Let’s fill up the shop

This is probably a good time to address one of the handful of questions that’s asked by virtually everyone that learns I’m building a boat:

“Where are you doing this?”

To those that live in some parts of the country this question might sound a bit absurd, but I – dear reader – live in San Francisco.  In San Francisco, deeded parking spaces can sell for $82,000.  Space is highly, highly limited.  And so, this is not an unreasonable question.

For the past year and a half or so I’ve had some shared shop space on the old Alameda Naval Air Station.  We’re right out by where the Mythbusters film (used to film?) the segments of their show that require large expanses of asphalt.  It’s pretty bad ass.

My section is just barely big enough to fit this project.  In truth, it’s not big enough for the project, but it’s big enough for the boat, and the guys in the space across from me are never there.  I end up pushing a lot of my rolling tools and tables into their stall since it makes space to work.

That point established, after the stem the next thing to come off the router was the MDF parts that can be assembled to form the strongback.  For those that don’t know, a strongback is a rigid, stable form upon which a boat is built.  This is kind of a hybrid strongback/jig that positions everything correctly so you can get going more quickly.

Here’s a shot of the strongback after initial assembly.  You can see that beneath it we constructed a ladder-shaped base of 2x4s.  That gave us something to secure everything to, and also allowed us to create a platform that was plumb so there would be less tweaking of the strongback itself to get it level.  Speaking of level, you can also see the level across the strongback frame.  We spent a lot of time trying to get things square and plumb so we’d be building from a good set of reference surfaces.

In this picture you can also see the large stack of 3/4″ Marine Grade A-B Doug Fir ply that will soon be turned into frames and stringers; my dad dusting himself off, and the very small amount of working room that exists on either side of this thing in the shop.  It’s a tight squeeze.

-Ben

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