Boat lumber delivery

Dave was glad to have a shipment of excellent new boat lumber arrive today.

It's primarily Osage Orange, an extremely durable southern hardwood that creates such crazy, almost neon sawdust. You can see that the pieces are curved, a characteristic that makes them especially useful, even labour-saving, for frame construction.

There were also a few pieces of Black Walnut and Oak.

You know all that hooey about double-sawn frames two posts again? Well, the reality is if you can find timber to fit the curve then you darn well use it, as shown in this shot of a forward frame made from solid pieces of Osage Orange.

Our girls are growing

Until Dave and the gang start framing them up, it takes a little imagination to see the two sweet schooners these keels will become. Still, when you place a few photos together, as below, it's not hard to see the progress they've been making.

In this first shot you see in the foreground one of the keels lying upside down while the ballast keel is attached, while just behind it sits the second keel, upside right with her stern post attached, all of the deadwood fitted in around the ballast keel and the beginnings of the stem.

This next shot, below, shows Dave alongside the finished stem with the still inverted keel of the other schooner just visible in the background. It's still upside down, but if you look closely you can see the deadwood is being added.

Finally, this shot gives another perspective of the stem; one from which you can start to infer the future schooners' lines. Made of super strong and durable Osage Orange, which when planed and shaped produces those sunny yellow wood chips, the stems feature a traditional Lunenburg knuckle in the bow.

Of course what these photos don't show is the temperatures in which our gang has been working. While the sun is shining, it's been hovering around minus 10 degrees Celsius all week (that's around 14 degrees Fahrenheit). Not that they ever complain.