All good times must come to an end

I never thought I would be waiting on the weather so I could work on my boat. The Charleston summer was long, hot and humid as always. Plenty of building time that I squandered doing who knows what. But since it has gotten much colder and I am pretty sure epoxy doesn't like the cold, I wait for better weather. I suppose at some point I will just get a space heater so I can make the garage warm when I need to glue something. Today while I waited I moved on to the sheer notches. The first thing I learned is that I should have at least cut the base notches while the frames were upright. Upside down, while laying on the cold concrete, when you can't move to see both sides of the wood to check your line is not an easy cut. I did manage to get all the notches cut in one afternoon. And they were close to what they needed to be.

Since my chines needed no steam to make their bends I figured that the sheers wouldn't need it either. NOT a good guess. I just wanted to see how it would look (I am sure I am not the only one who has done this,) and, SNAP! The sheer snapped right at frame 5. It didn't break completely through, it just split the outside where the wood was being stretched. No creaking, no cracking, just SNAP.I don't know how I can fix this one. This piece is perfect for the sheer (well, before I broke it,) So I would love to salvage it. I could scarf on another piece since the break is toward the end. I thought about packing the break with epoxy (lots of surface area in there) and flipping the sheer around. The break would be on the compressive side and I would be sure to steam the sheer before I tried to bend it again. I will actually steam the sheer anyway before I try to bend anything again. I guess I got lucky with the chines, but I am not going to rely on that anymore. To add insult to a bad work day I found one of my chine glue joints with a crack in it.

I don't know why it cracked, it just did. Maybe it was too cold to dry right. Maybe it was mixed wrong (nah.) Whatever the case, since the crack is only on one side of the joint, I don't think I need to worry too much. I will probably just sand it down and re-filet the joint to make it look nice. So, all in all, a productive weekend. I love when work makes you've done makes you think about how to fix it.