Life on the Outer Coast

"feel my edges"
Another phrase that doesn't convey alot of information about the construction processes of day three, but definitely alot about the mood. The humor has sunk to new lows, nothing like being tired to make this particular group silly. Much better than cranky. Todays phrase comes from the amount of planing that has been done and the insecurity about adequacy of planing. I think that we all now have it figured out.
Today we steamed, bent and attached the ribs and worked on the combing. The combing was drilled (1/16) and nailed every two inches. This was relatively straightforward except that the shape made it a bit of a challenge to find a suitably sturdy surface that we could hang the combing on. That done we proceeded to randomly select 19 ribs, pick through for flaws and cut them to the correct length. I got lucky this time and had a pretty good set of ribs for my boat. Added another new tool to the mix; a joiner. Probably should have been more nervous about this tool, since I was told that it causes more injuries than the others that we have used, but it seemed okay. We used it to thin the tenons to ease the fit into the mortises. The ribs from each boat were put in the steam box for eight minutes. We started with the first boat by putting a rib in every minute until the steam box was full, then once the first rib was ready added a new rib at the end so that there was a continuous supply (on 1 minute intervals) of ready ribs until the last boat was finished. The first three ribs in each boat were bent in a v-shape and Brian did these on each boat, he let the boat builder do the middle ribs, then he took over again at the end. Each rib is small enough that it only stays flexible for a very short period, so we had to work very fast. After each rib came out of the box it was laid under a leather strap and bent very quickly with steady pressure. It took alot of wrist and hand strength, my left hand was not quite strong enough for the task of bending the ends, but it worked out alright with some assistance. Scott, Keith and I were fortunate and didn't have any cracked ribs, but Jonathon's boat had 4 break and Sam's 2. Luck of the draw on the rib stock.
We drilled (1/8) and pegged ribs 1,3, 9, 12 and 16 through the tenon then set the keel. Some major tweeking occured with most boats to get the keel straight. Sam and Keith's boats had some ribs moved around and Scott and my boat had to have ribs heated up to re-shape them.
The last bit today was shaping the stern and bow posts (?) with the deadly bandsaw and the benign japanese saw. Definitely punchy by the end of the day again, 8am to 6:30pm is a long day in a shop. The boats are beautiful. I'm feeling rather grateful for the opportunity to build one. The option for internal boat grafitti is probably coming to a close, I'd like to take advantage of the gunnels as a writing surface, but am not quite settled on what to write. A good limerick ?

More marbled murrelets (8) on the way home. Roughly a third of the birds I see in the evening have fish in their bills.