Practice does not make perfect.

Practice enhances quality, it improves performance, and it increases speed; practice does not, however bring about perfection.  I am well into strake number 7, the penultimate strake!  Still, as I step back after each iteration, I can still see imperfections.  I could have done better.  I lamented this to John Brady, who is my boat building mentor, a superb boat designer and builder, and now the very capable president of the Independence Seaport Museum (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA.)  John observed that the boat builder always sees every flaw, no matter how minor, and that's OK as long as the owner doesn't.  In the case of Lagniappe, that particular distinction is blurred, but John's wisdom brings me a modicum of comfort, nevertheless. 

First starboard section of #7 glued up

Looking aft

This is my first update in a month.  It is not that I haven't been working, because I have been putting in three or four hours a day, four or five days a week, as has become my custom.  It's just that, not having a creative mind, I have not found words or pictures to make an essentially grinding, repetitive, dirty process look new and interesting.

Really, the hull doesn't look all that different as each successive strake is glued up, and the process doesn't change much, (i.e., spile, cut, fit, plane, fit, scarph, fit, glue, repeat process.)  Actually, the iterative process has become even more iterative in the last few weeks.  Starting with the fifth strake, I exceeded a total plank length of 23 feet, which meant that I need to use 4 sections from my 4 foot x 8 foot plywood sheets to make each full strake.  Might not seem like much, but it adds 33.3% additional work to each plank.  If you like numbers: that means, by the time I finish, I will have spiled, cut, fit, planed, fit, scarphed, fit, and glued 56 plank sections.


An additional challenge has been our weather recently.  An annual summer-long blessing bestowed on the middle part of  the US east coast is the "Bermuda high," consisting of high temperatures, little rain, and extraordinary humidity.
With daytime temperatures in the high 90s and even into the 100s each day for the last couple of weeks, gluing has become even more of a challenge, and sometimes an impossibility.  Even with tropical hardener, and my poor garage air conditioner coughing and sputtering away, the setup time is simply too fast.  It has been suggested that storing the resin and hardener in the refrigerator would help, but I value my domestic relationship too much to even broach that as a possibility. 

A cool, air conditioned, 91 degrees F

As I have proceeded with planking, I have begun to do a bit of fairing.  Whenever I see a strake edge curve that doesn't look quite fair, I take the time to sweeten it with my new Stanley 92 rabbet plane, 

Stanley 92 rabbet plane for sweetening plank edges

and bulges or surface irregularities are being addressed with another new toy, a longboard (or, as boat builders affectionately call it, a torture board.)



I expect to be working on strake #7 for another week or so, and then moving on to the shear strake.  This will take a bit of special planning, because I want to have the option of finishing the shear strake bright.  Therefore, no temporary screws to hold the glued plank in place, perfect scarphs, careful grain selection, and on, and on, and on.