Locked and loaded

It's been a busy week here. 
Deck beams and furniture
 It's been a busy week at the Hack Factory.  Several efforts in parallel have started to gain traction, and we are making progress!!!  To the right, you can see the lightened beams for the deck rails, and the sandwiched ribs for the first/last rib on the deck.  These will transfer the buk of the load from deck to hull, and tie the boat together. 
 Here's a bit of progress gluing up the keel.  The design has a split keel - the forward half is centered along the vertex, and the aft is split to provide support on the stern half of the hull.  Clamped in place, and using Adtech Pro-build with a little Cabosil (www.expresscomposites.com) mixed in to give it some body.  I put enough in the joint to squeeze a bit back out, clamp it in place, and then let it cook overnight. Hmmm. Sounds like my favorite BBQ technique...



 And it's time for glue-up!!! We spent about 4 hours on Thursday evening checking all stations, transferring all lines and markings to the port hull frames, We had done that before, but as we found there were several spots we had done something incorrectly the first time, we transferred everything across again.  Friday night, I hit the point where we were 'good enough.'  The only issue remaining was that we didn't particularly like the shape of the transom, but since it didn't *need* to be glued, I decided to take a fresh look at it after everything else had set.  Lots of clamps, and then it was beverage time!
Some additional random shots from this week.  At left is the uncarved bow section.  It's in approximate position, and will get tied in later in the weekend.
I came in today to a room full of wood shavings, and about 3/4 of the stringers planed to shape!  Dan had a busy afternoon yesterday.  Most of this was done with a pencil, batten, Dozuki and block plane.   And a carpenter's eye.

I leave for Trials with my athletes on Wednesday, so this will, in all likelihood be a down week.  Next week will be cutting and scarfing panels, and hanging the same.  The following week will also be a lower progress due to maintenance on our Dragon boats, but they're glass so won't get any reporting on this blog. 

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