Whoa, 3 months without a post. Where has the time gone? Work, Christmas, and hockey mostly. I've been busy busy busy, with not much time for model work.

The last post was on the MTB. Nothing has been done to that recently. Over Christmas I did some work around the house, and have re-purposed (Lordy I hate that word) a room in the house. What used to be a room full of hockey gear, is now only partly full of hockey gear, and room was made for a new desk I managed to score just before Christmas. It's very nice, almost 7 feet long, and perhaps a bit over 2 feet wide. It has two nice big drawers for holding folded plans, notepads and such, and is a nice surface for model making. The MTB has been moved there and I hope to get some work done on it soon.

What I've been working on lately is the Blue Toon. If you've read this blog before, you'll know that I spent 50 hours making a nice fully framed hull for the boat. Just as it was being made ready to be planked, the damn thing warped, so badly it couldn't be saved. 50 hours of work down the tubes. On Christmas day it went in the fireplace, and it burned real good. Not for 50 hours though.

Anyway, I started over, but this time with bulkheads instead of frames. I cut all the bulkheads out of 1/8" plywood, cut the keel out of 1/8" ply as well, slotted the bulkheads, built a building board, set in the bulkheads, slotted the keel, glued everything together, and in about 5 hours I was back to where I was with the first attempt. Here are some pictures, first of the building board I made, then some shots of the bulkheads and keel being put in place.

The building board, by the way, can be used again with a different boat. I just need to remove the cross pieces and move them to wherever they need to be, then fasten them down again. I'm working on a new similar board that will have two slots running lengthwise, with each cross piece being held down with bolts. That way, I can simply slide the cross piece to where it needs to be.

More later.