I am continuing to fix the square frames to the keel and continue to learn things that I already know. For example, when drilling a hole, a drill bit has a tendency to wander. So, I would test fit a frame to the keel and get it perfectly aligned, then pull it out, apply a bit of glue at the keel frame joint and properly reposition the frame. So far so good. Then I would drill the dowel holes through the frame and into the keel. Ahhh, but the drill wanders as it hits the keel and when you install the dowel, the frame is not exactly where you want it to be! So lesson learned, I glue the frame to the keel, let the glue cure, THEN drill the dowel holes. However this slows the process down because I can only install one frame, let the glue dry, dowel it, then install the next one, let the glue dry, and so on. But thats OK. You can see the yellow clamp holding astrip of wood applying pressure to the frame keel joint that is curing.
Now I have started preparing for one of the next steps, attaching the deck clamps. I will use the little clamps to hold the strip to the frames, but in the following picture you can see the next issue I ran up against. The frames are .200″ thick near the keel, then thin to .125″ at the top. but I found that my .125″ dimension is not perfectly consistant frame to frame. I have a variance of as much as +.015″. In the next picure you can see a gap between the deck clamp strip and the frame where I am pointing with the screw driver. Not good. If I clamp and glue all the frames to the deck clamp like I want to do, the variation in this dimension would all be transfered to the outside of the frames and they would have more variation than I would want to sand away. So I need to sand the inside of the frames so the thicker ones are much closer in dimension to the thinner ones.
Now the next lesson learned: The way I designed the frame spacers, they extend past the inside of the frame and I cannot easily get a sanding block to the inside face of the frames. Plus, I think they may interfer with my deck clamps.
So I will need to adjust the frame spacers outward. But that is OK, I’ll know better next time and I continue to have fun with the build.