For the rest of the course (7 weeks) Wednesdays are going to be boat building days for me, and Wednesday the 30th (day 18) was the first of those.
I spent the day helping Ben and Johnny rivet the new frames into place on one of the two traditional clinker dinghies which Ben is repairing. That gave me an opportunity to see and take part in some steam wood bending. The new frames were oak and still quite green to facilitate in the bending process, Johnny was nominated ‘steam box chief’ and his task was to insert and remove the frames at timed intervals. Too long in the steam box dries the wood out too much and could result in it breaking when bent, too little time in the box means that the wood is too cold and again can snap when bent. A critical task indeed.
As each frame came out of the box Ben and Johnny would ease it into place and it was my job to drill through from the outside of the dinghy using the rivet holes from the old frames, hammer a copper nail through and brace it as Ben seated the copper rove, cut the nail and peened it over. It was tough to hit the frames dead centre (the ideal) because as well as having no point of reference, the curve of the bilge dictated the angle of attack and it was hard to gauge the angle to come up at. Overall I managed pretty well though and when we were finished most of the rivets were on or close to the centre with only a handful being on the edge of the tolerances which we were working to.
All in all another very tiring day with a lot of clambering about under the boat but again it was very satisfying to see the dinghy coming together.
Check out Ben’s facebook page for more pictures and updates on this and his other projects.
This is so cool.
(via boatporn)
