Monday-Tuesday 8-9 February 2010: I've been lashing and unlashing and then re-lashing the stems. Actually mostly the bow plate. The stern looks good. But I think the keelson has just the slightest bit of corkscrewing in the last 12 to 16 inches approaching the bow plate. It isn't noticable until I try to line the bow plate up with the laser. I'm probably just obsessing over a pretty insignificant deviation. But I've been thinking it would be wise to put some pegs in the gunwales and chines anyway just to really lock things down. I don't want the stress from pulling the skin tight to move anything around up there. So I cut off most of the bow plate lashings, lined things up as best I can, drilled a quarter inch hole through the gunwales and pegged them to the bow plate with an oak dowel and some titebond II glue. Pegged the gunwales at the stern similarly and will peg the chines too before re-lashing everything.
Looking at the stems, it occurs to me now that it might have been better to let the plates continue forward in line with the bottom of the keelson for a couple inches and then round up to the line up to the bow. That would have avoided having a sharp angle where the stem plates meet the keelson and also avoided that slightly weak looking triangle of plywood there. I'm almost tempted to cut the plates out and redo them. But that would waste wood and the plates as they are very much in the spirit of many other sea riders as shown on yostwerks.com. So I think I'll leave them alone and make that fix on the next boat!
Late Tuesday night I cut up panels of 1 inch silvered insulating foam and built a small steam box that is long enough to steam oak strips for laminating a masik to replace the top of frame 4.
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