(1) Well, after many weeks of epoxying everything in sight, it's down to starting the construction, albeit in a rather modest way. Day one was devoted to clearing a space to start construction, and taking a palm sander to any epoxy blobs we noticed as we relocated the parts (paying particular attention to surfaces that need to be joined later). We had mulled sanding all the epoxied parts while they were flat (to get rid of dust, raised grain, bugs that had become immortalized etc), but decided against it as we felt that we'd have a better idea what parts are actually visible when it starts to look like a boat, plus, for final finishing we're going to need a clean environment. The hidden bugs will stay so we can claim the boat is 'organic'.
Reorganization and deblobbing aside, we suspended what we thought were the gunwales as recommended. Oops - Richard Larson, a darn good, and very helpful, fellow, gave Mark a call to say these bits aren't the gunwales (they were the topsides), so off came the weights before any damage was done!
Here's what should be suspended. It's from a camera phone so it's not the highest quality but serves to illustrate. These are the outer gunwales - the inners also need suspending, in both cases with the weight 48" off the front. The inners are the only other equally long pieces. The front is the end where the notch is cut out (for the shroud blocks). We left them hanging about a week between visits to the workshop.
(2) Building a pair of 'step and fetch it's is pretty easy. These things, and I assume this is a Canadian term as neither of us had ever heard of such a thing, are really just low sawhorses for the hull as you build it. Doubtless we'll end up screwing extra bits on to hold things steady as we go on. Built entirely out of scrap, the lead painted 1x4's probably created additional brain damage over that already done during the epoxy stage. The corner reinforcements use the top of the mast box as it was just the right width. We managed only one minor screw up - one is slightly longer than the other because we used the wrong end of the wood we'd cut. We have the right piece but will only bother fixing when and if necessary. So now they're stackable...
(3) The next thing up was figuring out the front of the inner gunwales (it's the end with the notch). Kits nowadays come with only shroud block notches for the center placement of the mast. If you want it forward of his position too, you need to cut out notches for the extra pair of shroud blocks that MSD supplies (10" forward of the standard notches - Lorne helpfully marked the position so that made it easy). So, on the principle of why not, notches were cut. Mark the wood and rough out the shape with a small drill, with the depth marked with masking tape so you don't drill too deep. Use a fine blade chisel to chip it out and finish up with a Dremel or whatever. Hand clamps are useful.
