Thursday 22 March 2012

Anti climax

Despite my head cold and sore throat I couldn't resist getting started on
the keel yesterday, I set out my battens and took up all my marks from
the old keel then tacked the top batten on to the top of the new keel and
transfered the marks and  faired the lines. Then I turned it over and went
tacking on the batten when one of the nails seemed to go in very easily.
Noticing this I gave the near by timber a clout of the hammer only to
leave a sizable dent. F*%K S^*T B*%^^X.
A line of rot running about four foot into the timber. So we're back to
waiting for a keel again and now without the money we had for it.
Well such is life, and I've learned to scruttanize the next piece
more aggressively.
Its not a total loss as three quarters of the piece is still good oak so we'll
cut out the rot and set the remains aside for future projects.

I continued today with roughly cutting a few frames from the crooked
oak we got and finally got the false keel made as well. I had picked up
another piece of oak to get that out of after the first one wasn't big enough
but this one had splits running through it so I've now made it in two
pieces instead.
A section of pith which is what was rotten, Obvious in retrospect it can be seen here on the end grain.  
I had wanted to see the log being sawn to make sure the pith was avoided but it had already
been cut when we arrived and I hadn't realized it ran so far into this piece.

Setting out the lines


After a coat of linseed oil

The split piece, soon to be fire wood. The old rudder can be seen in the background, it broke in half after it fell lightly against the door.

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