Over the hill and far away (sorta...)

Over the hill and far away (sorta...), originally uploaded by bob.wessel.

Yesterday marked the beginning of construction...

Ed had graciously offered his time and tools to help me mill the lumber for the boat. Yesterday I took the lumber up to his house up in the foothills near Placerville. I've been up there a few times, but, for some reason, I had more trouble getting there (two wrong turns) yesterday than I had the very first time.

We did a lot of conferring over the BOM to make sure we knew what we needed. We did a lot of the"measure twice (sometimes more than that) cut once" exercise to make sure we knew what we were doing. We trued up the piece of ash (it wasn't off by much, but it was better after Ed worked it over with a plane) before running it through the bandsaw. And with that First Cut, a new Goat Island Skiff was started.

The Western red cedar boards were turned into staves for the foils. The cut-offs were milled to 3/4" x 1 3/4" pieces that are too short for framing, but will become the inwale spacers. There isn't much wasted wood - at least not yet!

After we were done milling lumber and straightening up a bit, we had a beer and relaxed. Ed showed me the study plans for a nice little pocket cruiser and we talked about boat building. We celebrated the start of construction - the First Cut - with a very nice bottle of Australian Shiraz in honor of the Autralian origins of the GIS design.

While I am waiting for the bar clamps (a decent find on eBay) to arrive, I will be working on the work bench/table. Those blanks should be laminated by the end of the week.