Old Man Takes Up Rowing

There may be a better way to make all these posts more easily navigable, but the best I’ve managed is this table of contents which is roughly divided into “building the structure,” “overthinking everything,” “making mistakes,” and “Look, it’s a boat!” That also happens to be the chronology of the project, so that worked out.…

As threatened, I ran screws through the sheer clamps near the bow and stern to hold them securely together while I pushed and pulled to try this and that to get the hull panels stitched together. I stitched the side panels together at both ends to get the curve started. It’s clear that the side…

I hoped that stitching the bottom panels to the side panels would be revelatory, that all would become clear as the process progressed, but I am flummoxed. I verified the measurements; I pushed here and there; I took the spreader out and put it back; I dry-fitted one of the bulkheads, and I do not…

I set the stitched bottom panel on top of the still-inverted side panels and hoped that the bottom panels would open up undramatically. They did not! All the stitching along the keel line was much too tight to permit the panels to open. On the bright side, this did wonders for my confidence that the…