Wednesday, February 17, 2010

Assembly of Both Stem Molds

Another pretty productive day today I suppose, although frustrating again not to have gotten further.

Today I focussed on getting both stem molds assembled, ready to mount on the strongback. I'm paranoid about inaccuracies creeping in and the setting up of each mold is critical.
The first thing I did was to cut strips through the molds at stations 2 & 17, the exact width of the stem molds. I then transferred all of the stations & waterlines onto the reverse of each mold, to assisst in aligning everything up.



I also cecked the height of waterline 3 (WL3) on the stem molds, which must align exactly 200mm above the strongback's top surface (same as on all of the intermediate molds). It's a good thing I did too, because the bottom edge of the mold, as defined by the template, was from 2 to 5mm out & not completely level. I measured out 200mm from WL3 and marked it off, then used my trusty sanding station to get the edge down to the new line.



Once that was all done, it was a relatively simple matter to screw all the bits together. They seem reasonably stable & level. I'm going to sort out each cleat at each individual station as I go, to try and achieve acceptable accuracy. The photo below shows how much I'm going to have to cut/plane of the first cleat.



Below are the results of my day's efforts.





I had hoped to have these mounted on the strongback today as well, but I spent too much time being anal/fussy & ran out of time. I also don't think I'm managing my time very effectively. I didn't get started until 1030 this morning, then stopped for an hour for lunch and knocked off around 1515 (to take my daughter swimming, which got cancelled anyway). Now I won't get another chance to work on the boat until the weekend. In the words of Matchbox 20, "I wish the real world would just stop hassling me....".


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