I only had a short hour or so that I stole from Sunday afternoon to work on the boat. But any time is good time.
I bought a thermometer to keep in the garage, to let me know if it’s warm enough to glue. It was 32° outside but 40° in the garage, and 40° is the lowest temp where PL Premium says you can use it. I brought a space heater up from the basement and plugged it in inside the garage, but even after working in there for a half hour or so the thermometer didn’t go up appreciably. It bumped up to 41° for a minute but then went right back down to 40°. Maybe I can pre-heat the garage for a couple hours next time I have to glue anything.
Mostly today I worked on the sides in the garage. I took out the staples from the butt blocks, which was a pain. If I thought trying to staple the pieces together was difficult, then, whew, pulling the staples out was super difficult. They all pretty much broke, each one every time, when I was pulling them out with the pliers. Ugh. I think I’m done with staples.
I still have to use butt blocks to join the bow points on the bottom sheet of plywood. I’m either going to use short brads or just go with weights.
I then was able to lay one side assembly on top of the other to see if they were close enough to symmetrical to use as is. They were not. They are not.
They’re not bad, mind. They’re pretty close, but the sloppy cutting of the parts is catching up with me. I marked with a Sharpie the couple places where one assembly needs trimming. I’ll get to that next week maybe.
The major thing that I did, though, was move back inside the warm basement and cut the compound angles on the sticks I’m using as a temporary transom for the initial hull assembling. This is all part of my overthinking of the transom. I’ve literally spent hours mulling over and drawing and designing the transom, worrying over the angles. This temporary assembly is going to serve as a sort of story stick, to be able to measure final angles for the final transom piece before cutting into the relatively expensive 3/4″ plywood.
The angles on these sticks was complicated enough, despite simplifying the up/down angle of 13.3° to match the aft-to-fore flare of the sides of 13°. I figure the 0.3° won’t make an appreciable difference on these temporary pieces.
The key move, though, was marking the angles on the pieces such that the laser on the compound miter saw match the marks, so that I knew I was cutting the right directions. The miter angle was easier, since the saw pivots both right and left for miters. The saw only pivots to the left for bevels, however. I had to turn the pieces around and cut what I considered backwards for the port sides of the sticks.
The blade on the miter saw is only 24 teeth, so there was a fair amount of tear-out on the sticks as well, but that shouldn’t be a problem either, as these are, again, temporary pieces. The main thing is that they’re cut and they’re right, 39-3/4″ at the top of the top stick, 29-1/4″ on the bottom of the bottom stick, angling toward each other at 13° and flaring aft to fore at 13°.
I didn’t have time to attach them together 11-5/8″ apart, though. Was time to go wash up and get ready for dinner.
Lesson 1: Staples! Damn them.