Busy Saturday

So between trunnelling, cutting, fitting and gluing new planks and turkey farming this has been a busy day here at the farm/ boat yard. I'll show a couple of up dated pics but first I found the video of the first plank being trunnelled. Warren used the wooden mallet to hammer the trunnel at first but since then we have switched to a 5 lb hammer. I believe the poor mallet would have suffered irreparably from such abuse.

I don't talk much about the activity around here but we get quite a few visitors to the shop. Often it's someone who was told by a friend who has been here. It's usually a great way to meet other boat enthusiasts and we have found that everyone has a good story to tell. This week we have had visitors from Maine, Maryland, Ontario, Nova Scotia (other parts of NS) and Warren's son, Adam, is visiting from Fort MacMurray. Between visiting family and friends and doing some things that he needs to do he's able to give us a couple of days help working on the boat- I see a boat building future for that fellow. Our son, Sheamus, also stopped by to give us a day's help with the boat. It's great when the kids, well, not really kids anymore, still want to be involved with what's going on.

As you can see we generally fasten a plank to one side of the vessel and then fit and glue one to the other side. We try to keep both sides symmetrical.It was a super day in the shop and a great day outside. Sunny, clear and 20 degrees C.

New photos

Wanted to update some photos and generally let everyone know what we've been up to. The rudder is now completely secure on the vessel, after a very long and tedious fitting process. We cast all of the rudder fittings here in our foundry and they're all shined up and looking good.The water box (rudder port) is fitted in nicely so water won't be pouring in from her stern- that's good. As far as we know she's water tight from the top of the rudder to where the deck will be. The rudder stock is 6" oak.From the pics you'll see that she's pentox green but she'll be a different colour when she's done.
We had to caulk beneath the rudder straps because it couldn't be done after the fact so I got my first lesson in the art of caulking. By the time it's done I'll probably be a great amateur at it.
We can now continue with the planking. Yeah!!! We measured for, cut and fitted the plank just above the tuck and it will be placed and fastened Sunday. We put a couple of pics of trunnels in before they're driven kind of as a before and after shot.
The king plank is all ready to go in. This plank goes directly between the rudder stock and transom. We're so excited to be at this juncture because you can see the progress more plainly as the planks go higher, and higher and higher. Gasp!
We've had many many visitors from all over. Thank you all for your interest and encouraging words. We are enjoying this journey so much and when the creative journey is over we'll enjoy the travelling too. We hope that some can make a journey with us. We've met so many interesting people with their own story to tell that it makes this all worth while.