Monday, April 19, 2010

Fiddly bits... Mast project days 4-6

What most people don't realize about boat building projects is that the hard part is simply getting on with it when nothing much seems to be happening...


Case in point, the ongoing mast project which is more or less on schedule but nothing much seems to be happening. The process of making big planks into skinny strips followed by making them pointy and then gluing the pointy bits together to make long skinny strips (or scarfing, as we boat butchers like to call it) is a boring process and worse for it as when all is said and done, not much seems to happen as what you still have on the bench is a whole lot of skinny pieces of wood that don't look like a mast!


Which is made worse by not taking up much time as a whole lot of the process is waiting for glue to dry, which take my word for it is not nearly exciting as watching paint dry!



Such is boat building...


A friend who was helping me was some kind of impressed with my little SurForm which I take for granted as my go-to-tool for cleaning up epoxy and glass and is easily one of the most used tools in the tool bag... I thought everyone knew about them. They really are great and at just a few dollars it's worthwhile to have a few handy.