Spring Outfiiting - Day Thirty-Five

Cinco de Mayo! The crew had the day off in anticipation of rain and having to work this weekend. We expect to be hauled out on Friday or Saturday so there will be no time off then. Brian and I put in a 12 hour day in preparation for the haul out. We're planning to install our new jib boom while we are hauled out as the shipyard crane will be able to lift it in place. The problem is....as of this morning the jib boom was hidden somewhere inside a 10" x 10" block of red oak that is 24' long. Our job was to start the process of finding our jib boom in that piece of wood! We were able to work on it until 2:16 when the rain really started and prevented us from using the power planers. We covered our project with a tarp and proceeded with other projects. Brian stuffed brochures and delivered them to our distribution center and I painted for four hours. That, of course, was after two hours of office work in the morning. Our bodies and minds are tired and we're stressed about a lot of things, personal and business, but we're on an auto-pilot of sorts and just keep putting one foot in front of the other. May is going to fly by!

Here's a look at one side of the jib boom and the taper that we've laid out. You can see that we've already shaped the bottom edge and we've rolled the piece to remove the wood from the top down to the black line. We finished those two sides in six hours and that pile of sawdust and chips under where we're working is getting bigger and bigger. The next step will be to taper the other two sides and then work to make the square piece an octagon and then round.

Here Brian prepares to make cuts along the top with a circular saw. He made a cut every couple inches or so (to just above our black line) and I came along behind him and removed the chunks with an ax. I was getting cold and had added a layer before I started that process. It didn't take long before I had worked up a sweat and had to take that layer off!