Wednesday, January 28, 2009

PK87 Dinghy- Today's Progress, Plywood Frames Cut.

I am going to post a kind of daily thoughts and progress journal of the building progress. Mainly for a reference to look back on when I write up the "How To" guide for the stitch and glue dinghy construction. Here are my reflections on the first day.

UPS delivered the plans right before lunch today so I didn't get to start until around one o'clock in the afternoon. First I looked the plans over for a few minutes and read everthing. I tried to make sense of the diagrams for the plywood cutouts.

Reading the plans wasn't very difficult and I started making some progress, putting some marks onto the plywood. It doesn't take a genius, just some basic geometry skills and careful measuring. The cutting went smoothly and I have all of the frames and hull peices cut out. Best of all, I didn't have to cut anything twice (but that may change when I start fitting the peices together in the morning) so no wasted lumber!

Once I had the pieces cut out I was preparing to start drilling the holes for the "stitching" and I couldn't find the Assembly Page that is mentioned in the instructions to figure out which way the pieces go together, and I looked through everything carefully at least three times. I ended up figuring it out on my own and I realized I didn't have my drill bits! So decided to call it a day a few minutes before 6 o'clock in the evening.

Overall it was good day I think and I enjoyed the work. I cant wait until tomorrow, I hope to get the pieces stitched together so that the boat will take shape! I will have some pictures at least to post tomorrow too.

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