Me and my Da.

Dearly.
When I was quite small my parents split, acrimoniously as many do, and my father buggered off to Ireland with someone. I remember missing him terribly and learning a taste for anger at the separation which was to endure through and impact upon my entire life thus far.

Some of the best memories of my childhood relate to my month long summer visiting rights spent with him and my sister in Donegal while I was still quite small. The experiences left a lasting impression upon me.

Now that I too am apparently grown, I’m lucky that my relationship with my father is close and strong. We are very different, but I know that despite years of separation I have become very much my father’s son. And I love him.
Thankyou Da.


The first chunk of this clip is in Gaelic, live through it and you shall be rewarded with magic.

There’s Something in the Woodshed.

Things have been getting a little out of hand. I’ve been experiencing one of those cycles that Wendy and I occasionally go through- the one where despite a fair number of working weekends (or sometimes bits of them at least), I get to feeling like I haven’t got much done, and have to prod my memory hard to convince myself otherwise… ow.
Which is silly because now I look at the pictures, um, there’s proof.
This little collection is all recent woodwork I’m afraid, but I have indulged in a couple of nice steelwork dings too- just haven’t got pictures yet. We’re still poor as ever so represented here is all stuff made of offcuts, odd bits, and surprises. Cool.

This is the other hearth. Still not grouted but at least now finished around the sides with some lumps of teak that were too big to go through the chopsaw so had to be hand cut and then were a total slidey sod to fix and glue all the giganto mitres together. And still in want of final sanding/oiling. It doesn’t matter how many times I think ‘O, that’ll be simple and quick, I’ll do that’, I never bloody learn.

Here’s part of the next run of deckhead materials. Nice surprise this. It was originally gleaned and denailed for becky’s stables by John. In spite of looking at the time like heavily weathered pine it had a run in with my planer instead and never made it to horseyland. Two days work (!?) later it turned out to be cedar (hooo!) and is now cut into chunky T&G ready for some more neck craning installation this weekend..

Er, how the hell am I going to explain this one?
I know. My dear friend and expert in the art of making big bits of wood smaller came to visit. And we went a bit mental. Apart from looking like a big pile of timber, what you’re looking at is the completed carcases for the ‘snug’ seating-to-be up forward. The reason for the jumble is that I started piling bits of teak on top in order to visualise how to take them further and came over all lazy at photograph time. The carcases are bolted to the hull side battens and the theory goes that when all finished the completed seats will still be removable as units.

Mind you, if these kinds of joints that I’ve started cutting are anything to go by finishing the seats is going to take a year and my brain leaks every time I look at them already.

And last of all, remember Christmas? We were ill. Somehow I accidentally/on purpose made the cabin deckhead go all stripey; having turned up a couple of oddball veneers in the last lot of ply last year it seemed a shame not to exploit them. Then we felt a bit better and had the worlds quietest new year underneath it. Lovely.

There's more, but I'm thinking this assortment is random enough already, so I'll save it for another posting.

Her Majesty’s a Pretty Nice Girl.

And now, since we’ve actually got around to telling everyone else….
Here is The News. Bonggg.


Brace yourselves, Becky and I. We’s getting married.

This Summer.
Ohshitoshitoshit!!

Having a fight with Meself.

I’m almost done with the big plywood aspect of the interior lining throughout the boat. Well, clearly that’s a rubbish statement, as it doesn’t include a myriad of future projects like boxing around tanks, bathroom subfloors and built in furniture. But since none of those things actually exist yet I can conveniently ignore them and say, aha yes- for now I’m almost done with plywood. This is good because I’m bored, bored, bored of working with the stuff. Each time a piece is templated, cut/planed/sanded and finally into position I experience a deflating sort of miniature anticlimax. This can be attributed to the idea that although getting every one to fit tight is an achievement one part of my brain won’t be fooled, merely confirming to itself that the panel just looks the way it always thought it would. After all, the desired result is large featureless areas of blank lining, and that’s what you got. Another part of my brain demands to know why all the usual boaty excitement buttons are getting really hard to push, and threatens to sabotage the whole day by wandering off and getting distracted by something completely frivolous. A third part has had to learn to ignore the constant bickering and quietly do-the-dance-to-attract-pencils ready for the next piece instead.

