Floored.

Its now about three weeks into the new year and I honestly can't understand where the time has gone.  I must admit to doing a fair amount of faffing around and the weather hasn't exactly been brilliant.  However at least some progress has been made on the boat.

Thanks in no small way to the handy Spiling Tool  I made earlier I have managed to measure and cut the floors. The other tool which has been an absolute boon in doing this is my  Band Saw. Its absolutely brilliant for this type of work and would have taken ages without it.

As usual my work is slightly less than accurate, so there are plenty of gaps but that's why epoxy was invented. None of this is glued up yet. The weather has been far too cold for one thing and I wanted to make sure I was happy with everything first.  Like making sure a plank would lie nicely along the floors.  All the floors need finishing off and sanding before glueing but at least some progress has been made.

Can you tell what it is yet?

The next stage of the Coot build will involve fitting the interior. The next logical step will be to fit the centreboard case but due to the Big Freeze over the Christmas period, currently forecast to last a week or two yet, no glueing can be done.

So to keep myself at least partially occupied i've been noodling away doing some tool making. One of the trickiest stages is making the floors, especially as they have to be a snug fit in the plank lands. So in an attempt to make things easier for myself i've followed a suggestion I saw in Iain Oughtreds book.

Its made from some Ash I had left over from Caitlin, which has been looking for a use all these years. The slots were routed out, and a few bolts and wing nuts from B&Q keep it all together. It took a good afternoon to make it but hopefully it should make this stage a bit easier, we will see.

It should be fairly self explanitory from the photo's how it works.

We'll see how it works in practice in a few days but so far I'm pretty chuffed with it.