I admit, I've been slackin'!

Yes it's true. I've been slackin' of late. Finished my contract with the Gubment on June 1st and here it is 11 days later before I get into the boat shed in earnest. It's been a wacky last week and a half. Yesterday we had to put down or cat, Shadow. She'd been sick for awhile and we had to do what we had to do. :-(

I had been in the shed doing some general clean up and tried to bring some order to the chaos. There was a ton of lumber left over from the strongback & turning frame. I looked at it for a bit and 'Wallah!' it came to me! Picnic Table!

My $14 scrap lumber picnic table

That took me two days of pissin' around inbetween weather and such. Didn't take too long to turn it into a work bench either!

Makeshift workbench!  ;-)

I have no way to cut stainless steel. Had a few chats with a local machine shop guy and he's agreed to fabricate my rudder assembly. I've assembled all the materials and agreed to cut a mild steel template for the foil shape that'll make up the thingies in the rudder.

Foil shape rudder thingy template

The machine shop will plasma cut the foil shape thingies saving me a heck of a lot of time & effort. The rudder will be the same as Peter's 'Luka'.

Peter's rudder assembly

The first job today was re-leveling the boat. You do this a lot when you're building on a dirt floor. This time I made myself a new, improved, water level. It's 7/16 plastic tubing with black water (food colouring). Worked like a charm!

New and Improved water level!

I also use a laser level to get things level & plumb. Not easy inside the boat where there's no flat surface to set up the level.

Attempting plumb & level.

The laser level has been a great tool right from the start when we setup the strongback. Without it I'm sure this ole' boat would be crooked as a Liberal politician!  ~ :-)

Improvising base for laser level.

Once that was done I located the position for the main bulkhead that'll separate the forward cabin from the engine space. There are notches in the stringers for alignment and I had to be sure they were properly aligned.

Stringers aligned for main bulkhead

Once that was done I could now start to fit the stringer extensions (required due to hull stretch). I'm planning on using 8/4 white oak for the engine beds. These will be incorporated into the stringers so any strength I loose in leaving out 1 layer of ply (my engine is 21" wide, stringers are 20" apart) will be more than compensated for.

That's about it for now. It's raining again and I have a leak in the shed roof. As expected. Printed out all the measurements for the engine so I can double check those and make sure things are going to line up as I had originally planned.

More coming soon.

Standby.....