Mondays are for odds and ends, and preparations, and trying to do things that will make our lives easier later on. This week, that means taking a look at this 200 year old model ship that the museum picked up from the Seamen’s Church Institute in Philadelphia. It’s big and cool and old and really impressive.
Lots of insane detail, which the new caretakers are very interested in learning about and cleaning.
Back in the shop, we check out our stem… and it’s not good. In the laminating process, we made sure that we made it as un-square as possible, twisted it a little to the other side, and then twisted in back. That’s why you make these parts oversize, I guess.
Still, it’s the right shape in profile, which is the important bit. After some judicious use of a handplane and blue chalk, it fits up okay.
The centerboard case, which has largely sat around unnoticed for a few days, get a quick coat of pre-varnish sealer on the outsides and a coat of epoxy on the insides, which will hopefully never see the light of day again. Everyone adds their two cents on varnishing technique, debates the best place to hold your wet edge, and tries to show off.
Lumber shows up after lunch, and the rest of the day is spent sorting, stacking, moving, and shuffling giant pieces of wood around the workshop to make room for everything we bought. It all fits in the end, and there’s even kind of an organizational system to it.
The day’s final project is to move the Ventnor forward into her new home until launch time, which also gives us the floor space we’ll need to set up for the Corinthian. Moving hulls in a shop is always exciting, because it invariably means that you’re actually making progress on a project and not just amassing a collection of highly varnished sculptures. For the apprentices, this move is especially exciting because now we’re staking out our own project on the shop floor, and feel a little less like interlopers. This is also the time to do a shop deep clean, and for anyone who has criticized me in the past for not cleaning enough, my response is: I actually love cleaning, as long as it’s dirty enough. Vacuuming three inches of sawdust off the windowsills is an absolute blast.
The move goes pretty easily, as the boat has been sitting on trucks the whole time and doesn’t need to be slung or jacked or carried; A few blocks are removed and she gently rolls to her destination. The result? A Corinthian-sized block of floor.
