The sun shone on us as winter drew to a close. After gluing the side plank puzzle pieces with epoxy resin yesterday it was with some trepidation that we arrived at the shed. Had we successfully joined the wood together or was it a travesty of resin failure?
We didn’t have to wait long….
I’ve just realised that I’ve dropped writing from the 3rd person and have now adopted 1st person. Thanks brain!
Back at the shed, on the mezzanine level, we took of the weights and peeled back the black builders plastic to expose the joins, one by one. Success!!!
Well, maybe 88.9% success – there were nine lengths with two puzzle joins each. Each puzzle join averaged four connectors and we had come unstuck with the inside bevelled layer on each centre join. The side planks had one side bevelled down to overlap it’s adjacent plank. This meant the join at the bevel was lower than the rest of the join. We had glued the joins, placed black plastic over each join and then a flat piece of wood and then weights to press down on the join while the epoxy set. All of this had no affect on the LOWER bevel join which was free to spring up a bit.
Tragedy? No, not really. It meant that we’d have to sand down the now-raised join on the bevel before stitching it to the adjacent plank. Next time – deliberately place a separate weight on the lowered bevel join.
Enthused by our success we then turned attention to the bulkheads which would need gluing next. Frayed edges were sanded down and the little tabs that confounded us were filed away.
The tabs are a result of the CNC process to cut out the pieces from a single flat wooden sheet. We were concerned about their presence and so Chris fired an email off to John at Denman Marine to confirm the fate of these bad boys. John confirmed that they were surplus to requirements and so we filed them away while retaining the tabs we need to keep. The difference between the two tabs – if the tab was only halfway bothered then it was whittled away to nothing. The tabs that were the full width of the plank were retained to fulfil their celestial purpose in life – what ever that will be!
So the remainder of the day was spent, again, in the sun sanding down the wood. Ah, it’s a good life!
