Let’s twist again..

Challenging few days.

After driving on and getting the stringers last week I started this week with a dusty day bevelling some of them ready to take the side panels. The order of mounting being transom, sides, chines and bottom(s).

All had been going too well. When I mounted the side panels on the Port side I found I had a big gap, they weren’t long enough. Whereas the Starboard appeared fine. I continued bevelling but in the end I still ended up with a 30mm gap. This was slightly disappointing. Well quite a bit disappointing to be honest.

Overall this would equate to less than 1% of the overall length, so not a huge difference, and after all we are not building Formula 1 racers. Possibly if I had been building from raw materials rather than a kit I may not even have picked this up, as I would probably have cut rough to the boat and finished on the boat in front of me. However as I had three pre-cut kit parts to play with I had to take a step back. Why was I having this problem.

So out came the spirit level and the tape measure. I spent a morning re-measuring things. Overall length of the boat was fine, key jig dimensions ok. However I found a few key measurements out. A couple of frames slightly off centre (having run a plumb line over the top), and one of the frames and transom twisted off vertical. None of which you would notice to the eye.

As this has been checked numerous times before whilst building the jig and mounting the frames I can only assume this has happened quite recently. Although the tent we are using to build the boat is great, it could ideally have done with being a little wider. From time to time when we need to work on one of the sides we need to push the whole jig and boat to the other side of the tent. I can only assume we have accidentally introduced the movement whilst moving the boat.

So this morning was spent freeing the previously glued stringers on the aft Port frames with an oscillating multitool saw. (The only bright side of this episode is that I now have another new toy!!). This afternoon was spent repositioning the errant frames and rechecking the side panels. They pretty much fit correctly now, although I probably need to finish a little more bevelling for final positioning.

This is a good result as I thought for a while I would need to cut out all the stringers, which if I damaged would probably set me back a couple of weeks.

So what are the learning points.

1. Don’t assume that once you have mounted the frames on the jig that they will not move. We had already added additional structure to that shown on the drawing, but even so….
2. Do not glue anything or cut anything to “final” length until you have checked the next two steps ahead
3. Before you glue its a good idea to double check that your core dimensions are still correct, nothing has moved
4. keep coins nearby for the swear box

Hopefully we have resolved our issues for now. On we go.