Week 18 - Major learnings

This week is a continuation of the work on the 8 metre boat. Aside from working on the anchor well, I assisted John to glue on the cap for the gunwale.  John and I had a lengthy discussion on how we could decide on the angle throughout the cap of the gunwale at different station points. With the differing angles where the completed deck is supposed to meet the gunwale, it is quite a challenge process in thinking through how we could plane the angles throughout the gunwale cap. This I think made the boat building process more of an art than a science (as with other building process in boat building) even with the advance of technology and the sciences involved in boat building.

For the anchor well, I continue to apply bulk to patch up the two holes at the bottom as well as the openings at the bottom of the bulk head to seal them. It was not an easy task having to reach down to the bottom of the well. Previously I used off cut foams to give some body form to close up the holes and then apply 411 resins to cover up the holes. The mix I had initially were too runny - and the 411 resin was difficult to apply. I had to wait for it to cure further before I could smooth it out to. The subsequent mix I made were much thicker with more 411 powder. However the resin cure much faster and I had to work faster. Once the resin cure it is very difficult to apply onto the walls of the well. There is also much heat generated from the curing process of the resins in the ice cream container from the left over resins.

In the subsequent applications to joining areas where the bulk head meets the side of the hull, I decided to use masking tape to provide the alignments to the whole length of the joints. This made cleaning up the excess bulk material easier later as I thought. This also gave a smoother line to the joints.

Learning points :
1) Pre planning (thinking though how I was going to apply the resin mix) and preparation is essential for the application of the resin. These will lessen the amount of touching up and cleaning up later once the resin is cured and harden.

2) Speed of work is critical and the curing process of the resin will make the resin mix more difficult to work with once the cure is complete. Furthermore the fully cured resin is of no use as any further application to the surfaces to work on is ineffective and made cleaning later much more difficult a task.

3) The skills (building) of a boat builder become more critical as and when the boat is being built. All designs that had proceeded before would have to be modified when the actual building process started. It is more like a learning and adapting process as the building process proceed.  Judgement ability also become more critical which means experiences of the builder is paramount in the success of a boat being built.