Thankful for Frames

Well it seems this is an early post to be writing for a weeknight, but it will be spanning 2 days worth of work.  When I last posted on Sunday, we were preparing to bust out all of frames on Monday night (today is Tuesday).  You know what they say about the best laid plans right?  It didn't quite work out that way.  So it goes.

A quick note.  I received a comment on here about which boat we are building.  This is indeed a boat from Roger Fletcher's book.  This is the Colorado River Dory (a likeness of the boat Jerry Briggs built).  I also had a question regarding sourcing for the Port Orford Cedar.  I was able to source this through one of my Millwork Subcontractors.  They sourced it from a local wood supplier.  Anyhow, back to the building...

Gary picked up the borrowed compound miter saw Monday moring from a friend.  It had last been used with a metal blade to cut a bunch of steel studs for a deck project.  The Owner had then left it out in the weather and all of those little fragments rusted the saw together.  We decided that building boats isn't fun enough, we should spend 3 hours getting the saw cleaned up instead.  We were not to be defeated and finally got the saw in working order again.

Here is the saw before it yielded to our manly good looks, er muscles:

Here's a few shots after.  It was an SOB, but we won.  Looks pretty nice too!

 Victory!

So we then had to run out and get the appropriate blade (12") before we could start cutting wood.  We cut frame #8, and the Transom frame before we started on the expensive stuff.

Working with the cheap stuff:

Our first frame out of the Port Orford Cedar:

We decided to call it a night and regroup on Tuesday (today) to get some more work done.  Luckliy, Gary had an easy day and was able to come by mid-afternoon for layout and cutting of some frames.

A stack of frames ready for finish cuts:

When I got home Chad and Gary were hard at work, so I jumped right in and in no time we got the rest of the frames cut and were ready to get them together:

I have to say.  Brad Dimock warned us all on his blog about this stuff, but the Port Orford Cedar smells heavenly.  I mean just fantastic.  I imagine it is what heaven smells like. That and wet sandstone...

Gary and family went home about 6:30 to have their Thanksgiving dinner since Gary and his wife are outta here for Turkey day, so I finished up the frames.  There they are, #1 through #10.  Just waiting to become a boat:

All of the final frames are built and ready for assembly! They look kinda lonely.  We will fix that soon!

Here is what the garage looked like post assembly:

I was also given some Mahogany for miscellaneous trims and other goodies.  We will have to break it down, but this is definitely a huge score for us (like 140+ LF).  Thanks Glenn!

 
Finally, I also had some assistance getting the Stem Post cut down.  It was just too big to handle on our equipment, so GMMW got this big mother taken care of.  We are really getting ready to build this thing:

The next few days we will start scarfing the sides, bottom and transom in preparation for building the boat.  Looks like a boat building party the weekend of December 7th and 8th.  Mark your calendars!  Come one, come all, bring beer and other refreshments!