Thought I would post up and let everyone know what I've been up to lately. As of the beginning of August my boat has been out of service (again! grrrr!). A friend and I went out to Newfound after fixing the lower unit. Now that issue is taken care of, the engine decided it wanted to give me more issues. First it gave me some sort of (I think) ignition issue. It would intermittently gain and lose power and eventually didn't want to stay running. We were slowly putting back to the launch ramp to call it a day (50 feet at a time, then it would stall), and the starter died. Later came to find out the brush on the positive side came off of the wire so I couldn't crank it over. Luckily as weather was coming in a guy in a square-back canoe with a 15 horse was nice enough to tow me back on his way in.
Fast forward a couple weeks. I was still bumming about the boat, but had a decision to make--drop a couple hundred bucks on fixing the motor, or start getting lumber for my wooden boat. I decided on the latter as the motor has been a pretty fruitless endeavor thus far. It's unfortunate as the Cadet has been a fun boat this season when it's been working, but the engine issues has put a damper on our fun.
As of today I've put 28 hours into my wooden boat and I'll show you a quick photo diary of the progression. Starts with the building form, plywood parts, wood cut-outs, and most recently, frame gussets. I'm now at the point in the project where I am ready to bust out the screws and structural epoxy and glue the laminations together for breasthook, stem, and transom knee, and glue and screw the plywood gussets to the frame members. Then it'll start to really look like a boat as I can mount everything on the building form!
