CLC Pram #4 Stitchin’!

G’day y’all!

Yet another update on the CLC Eastport Nesting Pram.  The technique building this little boat is known as “stitch & glue”. Time to stitch!!

So first you stitch (with pieces of wire) panels #1 to the floor panel. A perfect way to break the ice on weekday afternoons. Then, on a supposingly rainy Saturday, which ended up being a nice sunny day, get help. Alexandra to the rescue! After some quirky figuring out and  “what the hell are we doing”, we got panel #2 on.

Next in sequence… the bulkheads including a temporary bulkhead which is that dark blue thing. This took the longest time. For one, they didn’t fit well due to my clumsy sawing. And second we didn’t have enough weight placed on the floor panel to give the necessary curvature. Gotta pay more attention to the manual’s details.! Thirdly we were trying to tighten the wires too much whereas the manual says not to!

Now, we are talking about a lot of wire twisting. Figures get numb and the whole thing is beginning to behave like a porcupine! So once again, I bled…just a tad, but my arms are all scratched up from the wire tips. It’s actually a bit dangerous and one can poke an eye out if not careful. Ewwwww!

 

Time for panel #3.

This went on pretty straight forward… we’ve gotten good at it by now. We were running out of time and contemplated on leaving the last panel #4 for a later date. But we decided to proceed, it went on real fast, we backed away, took a look and exclaimed “Wow!! We just built a boat!!”

This is so bizarre! After 2 months of sawing and filling and gluing and parts all over the place… there is A BOAT! I’ve been walking around with a ridiculous grin for days now!

I’ve been spending this week tweaking and tightening the wires and it’s just about ready to flip and spot weld.

More on that…. next post.

Stay tuned… and wipe that ridiculous grin off your face,

Capt. Pete

ps… meanwhile back on Zoot Allures…

 

pss…. I’m on aspirin!