Another half model

How many posts is this today? Anyway, it's been a busy couple of weeks. I went to Vancouver last weekend to go to my friend Sean's wedding. While he was living in NZ he bought an awesome boat called Rogue, built 1892 by Chas Bailey Jr in Auckland. He had to let it go, but did a great thing by stopping it sinking on its mooring, as no-one was willing to buy it at the time. We had some great adventures on that boat. There's some photos on my Facebook page. Unfortunately, I ran out of time, so didn't really get the finish I needed. The varnish just kept soaking right into the wood! It needs another coat or two. Anyway, It's made of Kahikitea, varnished with Goldspar original, and the backboard is Rimu, which I rubbed with boiled linseed oil. Down the bottom are two photos. One is of Rogue in her prime, the other taken a few years ago in Wellington harbour just to the West of Somes Island.

Sanding makes you thirsty

We started sanding on Sunday. It was a lovely sunny day. As an aside, there was a very strange tidal surge: the tide was just beginning to ebb - maybe about 15 minutes into it, when two or three surges came though - about 3 inches each. It was enough to put the boardwalk under water. There's been a few earthquakes lately so am putting it down to that. No shipping was around at the time and it was a dead calm day. It was kind of spooky.

Seats for the tender

We did this last week. We tried a few tricks for this I learned at the Woodenboat school in Maine a couple of years ago but ended up just measuring across with a tape measure and shaving the bevels to fit. The seats are more of the marine ply and the risers and knees are solid mahogany. We got a bit creative with the clamping; using some heavy hardware from Shemara's mast to get downward pressure, and clamping bits of wood here and there on finished bits and giving the end a bang with a mallet so it budged up tight against the bit getting glued and screwed horizontally. You can see that in the pictures where we clamped a bit of Fiji Kauri to the centre seat, and banged the end of the wood so it put some pressure on the end seats against the planking. This helped get a tight fit

Mast finishing finished

Well that's done. A week over schedule in Dave's shed but he didn't mind which is good. Milan and Mike gave me a hand on the weekend getting it on the boat. Just waiting for Duffy now to get his stuff on the wiring done and she'll be back up. The brightwork is two coats of thinned Everdure and then 12 coats of Goldspar original. The white paint is two-pot epoxy. The other two pictures are of my shed taken from the water. I took them whilst rowing back because it looked rather choice.