Cabin Top Mould Supports

I’m very pleased to say that my business venture is beginning to gain some momentum but as a consequence build time is being squeezed yet again. I’ve learned not to get too stressed though as I now consider my business activities to be as much a part of the project as the actual building. This is a concept that’s taken some time to get to grips with after so many years of treating work as a hindrance! I’m finalising plans to bring the two things together on the web as well. I’ve had a coupe of false starts with ‘Affiliate Afloat’ and ‘Dream To Sail’ but I’m going to make it third time lucky and hopefully find a way of passing on my experiences of the project as a whole to those that are interested without detracting from the build journal itself. Watch this space.

Cabin Front Template Sitting (Very) Roughly In Place

Actually today was a bit of a struggle as I felt distinctly under the weather as I was suffering with a thick head and a lack of energy and no, I  hadn’t been drinking! In hindsight it was probably not the best thing to set myself the task of getting my head round the construction of the cabin tops but I did OK. I’d already decided that I wasn’t going to make the same mistake I made with the tumblehomes i.e. try and fit the sides before their was really anything to fit them to, namely the cabin roof section. This time I’m going to make the curved cabin tops first so that I can get them in position, adjust the heights to suit (as Jacques mentioned a few weeks ago he lowered the tops slightly as he didn’t need the headroom) and then make the cabin sides to fit. That said I made a hardboard template of the cabin front section just to get a feel for things and to allow me to test the radius measurements for the cabin tops. The plans call for a curve based on a radius of 2 metres which allows the tops to overhang the cabin sides all round. I used my template to reposition and fix the timbers to the barn floor that will support the new mould I need to make.

I’m quite excited to be moving to this new phase after spending so much time working on those piggin tumblehomes. I’m going to try and squeeze as much build time in as I can these next few months because the weather is already beginning to turn and I’m determined to get these hulls enclosed before Autumn sets in.

A four hour session today enabled me to finish the two outboard tumblehome/cabin roof joint strips. Same routine as before, prep sanding, routing a nice round edge on the cabin roof and beam trough edges and gluing on the half round strip. I used bigger screws this time so hopefully they’ll come out easier. I haven’t had time to pursue Jacques idea about screws yet but I will. Anyway apart from removing the screws and sanding back I’m now ready to start building the cabin sides and roof so I’ll be dusting off the plans and cutting more plywood soon!

Time to build is an issue again and one I’m going to address very soon. For today I just sneaked in an hour and got the outboard tumblehome/cabin roof joint of the starboard hull sanded, routed and prepped for gluing of the half round finishing strip.