7 February 2015.I can't believe I haven't blogged in a month. Shame on me because I'm sure a lot of little details that I was determined to capture have been lost in the belly button fluff that is my grey matter. Oh well. The new year brought much work that could not wait, so my train ride, where I generally blog, has been consumed with writing code and emails. Enough of the excuses -- on to the stem.As you can see in the picture below, I got the chines attached to the stem. The complicated nature of all the diving curves and planes had me nervous, but in true SloppyCopy form I just took out my Japanese pull saw and nice new Lie Nielson hand plane and attacked the task. I bent the chine. Made a mark with a pencil. Was careful to cut oversize, but not too much, and then planed it down to fit nice. The chine on the left of the photo, which will be port side, went in pretty much as I expected into the slot that is present in the stem. If you look at the other pictures, you will see that the leading edge of the chine does not meet the leading edge of the stem (like I think it does in the photos DH provided). Oh well. I used a single temporary screw to hold it in place. I also attached the two blocks on the form to make the stem not wiggle at all. The planes of the stem and the chine do not meet perfect flat, but it's *pretty damn close*. Close enough for the SloppyCopy. I had the whole task of port chine done in just a few minutes - maybe 5. I breathed a sigh of relief and went to work on the second chine. I cut it with the hand saw and realized pretty much right away that I had not left sufficient material to play with the fit. I also realized during the fitting process that keeping a the plane on the face of the chine flat with the hand plane was tough. Maybe I got tired on the first side. Whatever the reason, I had a modest curve on the face and was not too happy with myself. So I stopped for a bit and regrouped. I have been using a block of cherry and 60 grit paper quite a bit to sand off drips of hard epoxy and all other places needing some adjustment. I quickly discovered that the fir was little match for the 60 grit paper and block and had the plane nice and flat in a flash. The starboard chine is a bit..well..short. Maybe a 1/2 inch. I don't have a good picture and it is long buried under the panel, so no photo will be forthcoming. If I could do this about 100 times I think I could do it well. Learned a lot with just the two sides.
The photo below shows how the leading edge of the chine lags the leading edge of the chine. There is some modest amount of epoxy behind the chine filling in the gaps where it meets the stem. It feels very strong.
The picture below makes it look like it fits perfectly. Alas it don't.
Starting to look more like a boat. The hog is attached with clamps, but has not been glued up at this point. You can see the blocks I attached to the forms that I used to screw the chine into.
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