Week 9 Stiffening & Sheathing the Inner Hull

This week was a really busy week at the academy with the boat building continueing but with the recomencement of some lectures, painting and finishing teaching and on friday block making in preparation for next weeks splicing teaching by veteran boat builder Roy Gollop. Today's block making with Roy was truly brilliant. With all this going on I worked late every night this week to keep the build moving forward.
Monday started with the build moulds being taken down which took all of about 30 minutes (slightly quicker than erecting them) and a spring clean of the working area then the boat being moved into position on it's cradle.
After we packed all the moulds away and decided on the next step of battening the sheer line we realized they had to be brought back again and some placed back into the boat to mark the sheer line which was marked on the moulds. It took us until about 8pm to get them exactly in place and plum. With all our levels checked and triple checked and qaudruple checked we marked the sheer and battened it off.
Tuesday was spent scarfing and fitting the gunnels along the sheer line.
On wednesday we made cross members to temporarily stiffen the hull then the rest of the day was spent cleaning off the inside of the hull of all the hot glue gun glue blobs, hoovering it spotlessly clean and laying out the cloth ready for sheathing with epoxy on Thursday.
On Thursady the centre board was temporarily fitted inside the boat and the slot lengthened to suit before we got ready to epoxy. I was helped by Paul and Nick along with the watchful eyes and skillfull hands of Bob and the Mike Broome who were fantastic. All went smoothly and we applied the last piece of peel ply by 3:30 and by the end we were shattered. Nick and myself worked again into the evening laminating the wood stock for the rudder.
Friday morning was spent making our wooden blocks with Roy and then to painting and finsihing again. I worked on the boat build again the rest of the day until 7:00pm making the rudder and cutting the sheer line with the fein to reveal the finished hull ready for fit out which begins next week.