Hard Going

After a flurry of activity its been slow going here at the boat shed. The frames are cut, the jig is built, the shed is waterproof at last, why haven't I put it all together and started bending my planks on? In a word, fear.

Too many times I've gotten to a point in a project where it suddenly dawns on me that I should have done something differently 5 steps ago. You have to remember that I'm not working off of plans that some naval architect came up with and has already been built before so that all of the pieces and curves have been thought through. This is straight from my head to the wood (with a quick stop in AutoCAD) and although I fancy myself a competent craftsman it's a big step to take.

So I've been reviewing the drawings and trying to imagine the difficulties I'm sure to run into and trying to see if there are stes I can take now to cut down on headaches later. The books I have on the subject are fine up to the point where they say "Now take care to follow the drawings carefully." Well, you can image how useful that advice is around here.

At any rate, I hope to have at least the forward frames together by the end of the weekend. In the mean time, I've exported the plan views from my drawing to post here so that you, my faithful readers, can see what I hope the finished product to look like. What you see are the side and top views with the frame uprights fore and aft (forward is on the right side). For an idea of scale, the stack (chimney for you land lubbers) on top of that box that is the boiler is 6ft high. The boat itself is 21.5 feet long and displaces about a ton unloaded. I figure it will be about 3k lbs loaded up, at least that's where I put the waterline (which isn't marked here). It looks now that most of the weight is in the stern, but that doesn't account for the coolers loaded up in the front. You can't believe the quantity of liquor it takes to operate one of these things.