Still Here, Still Working On It

Progress has been really slow...ok honestly it's been hard to measure.

I lost about half of the roof on the house over the winter and as a result I spent most of my down time this summer roofing. Sucks but that's life. Good news is that I've got a little over 4 cords of wood put up and I'm getting ready to get geared up on the boat again.

What I did get done this summer was that I managed to get the keel faired out. I had a couple nasty dips and dives particularly where the forward most scarph came together. I pulled a line down the center of the boat and marked the low spots. Fill, sand, lather, rinse, repeat. At this point I'm just about ready to start glassing the bottom.

Side Project (Lund)

My 14' Lund that I bought used a few years back had been fitted with a deck from the bow seat forward. The last owner had built it using 3/4 acx, and suprise suprise it didn't hold up.The other two seats were decked by the factory with 3/4 MDO, so in order to stay in the same vein I replaced the bow deck with new one made out of MDO.

At the same time I decided to move my battery back closer to the CG so I built a battery box out of some of the scraps.

Bow Deck:

Hatch Detail:







Battery Box:

Spring Sucks

Well I wish I could say I had made a ton of progress recently, but I haven't.

Spring planting and other spring related duties have really killed my available shop time.

In the last couple weeks I have gotten most of my "chores" taken care of. I've got a couple remaining and then maybe I can get a whole day to work on the boat. In the mean time I'm picking at it an hour here and hour there.

Right now I'm really struggling with whether or not I should put the UHMW wear strips on that Renn calls for on the fairbody. I HATE working with that SH!T I've still got a scar on my arm from another project using UHMW last year. Nasty crap came off the back side of the table saw and the melting hot plastic stuck to my arm. I'm struggling because if I delete that component I don't have to flatten out the fairbody and add the sacraficial strips for under the UHMW. Dunno, seriously how often I'm going to be beaching this boat.

More On The BHSB

http://www.duckworksmagazine.com/07/howto/bhsb/index.htm

Feeling like a rockstar...ok, not so much.

Still Sanding

I know I haven't posted to this blog much but frankly there hasn't been much to show. I've got a fairing coat on the transom, and the port sides everything is smoove as smoove can be, but it's almost not worth taking a picture of. I've gotta get the starboard side faired out and then climb up on the bottom and start working on that. I don't know why, but getting on and off the bottom/top of the hull just isn't very much fun. At least when I'm working on the sides I can sand while standing comfortably, but when working on the bottom I gotta spend all my time bent over humping my sander.

I'm hoping to start glassing the bottom in the next couple of weeks, but like everything else with this project I'm sure that'll move out some. Everything, and I do mean EVERYTHING seems to take me longer than I expect.

Sidebar

Ok so not really a building post, more of an explanation...

I'm building this boat so I can go fishing in the winter. I already fish pretty much when ever I want when it's warm, but I want a place to sit and stay warm when it's 10 degrees outside. There's a couple lakes around here that just light up when it gets cold.


My Step-Brother made the cover of Fishing and Hunting News

That's him on the left and his buddy Josh on the right. Look at that HAWG! It's a damn MONSTA!



http://www.fishingandhuntingnews.com/washington/

Gotta get more fairing done. As a plus I think sanding is probably pretty good winter time excercise to keep the casting arm up. Well that's my story any way.

Glaring Ommision

Boy, do I feel like an asshat.

I just realized that I never posted the url for the tolman builders group at Yahoo...

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/tolmanskiff/

Better late than never I guess.

Any way if anyone is interested in building a Tolman it's a damn good place to hang out and ask questions. Since I'm no longer a road warrior stuck in hotel rooms every night I really don't contribute to the list much these days. Not much interest in getting on computer when I get home as I spend all day sitting in front of one.

Still Fairing

No sense in posting a picture, frankly it doesn't look like I've made any progress. I'm still fairing. Tedious work but there is an advantage. I don't have to get the shop up to T-shirt temps in order to sand. In fact it's kinda nice to sand in a cold shop, less sweating. I've burned more wood this year than I ever have since the shop was built almost 10 years ago. I think it had something to do with having a whole lot more wood put up. Like money burning a whole in your pocket.

Fairing

Funny thing, I've been working for two straight weeks on fairing out the port side, and there's almost no way to document my work with a photo. It's little stuff really, divot here, whoop there, dings and imperfections everywhere I look. Some of my scarphs weren't perfect, there were a couple highs and lows in my chines that needed some filling and rework. All that being said the port side is damn near as good as I'm going to get it. Another week at the most and I'm moving over to the other side. The good news is that the starboard side for what ever reason looks to be in way better shape so maybe I can get a handle on it in something less than a month? I hope so because my shoulders are killing me. In the mean time I published my method for making sanding boards here: http://www.instructables.com/id/EFVGU4E9ITEV2Z8W5Y/