More templates

Despite the forecast, we had an hour or two of workable weather. Here is the progress to date, six bulkhead templates cut and carefully sanded to their final shape.

Tonight we made a few more templates including the fore and aft stems and the rudders. These parts are shown with full size patterns on the plans. You can check for paper expansion with a few measurements, some of which were pretty off ans some were right on. Makes you wonder about the drawing accuracy, but we tried our best to get them right.

The outline of each part was marked with a nail into the plywood. Then it was a game of connect the dots and cut them out using the circular saw.

Some areas like the handle at the top of the stems you just have to free hand until it looks right. Here you can see our pencil lines following the nail marks as well as some improvisation.

We're going on the theory that if it looks right it is right. Next we are sanded the newly cut templates down to the lines using the same impromptu bench sander setup (a piece of plywood, some 2x4s and sawhorses).

Tomorrow will be a big day for this Hitia 17 as we will finally be making real parts that will be part of the final boat.