Strip detail, glassed inside
Passed another big milestone this weekend. After 36 hours of work, both hulls are glassed inside, and that should be the end of the fiberglassing marathons.
I decided to embrace the staple holes and didn’t bother trying to fill them. They’ve become invisible to me already. They’re a basic part of the construction process anyway, seems dishonest to try and hide them. Continue reading
Richard Scofield , Boatyard Manager, and
Peter Thatcher, with the Second Oldest Melonseed
The next phase of construction starts a series of tasks for which there is very little instruction. There’s a lot of latitude in how you go about these things, and every builder seems to approach them in slightly different ways. Like it says on the old explorer maps of The Known World, beyond here there be dragons. It’s a good time to see what other people have done and plan ahead, so I took a day off from work to do a bit of research in St. Michaels, Maryland. Continue reading
Hardware River along The Plank Road
My grandfather used to say that, given enough caulk and putty and paint, he was a pretty good carpenter. Of course, after beer-thirty, his skills diminished considerably, and one could rightly accuse him of boasting, but before noon he could cover up even pretty big mistakes. Me too. Continue reading
South Branch, Hardware River, along
The Plank Road runs west from Keene toward the mountains. It was a toll road, and the original toll house still stands, a private residence now. It’s a very old road, once paved in wooden boards, and along it teams of oxen rolled huge hogshead barrels and cartloads of good from over in the Shenandoah Valley, coming down the switchbacks through Rockfish Gap. Continue reading
South Deck, Glassed and Trimmed
It’s been an eventful week. Besides the big storm and flood, boat building and Independence Day celebrations, the dogs cornered a groundhog that drew blood before we could separate them, and one night cornered a skunk, which ended just as you’d expect. Emily did the requisite tomato juice bath at 2 in the morning. At least the basement is mostly dry after a week of running fans, which now are doing double duty dissipating the stink. Continue reading