Saturday 30 June 2012

Doksuri overhead

These are the Sheer Clamps being glued at the sheer on Doug's boat
Tropical depression Doksuri passed right over Hong Kong today, bringing winds and rain.  Just before she set in, Arlene and I managed to scarf and glue together lengths of 2" x 3/4" Douglas Fir, on the cool new Makita Table saw.  We have to glue the lengths as we don't have wood long enough for the length of the boat here in Hong Kong (around 15'): I envy those places like California and Maine, or Australia, where all this stuff is just round the corner.
Scarfing and gluing these lengths together was a bit tricky. First of all I did a 55-degree cut and glued them with epoxy, but this didn't work. So I redid them, using biscuit joints and biscuits in half lengthwise (see photo), and using thickened epoxy. This worked fine and they've made strong joints.
"Biscuits": wooden, 1.5" to 3" long.
They fit into cut made by a special power
tool that cuts a groove to fit them perfectly

These lengths are to laminate into "Sheer Clamps" that you can see in Dave's photo above (Dave being another guy that is blogging about his build of the Somes Sound). These clamps help to strengthen the sheer and are fitted inside the sheer plank (or "strake") when the boat is turned over.
With so much rain recently, and as I'm building outside with no cover, I haven't been able to get to the outside stuff.  Instead I've built other bits and pieces inside, so far as follows: the tiller, the rudder, the centreboard, the centreboard trunk (that holds the centreboard), the deadwood, the keel filler, the transom knee and cheeks and the sternpost.
These are all sitting round in the basement awaiting better weather.
I'm also awaiting some more wood: Batu (a kind of Asian mahogany) which is from China and takes at least 10 days to arrive after ordering. This is what I'm going to use for the Keelson and the Transom.

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