when the parts were dry fit, but it has all taken on a sort of solidity. No going back now.

It all went fairly much as I hoped. A few moments of excitement, one when Maggie jumped onto the sole which had beads of epoxy laid out ... I had a vision of the cat stepping in epoxy, then licking her paws, then having to be rushed off to the vet.

Maggie does like sitting on the SCAMP... I will have to be very careful in future when gluing.

The other oops was when I was getting tired, and hurrying to mix the last batch if epoxy. I put the hardener syringe briefly in the resin container... hmmm. I  guess  will see if I have ruined a couple of litres of resin tomorrow. 

Hopefully I won't have to do any more marathon efforts like today again on this boat.  A good feeling, a hurdle surmounted.

Endolphins and Endorphins

 A busy week.  I got out sailing Wednesday, from the Warmies in Williamstown with Chris and Gavan, and on Thursday with Chris and Gerard. 

The weather wasn't so great Wednesday, but it was a great sail, made all the better by a close encounter with the dolphin pod off the breakwater.

Thursday was a great day too.  Gerard was held up, so Chris and I just hung off one of the visitors moorings in the river, and had a cuppa and enjoyed the sun.  Once we got going, there was a nice breeze, and we beat up past Wyndham harbour a few times, then  enjoyed a great run back, picking through the shallows, and tied up again at the visitors mooring for lunch.  Not very far or very fast, but my kind of sailing.  

I have been waiting on Richard the nice Irishman from Port Melbourne who is the West Systems Epoxy agent for melbourne, to get in some stock of graphite powder, which the SCAMP manual recommends for centreboard case and centreboard.  It came in Friday so I am moving forwards again.

I've put two layers of fibre glass on the centreboard, and graphite on the inside of the case. Sure makes for a shiny surface.   While I was waiting for that to dry today, I tried dry fitting the mast box.

Thanks to the wonders of the cnc cutting, it all fits together beautifully. 

I couldn't resist trying out what it would look like in situ.

I realised that it would be a right pain to be coating the inside of the mast box once it is all glued up, so I disassembled the structure and put a coat on.  At least there will be one coat on in there.  Not sure how you are supposed to paint it, or put the fillets on the inside.  But I will cross that bridge when I come to it.  Which will be tomorrow I hope.