The local public radio station said we might have a Thundersnow this weekend. I’d never heard of such a thing, but I’m kinda looking forward to it… whatever it is. We are expecting a bit of snow this weekend, and everyone has their eggs, milk, and T.P. judging from the empty shelves at the store.
I continued working on the cat boat keel rabbet this past week. I was a bit under the weather, but I was able to get both port and starboard rabbets sorted out. Like I wrote last week, I used a router to “rough out” the rabbet, but there is still quite a bit of hand work involved. I this case, the router was able to give me the basic bevel of the rabbet, but I still needed to figure the width. When building a boat, you cut the rabbet to plans, and then make a plank to fit. In this case, I already have a plank to reuse, so I had to measure the plank widths, and then extrapolate the inner edge of the rabbet in three dimensions. Not really a big deal, but you never know how it’ll turn out until you cut it, and try the plank. Everything worked out of course, but after looking at the planks when measuring them, I’m not sure if they don’t need replacing. I’ll have a talk with the owner to see how far he wants to get into this project, and make a decision then. I could repair any cracks and breaks, and get another few years out of them, but when things are already taken apart, that’s the time to take care of these things. Here’s a pic of most of the tools that I used in cutting the rabbet after the router roughed it out:
These are set out in order of use. First is a gutter adze which is a bit like a curved axe turned 90 degrees. It’s really good at roughing out things that are lower than a surface or plane. The chisel and mallet come next. These two tools can do so much in boat work that it’s a shame to not become proficient in their use. The rest are various planes that take the rough work down to a glass smooth and fair surface.
Once we decide about the planks, we can start getting her closed up and turn attention to the centerboard trunk rebuilding.
Good luck in this years blizzard of the Century!