A Milestone, not just a millstone.

At long last I've reached one important milestone. The bottom is fully planked. This was acheived at about 4 this afternoon. After I drove in the last screw, the Earl and I to a moment to have a celebratory beer. Then we went right back to work.

Here's some pictures of the finished bottom.



As you can see the clear oak is quite fetching but it's not quite good enough to keep bright so it will get a coat of white paint like everything else. Some of the wood on the topsides I plan to keep bright. Actually just oiled since varnish tends to go bad too quickly and I don't have the facilities to do it right.

And here's a view of the stern.



It's hard to get a good angle in the shed of the aft parts but they really came out much nicer than I had expected. I also promised pictures of the bull nose. You can sort of see them in the second picture above but here's a close up of the port side. You can click to enlarge it. As you can see by the lines, there are 5 layers of 4/4 oak put together then shaped down. Its hard to tell from the 2d picture but there is a lot of curviness to that area and there was no way I was going to get 1/2 inch oak to fit in. On my next boat (don't tell my wife!) I'm going to pay a lot closer attention to the design of the bow. I've learned a lot about what wood will and won't do, and just because I can make a pretty curve work on paper... you get the idea.

There were a few other pictures in this series that had some good shot that Earl took. Alas, they also contained images of my bloated corpus and so were not fit for publication. I take enough mock on my work, I don't need you all to be casting aspersions upon me personally as well. That's my family's job anyway.