Day One
By Ron & Devy Porter
Saturday, December 10, 2005
Here is the workspace. It's a little shy on light, but we should be OK
In the foreground, you see the 16' x 6' pallet and the MDF that will serve as our mobile building platform. It's a little bouncy on one end (the left), but that should stabilize nicely once we get under way. In the worst case, we'll just shim that end up a bit.
In the background you see some of our materials, tools, and general stuff. The extreme right and left is just stuff that Crestline needs as part of constructing their powdercoat facility. Get used to seeing various and sundry odd bits hanging around the edges.
Here's a shot of Devy driving one of the approximately 50 screws it took to fasten the MDF to the pallet. She's a little uncertain right now, but she'll be an expert by the time she's helped to drive the hundreds it takes to hold the boat together. Our experience with sheeting in the building platform led us to pick up another cordless drill/screwdriver, and we'll probably make yet another trip to pick up a couple of spare batteries. The things we do to avoid tripping over cords!
Here's one of me working on the beginnings of the building jig. At the far right, you can see some of the boat frames and to the left you can see the plans for the jig and the boat's 'stem' (the part that defines the rounded curve up front. I had to dig out the frames earlier than I planned in order to figure out just what room there was for lengthening the boat. Since the stem is pre-cut based on a 15' length, there is no way to increase frame spacing in the front 6' of the boat. Thus, instead of getting an extension of 18" (to 16.5'), we're only going to get 16' overall. Oh well, I'm quite sure that we'll appreciate the extra foot we'll be getting and the 6" we won't see we can't miss.
