All clamped up and nowhere to go...

Original split

You may remember a couple of posts ago we had a bit of an auld problem with the prow splitting apart on the boat... this is not only before it has hit the water but before it has even been assembled!
We had put wooden dowels in (chopsticks) and a breastplate and thought this would be enough to hold it. Our thinking was that the seawater is going to destroy any screws ya put in it so dowels and waterproof glue would last longer.
In short, our thinking was skewed and wooden dowels are a bag of shit. I forked out for brass screws and fixed the prow this evening.

All clamped up and nowhere to go

It's very very difficult to clamp surfaces that are at an angle, so what ya can see in the picture there is a load of wedges that I had lying around after bending the gunnels, I glued each one on top of each other until I had something resembling a square surface.
This allowed me to get a couple of clamps on and I was able to bring it right in to within 3 or 4 mm of where it was originally. I added a bit of epoxy that I had laying around and left it for 24 hours to harden up.

She's fixed!

I then got  apiece of waney ash I had cutoff from one of the seats (you can only imagine the amount of stuff lying around on the deck at this stage .. I could nearly build another boat), This was then measured up and the edges cut at about a 20 degree angle. The laths (stringers) that run lengthwise on the boat are 3/8ths thick and the gusset plate is set 3/8ths back from the edge of the boat to allow them run into the prow there. Not really sure this is going to work out in practice but we'll find out in due course I guess. This was then epoxied on and screwed with brass screws so it should be good for the lifetime of the boat with a bit of luck.

Next I am going make the laminated back of the upper gunnel which is about 4 inches wider than the lower one (26 inches as opposed to 22) and I am also going to screw the seats with brass screws as I am not happy with the way the dowels and glue are working out. Of course we didn't wedge the dowels as we would be doing on the thole pins but I would have thought they would do better cos there's not much pressure on them. And I am also going to scab some wood on to the half lap joint in the middle of the boat cos that was looking kind of weak as well ... Dave is gone having fun for the weekend so I will have plenty to do but I get to cut the cast off me hand tomorrow so things should get a bit easier once that's done...

More about thole pins and scabs tomorrow ... EXCITING!