The fitting out of the interior to get it ready for painting continues. I’ve been adding all the fittings to make it possible to have removable floors.

Adding little wedges to finish the bow inner and outer stem pieces.

Cutting out the reclaimed cherry to make the boomkin brace

And then deciding whether to place it at the bulkhead or further back? to interfere less with the motor well.

Then I tackled the bow chocks out of pieces of cheery from the neighbourhood that I had been seasoning for a while.

This was a very satisfying sculpting of wood. The cherry is hard but quite nice to work with.

I’ve also built a backing plate for the motor well to have something to glue the piece of hull I will cut out to so that when sailing we can still have a nice smooth hull.

The next step that has been slow going but necessary work is creating the hold-down tabs for the floors.

I’m using leftover brass keel strip 1/2 rounds and small pieces of reclaimed mahogany as risers.

I had to glue a couple extra pieces to the floors to allow for the adequate spacing of the hold-down cleats.

I’ve also been spending extra time drilling oversized holes for the screws and then filling them with epoxy into which I will then set the screws. This will help prevent moisture entering the wood through the screw holes. I think this is especially important on all the horizontal surfaces where rain water might trickle down.

I’ve also shaped the tiller arm

And cut the mortise in the rudder head

It took a while but eventually it all fit nice and snugly.

I even did the little wedge out of a small piece of mahogany

The eye for the eventual reaching sail is now attached to the bow.

I’ve also started on a pair of chocks for the stern. They will allow for stern tying to the beach or a shoreline and to tie the boat to a dock.

Now i’m all caught up. with the last month and a half of work on the boat. I’m motivated to get done before summer gets underway. Once the floor cleat risers are glued. I’ll be ready to start prepping the hull for painting. I’ll start with doing all the parts that will have Decks Olje. The gunwhales, the mahogany trim and the cherry chocks. The rest will all be painted teal or white.