More woodwork

(first published 17th May 2005)

Not a lot of progress in the past couple of days, mostly due to the continuing miserable weather. It’s perked up for a day or two now, though, and I’ve done two small jobs.


The first job was to start on the breasthook - the horizontal knee that joins the two gunwales just abaft of the stem head. This is a strengthening member, but I decided to make it decorative as well by fabricating it from a few offcuts of both white and brown oak. It won’t be finished until the final decorative oak strip is applied to the inside of the gunwale, but it’s a start.



The second job really was one of those “two steps forward and one back” efforts because I changed my mind and decided to give the rear thwart a wooden surface. I bought some quite reasonable WBP ply from B&Q with a good veneer face and cut it to fit on top of the rear thwart/buoyancy tank. Before I could epoxy it onto the GRP I had to remove all the paint - including that which I put on a week ago! I suppose I’d painted it without really thinking how it would look when finished - I just wanted the boat to look as if I was making real progress after weeks of taking it apart. But now it’s going to look much better.



'Sgonna look good when the oak trim hides the raw edge of the plywood.