Building Frames on the Jig

Yesterday afternoon we installed the building moulds onto our jig. This involved squaring and leveling the moulds and fastening them onto the jig with sheetrock screws. We had to pay close attention to center lines, make sure the moulds were positioned at the correct intervals along the jig and cleat the temporary ones with 1 x 2 pieces of wood. Below you see the finished produce from bow to stern. This involves the notched #3 mould, the laminated midships frame and the #1 mould closest to the stern. This process wasn't rocket science and we found our clamps were helpful to hold things once we got them positioned. In fact, we left the clamps on the moulds after we got the screws in place to add some extra muscle to the frame.

The next process involved bevelling the edges of the stern transom so that the planks would lie flat along the transom once they are fitted. This is where the head work came into play. It took some figuring to get our tools to tell us what we wanted to know and make sure we were cutting to the proper angle before we actually cut the transom. First we established guidelines by which we made our cuts and drew the lines on the outside of the transom. Each plank and the bottom of the pram lie on the transom at a different angle, so this involved setting the saw three times to three different angles and getting our guide tool set at the proper angle as the saw so we could check the results after the cuts. Below you can see the guide lines drawn on the transom.

We made our angled cuts on transom very slowly which would account for the burn marks on the transom, but they all came out well according to the angle tool we had set to check our results. Working with an experienced sawyer doesn't hurt at times like these. Below, you see the transom after the first bevel cut along the bottom. I am sure these edges will need some sanding to make the planks lie flat on them, but we will cross that bridge when we actually do the fitting of the planks.