I was quite surprised when I came in the shop on Monday. Two garboard planks were already perfectly assembled on the frame. Just wanna say thank you to Jacob for his work and the time that he spent on the dinghy during spring break.
From Jacob’s description, he used epoxy, the super strong and sticky stuff that we used to laminate our midship frame,to glue the plank to the bottom panel. He also used epoxy to fill in some gaps between the planks and the panel. I suppose it is not an easy job to hold the planks in place after putting epoxy on, because epoxy takes about six to eight hours to dry. ( For more details you can go to https://nauticalarts.wordpress.com/)
Fine tuning is a crucial step for planking. Hand plane, sander and electric plane are most frequently used tools in this process. Tuning is a relatively easy process, but it is time-consuming. So we spent one day working on tuning the joints between the garboard planks and bottom panel. Just a quick reminder, face mask is required when you use sanders to sand the joint that is created by epoxy. Fine particles of epoxy may clog your lungs, and it is quite harmful to your body.
The first set of plank,garboard planks, are on the ladder frame now, our dinghy finally looks like a boat. It looks like that two mid planks will soon be put on the frame. If we can put on one set of hull plank one week, our dinghy will be done soon. So we quickly created bevels on both garboard planks, trying to put the mid planks on Wednesday. If you want to know more about how to create bevels, please click here for a step by step course.
Bad news. Two mid planks are too short to be put on the frame. It was confusing because the length of the planks were exactly the same as it was written on the plan. We also tried to fit other groups’ mid planks to our frame, but every mid plank were short. So we had to set planking aside and do other things. Jacob and Ross plot the points for the rudder and cut it out.
Ryan and Matt have been working hard on the mast, and they are making some progress. Basically, what they are trying to do is to shave a trunk of wood into a cylinder. And as you know, the process is really difficult.
I looked at the calendar, and I realized that we only have seven weeks left before the finals, including the week of ED Tour and Bike Tour. There are still a lot of things that we need to finish, such as planking, making the mast, the sail, and some fine tuning. I guess we have to stay after school sometimes to speed up our project.
Thanks for reading, hope you enjoy our projects!
fiveguysandadinghy 