Week 13th ended well for me as John and I managed to complete the cutting and scarfing of the bilge panels (with heaps of help and prompting from Brett after he sensed and told us that we were lacking behind). As a consequence of our earlier "failed" attempt in cutting the 12 mm bottom front piece, John and I developed a phobia about cutting the wood. Couple with the frustration from Monday works on measuring the dimensions of the 6mm panel, we spent consideration amount of time to discuss and ponder over the dimension and shape of both bilge panel - the whole morning of the Tuesday. Before the end of Tuesday, we had cut and prepared the plywood for scarfing and joining.
On Wednesday, we started on the scarfing of the 4 cut panel. Our first attempt was almost a disaster with the ends of the scarfing breaking off and we had to "redo" the scarfing. From the lesson learned about providing more margins for the wood, we had more leeway to "redo" the scarfing - by cutting away (15mm) from the parts when the panel are to be joined. Manual scarfing was a dreaded task initially and after some practice, we began to get a hang of it. Nevertheless personally I felt there are still plenty of room for me to improve on how to scarf. The article of Duckworks Magazine - http://www.duckworksmagazine.com/07/columns/nichols/index3.htm gave insight on how to scarf with a sander and jig as well as manual scarfing .
We had also started on the half mold plug this week during the Wednesday morning theory session. John and I did the cutting list aspects. We drawn out a total of 26 pieces of pine wood of 150mm x 20mm of various lengths starting from 3.1 metre to 5.49 metres long. The cutting list was then given to Turtle and another copy to "Paul" via Leon.
The radiata pine wood pieces were later docked and dressing down to 3.1 metre pieces by another group. Each member of the class (both Brett and Matthew groups) then took a piece and with the cut out of the various pieces for the plug mold, we are supposed to mark, and cut the 3.1 piece for ourself.
Lessons learned and reflections this week:
1) The discussion and caution we took before moving ahead to cut the 6 mm panel were good for me even though we took more time than necessary.
2) We were struck at several points of our tasks and the just-in-learnings (promptings and advice from Brett) were excellent - several learning point examples were the joint of the two pieces together with two pieces wood screwed in and then using the joined panel pieces to read off the MDF frames is an example, Marking reference joining points to allow more accurate joining of the two panels is another. These I would refer to as the "arts" of boat building as opposed to the science. The "science" of boat building seem to me to have taken a back step now that we are on the actual construction phase.
3) My personal comfort zone in learning is constantly being expanded after the 12th and 13th week sessions. Prior to this, it was all "head knowledge" about boat building which had been gathered from books and website. Now the CAT course is getting more interesting to me as the Dory is starting to take shape (I hope). However I had to constantly remind myself of the safety implication as I moved on my learning curve especially with the handling of the powered tools and the epoxy resin (now that we are doing lot of gluing of the wood.
4) We had forgotten about the timeline - our daily tasks we undertook is a complete deviation from the timeline we had set for ourselves. We need to build in time for "backtracking" and "relearning" as we proceed along the timeline.
5) The cutting list needs to be update as well as we moved to on to use more and more materials.
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