Fit, Form and Function

Last Sunday I set up the bow and stern forms and aligned them to the strong back center line with a string. Some things sound deceptively easy when you are writing - it took me at least 4 hours to get this perfect. The idea is to have a perfectly square set forms in all x, y and z axes.

These look like two dimensional mushrooms from this angle, but these forms are what I will be pinning my cedar strips to. The string (which I'm not sure you can see) runs from end to end about an inch above the tops of the forms. Each form has a center line that you need to align to the string and the center line on the strongback - this makes it square in all direction once you screw it into the station block that were put on earlier.

If you look at it from a slightly different angle, it starts to look a little more like a canoe.

Aligning and squaring these took a few extra hands and eyes - you start to see things after a while.

On the fitness front - it was a sorry state of will power this week. I got out to the gym only twice (once for a cardio workout and once for weights) and I only played one game of hockey. The league game this week was late (10:30pm) and a combination of the weather outside and the nice fireplace inside resulted in an instinctive decision.

I'm digging out an old work out routine to mix things up a bit - changing the workout routine every now and then helps.

MoviePix is running a Bond film marathon this week. Some of these bring back memories of the gang going to see these on a Saturday night at the Somerset. Man, some of these are so cheesy when you look back and scenes obviously stolen from previous movies, you'd think they'd never cleaned off the story board.

Casino Royale is on tonight and I have to say I like the grittier, darker bond films - s it's going to be a toss up between Bond or BSG "Razor" .

...and now....the Larch...

Stealing the title from the Monty Python skit seems appropriate. A lot of work went into leveling the strongback....and it doesn't look that much different.

You've seen it before - now here it is perfectly level. (Ooooh and Aaaah at your leisure)

And here it is with a bunch of sticks on it - oh, the craftsmanship!

I am certainly hoping that this weekend gets to be a little more substantial as far as progress.

Al and Ez put on a new coat of varnish on Ezzie's "Redbird".

In the rink -

We had a break last week. A lot of the guys are out on the hunt, sounds like a good year so far.

I had 3 starts in net and won all 3, although there is plenty of room for improvement. A couple of late mistakes in the last game made it more interesting than it needed to be.

The most unpleasant outing I had in nets was this past week. I made all the saves off the first shots, but the rebounds were terrible. All the follow up shots I would get a piece of, but not enough to make the save (this becomes extremely aggravating). It was like that all night.

My league game last night still haunts me. I got the first goal on a decent enough backhand, but the puck was bouncing on everyone during the game. Transitioning from goal to wing is a bit of a challenge. Towards the end of the game, I was fed a beautiful pass that I couldn't (or didn't) adjust to fast enough to get a one time shot off. Instead, I took it in the skates and tried to set up off the kick up (yeah - didn't work so good).

Keeping up at the gym is helping quite a bit. I am usually able to keep my acceleration and speed up throughout the game, which is a good compensation for my lack-of-skill level.

Bends and Boxes

Puttering away in the woodshop is fun. The pace is a lot slower than work and it requires a great attention to detail - which suits me just fine.

So far, the stems have been crudely constructed and need some planing/finishing before being secured to the strongback forms. A couple of days after the pieces were steamed and clamped, they were taken apart and a laminated together using epoxy. Each of the bonding sides gets 1 coat of the epoxy and another coat of epoxy blended with a filler (Carbosil I beleive was the name). The blended epoxy is also coloured with fine sawdust of the same wood you are bonding (ie walnut or cedar in this case).

The walnut laminate is going to be on the outside of the canoe, the cedar on the inside. In this picture there is a layer of wax paper separating each set so they don't bond together. They need to be clamped together on the form to maintain their shape. When they are paired up during the building process, they are going to need to match perfectly. They'll stay clamped together for about a week which will ensure they do not spread (as would be there natural tendency).

The next step is to prepare the strongback, which will need to be perfectly level and square in all planes. The better it is set up, the fewer "adjustments" need to be made later on. It's like the foundation of a house - so it may take a few days to get it set up right.

This strongback is on loan from a fellow canoe-builder, Peter. It's in very good shape and the only thing I've had to do, so far, is to flip the plywood top. It's been used a few times and had earned a few dents and ridges. Once I have it completely square, I'll mount the forms themselves. That might take a bit of tweaking as well.