We planned to glass the sides of the dory Sunday afternoon but a quick check showed that while we had enough resin in stock we were still short the appropriate hardener. The end result was a wonderful day off. We did get the locations for the safety rope retention padeyes marked.
Locating them was a bit of a challenge - we've been working from some photos and an 8 1/2 x 11 inch survey of the original boat marked off in 1' increments. Let's just say scaling from that involves some eyestrain and guesstamation...
On Monday, we got the sides glassed.
Once I got a head start on the glassing, Tony started installation of our version of the safety rope padeyes.
It's a challenge building a boat to replicate a boat that Tony and I have never seen. We're working from photos that someone else took and typically don't highlight the details we'd like to understand. I suspect the original safety rope padeyes were either machined from solid stock or cast and then machined. We didn't have the time or the money to be that historically accurate.
Ours were molded in a jig from three layers of 17 oz fiberglass
and then cut from the resulting stock.
They're not the same, but will look similar from a distance once the boat is painted, and don't require holes in the hull to mount them.
With essentially all of the structural glassing done, I'll be headed home soon, leaving Tony and Helen to finish the project they started. Tony is an incredibly skillful guy in so many areas. Now he's learned the joy of working with scratchy fabric and sticky stuff and will be able to finish up the final glassing details on his own.
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