IT BEGINS

No kit yet, but still a lot to do/get done. I bought lumber to make the bow sprit, spreaders and tiller, ordered and paid for the hatches (“CLUE” hatches), and machined the last couple of cuts on the keel plate.

OAK: bow sprit was epoxied up from 2 pieces of wood, planed it down to the correct thickness. Did the final shaping. This was fast and easy.

ASH: spreaders were epoxied up from 3 pieces of wood, then a bunch of creative cutting and sanding followed. It came out fine in the end, but I was worried in the meantime that I was making expensive sawdust.

MAHOGANY/ASH: tiller was made of 7 pieces, trimmed to the correct size, and fitted for the stainless steel straps that will attach the tiller to the rudder head. This small timber structure will be in my hand, and right under my eyeballs for hours and days on end. It needs to be comfortable and pretty!

POPLAR: the lead bulb mold is made from this. Glued out of 4 pieces, and turned down on a lathe. Then split in half.  Molten lead will shrink 5/16 of an inch per foot when it cools. So, we need to make the bulb almost an inch larger than the finished product.

KEEL PLATE: the rest of the work is going to be a hand grinding. 2 hours later and the last bit of clean up is done. Yay!  Now off to the welder.

Well I accidentally deleted some pictures, so I lost some wood getting glued together, some machining and model boat stuff.  Don’t worry, I sail WAY better than I computer…

Spreader

Bow sprit, spreaders, tiller

Keel ready to hand grind

Build Plate from engraver