Enough complaining. So last time we were getting the pieces together. They are now attached and on the mold. Here are shots of the front and back of the boat. The mysterious rabbet is now not so mysterious.
Not sure if I mentioned this before... but this is a double-ender. No transom.The next step is lining off. Basically, we are putting temporary sticks (called battens) on the mold see where each plank will lie. This exercise is mostly for aesthetic purposes, but we also need to make sure that the planks aren't too wide where the boat makes a sharp turn in the center. We start in the center, where the girth is longest. We mark some plank sizes on the center mold, (They start off about 7" wide, narrow down to 4" near the turn of the bilge, and then grow again to about 6") then geometrically diminish them for the shorter girths on the other molds.
Here is the incredible geometric diminisher.
We place some tick strip on the marked center mold to pick up all the plank sizes and then place those on the bottom of the diminisher. We then draw lines from each plank endpoint to some point in the distance. Then we go to a different mold and pick up the distance between the keel and the sheer. We line those points up to the sheer and keel lines (the outer ones of the triangle) and pick up all the plank positions, then transfer those points to the mold. Confusing, eh? All this ingenuity could have been avoided if we just used the metric system. Basically, all we are doing is reducing each plank size for the change in girth down the length of the boat. But what is 59/74ths of 4 1/8"? I have no idea... so we use the incredible geometric diminisher...but I'm pretty sure I could tell you what 59/74ths of 9.1cm is, and even mark it on a mold. (It is 7.25cm by the way).
All this diminishing is just to get us close anyway. Next step is to run the battens (using the marks we just put on the molds as guidelines) along the length of the boat. Then, you stare at them. Here is the building crew doing the hard work of lining off. To my left(your right) is Josh and then Jamie, my building partners on this project.
All kidding aside about standing around and looking at this thing... this was tough. The marks we made work well up to about 4 feet from the ends. Then you have all sorts of crazy stuff going on. The lines twist and turn and if you just used the magically diminished points you would end up with a boat that floats, but an ugly one at that. What makes it tough is moving one line effects all others, in 3 dimensions. Anyhow, after a lot of cursing and moving, we finally ended up with lines that we liked.
In other news.... the other big boat is getting set up as well. This one is right side up.
The 12 1/2 (right side of the picture above) is almost done.The peapod is planked......
One final note.... the beer making equipment has come out of the closet. We just brewed my first batch in years. Should be ready to drink after the Thanksgiving break if I can get it bottled next weekend.
