It is Ready to be Attached!

 Hello Everyone!

Thank you for checking in to see the progress up to this point. I have now planed the last piece of glued laminated strips down to the desired shape and we are ready to attach it to the boat! We are ready to... ready to permanently epoxy and fasten the new woo... It is going to be a real calm and easy step in the...

PEOPLE I AM FREAKING OUT!

I know I say mistakes are good; I know I say that worse comes to worse you learn from the experience and you can always redo a step you have made a mistake with; but that doesn't mean it isn't scary to commit to it! The one half of me is truly excited to eventually see this thing on the water. The amount of hours put in to getting the boat here (8 hours of driving), planning the restoration, stripping the old varnish/glue off, more planning, acquiring materials, more planning, planning after the more planning... I think you get it at this point lol. The second half of me is scared! To an extent, I fear failure! It is interesting because I have been speaking with a fellow teacher candidate, and his Genius Hour Project is all about the idea of failure!

 This week was a great example of the benefits of taking your time with a task. Instead of rushing to the table saw to cut the bulk of the newly laminated piece of wood, I decided to plane the piece by hand with my good ol trusty Stanley hand planer. Why did I make more work for myself? I could have saved myself an hour and a half potentially. This may be true, but let me explain my reasoning. Once you begin a cut with the table saw, you have to see it through to the end for safety's sake. So, if your measurements are not exactly the way you want them, the table saw does not allow a redo; once the cut begins, that is the cut you get. With a hand plane, I am able to gradually take excess wood off of my piece and check it every step of the way. This allows me to identify when I am approaching the desired shape, so I can ease off of the plane and stop before I take off too much. For me, experiencing this was a great reminder that the longer route provides the better result. Below we see the planing process (shaving thin layers of wood off until you reach the desired shape/thickness) in action and an old piece of the original boat that is used a reference/guide for making the new piece.

 Once I submit my TED Talk for this project today, it will be off to the garage to fit the newly shaped piece of wood to the back left side of the boat! I am going to have to see where the fasteners are going to sit, where to cut the excess wood off, and how much sanding is going to be required to get the perfect shape. Some benefits are the bottom paint creates a straight line to determine where the new piece is going to sit on the boat (which means not having to fiddle with marking where the new piece needs to go!). Another benefit is that this new piece that is going on, is straight! I will not need to cut curves in it with the jigsaw tool like I had to do for the previous piece for the front right side of the boat!

 

One important concept I realized while gluing and shaping this new piece of wood, is how beneficial it is to glue the laminated pieces together to a larger size than you actually need. This is super important because after the glue cures, the boards will shift slightly, and the glue squeezes out and gets all over the piece. Given the fact that you made the piece larger than it needs to be, you are able to plane and sand down the newly glued piece to the desired size and shape and give it a finished look. 

Until we meet again,

Cpt. John signing off! (not a real captain)