The Fore Deck

With the bottom completed it was time to turn the boat over. I'm not strong enough to lift the boat and building frame and due to the Corona Virus couldn't round up a helper or two so I had to resort to block and tackle and pulleys. I've done this before with much heavier boats (~300 kg)  so had all the necessary bits and pieces to hand.  Here it is, hanging in the slings . The strips spanning the formers were to stop the slings crushing the edge of the strips inwards.

I had made three cradles to support the boat while the deck strips were added.

A number of jobs had to be done before stripping started. The spacers between the frames were loosened on the strongback and knocked sideways with a hammer to break the hot melt glue joints. I was surprised how tenacious the hot melt glue was but it all came free eventually. The wedges were put back in to reposition the frames and I checked that he frames were aligned along the part line and keel. Most were but a couple had to be knocked back into place. The inner stem and stern were cut along the part line. I lifted the bow end of the strongback to make sure that the bottom half of the boat was free and would eventually come off. Replaced the masking tape on the frames with less shiny tape hoping that t he hot melt glue would stick better. Hot melt glued to edge strip back to the frames.

I started stripping up on both sides; full length strips to begin with until the top of the stern was reached. Then continued with shorter strips - reaching back to the coaming opening - until the top of the stem was reached.

It was about this point that my 6 week old hot melt glue gun burned out iits heating element. I hope to get it replaced under warranty but have ordered a new gun and some sticks specifically for gluing wood, maybe this glue will work better than the unspecified glue I had been using. Here's the dead gun, there doesn't appear to be any temperature control at all and I suspect it just overheated when I left it turned on for a couple of hours.

I was a bit despondent over the dead glue gun but an early morning paddle on the Brisbane River near home raised my spirits again. The river is steaming because the air temperature was about 12C and the water about 20C. Very pleasant paddle in my CLC 16.

Stripping continued on the starboard deck until the centreline was reached.

When the PVA glue had dried overnight I marked the centreline and sawed off the excess and planed the edge back to the pencil line then eyeballed and trimmed it until it was straight.Then I had to plane it further back by half the width of the accent strip. Then glued the accent in place.

Strips were added on the port side fitting them carefully against the accent strip. This took longer that the starboard half where there was no fitting but it still went fairly quickly. Here's what the front half of the boat looks like now.

.Next is the aft deck, accent strips first the fill in with strips. There are a few different ways of stripping the aft deck so I will have to think about that.