An Experiment.

I’m almost ready to begin cladding out the interior hull sides of our vessel, and am keen to maintain the lovely shapes that they describe. I’ve also been spending a bit of time thinking about how to do lately (it’s called daydreaming I think). So on Sunday morning, more or less while I waited for coffee, I pinned this lot to the hull side in the forward accommodation. It’s just a couple of packs of the cheap 8mm thin rubbish from wickes thrown up with complete disregard to where the butted joins fall, but two cups of coffee later, it seemed to answer the following questions.

1) Will the wooden panelling happily follow the original sweeping platelines in wendy’s steelwork, which I handily remembered to mark on the battens down one side before she was sprayfoamed?
A) So far so good, I need to go have a play in the engine room to be absolutely sure though…

2) Do all the battens fair up nicely in relation to one another, or will I need to fart around with them too?
A) Buggering hell, there’s always one.

3) My, this wickes panelling is certainly very cheap, so is it really too thin, or am I just overimagining things again?
A) Nope, it definitely is too thin. And also appears to be made from balsa.

That was fun. Next please.

Meanwhile, Back at the Office.

It seems to never rain, but pour. We’ve currently got this rather sweet little dutch barge on the slip. She’s in for some extensive doubling (overplating) of the hull, and a whole bunch of other works besides. But the doubling part of it is all mine. In four days flat me and my two trusty Nepalese labourers have managed to get eleven plates tacked into their proper position on the bottom of the boat, and we’ve done a decent job of it too- I’m well pleased at the progress. Of course, if she were mine we’d have to cut the whole lot out and start again replating the proper way but economics dictate that we don’t have, um, four years. Instead I’m told I have three weeks from Monday gone. I’m really looking forward to plating round the bow partly for the shape that the doublers will take up but mostly because doing so will mean that I don’t have to scramble around in this space:

It’s just a wee bit tight under there folks, each day has already become an steadfast exercise in contortionism and seriously athletic to boot. I’m considering asking my osteopath if he can have me fitted with a flip-top head and Stretch Armstrong back to make life easier…

Boats, you gotta love ‘em.

Twins.

They exist. As a pair. And they are equally as unfinished as one another, because I was careful to work in mirrors. What I did to one I did to the other.
And it’s only taken me three days. And then some.
I’m lucky, having just been granted some arbitrary annual leave, so have just spent a good proportion of it making a real, sensible stab at making some actual built in furniture that’ll A) accommodate nooks and crannies B) be removable at a pinch in whole or part C) hopefully utilise top notch craftsmanship or D) as near as I can get dammit. Maybe I can squeeze in E) be useful too.
Being skint is the mother of all bastards but contrariwise, at least it has the capacity to make you patient, even occasionally inventive. So these are made from a real wood jumble. Battening, 24mm mahog ply, inch birch ply, teak, 12mm WBP, pitch pine, 5mm AA birch, and a couple bits of celotex, they’ve got the lot. And I still have to do the nosings on the shelf bits, god only knows what they’ll turn out to be made of.
Why?
Because:
The pile of ‘useful’ wood stock on board (and, to my shame, off) keeps growing. There’s all sorts in there and it’s in danger of becoming the woodpile that grew tentacles and tried to take over the world.
Lacking a handy pocket Godzilla with which to deal with this I’ve decided that the only way out (apart from having a very expensive bonfire) is to actually make some of the things that have hitherto lurked in the dark recesses of my little brain, mostly for some time.
Built in the hardest corner of the boats interior I could think of working in, which required constant crawling in and out of the compartment to measure, mark, measure again ‘cos I forgot which side the half mil goes on, template, cut, assemble, disassemble, block plane, headache; here they are, my half finished bedside cabinets. Tweedledum and Tweedledee. All I need now is a Walrus. Oh Maaaarrk…

Propped up.

Not sure how I feel about the use of such a dreadful pun, but what the hey.
Moving this bugger required the invocation of the spirit of Kingdom-Brunel as it weighs something around half a ton, luckily all concerned still have the full prerequisite of toes, so that’s nice.
Pleased with it, looks good. Although a certain captain may be about to remind me that the propeller is supposed to go on the outside of the boat…
My thanks to Sleepy J and Lover N for their ingenious assistance.