Come on baby light my fire!

No! We haven't given up and set a match to her!
In the depths of winter, we found it too cold in the workshop. The electric heater was on full blast, 24-7, to keep things above zero. Mutterings about kWh pricing from Oscar...
It had always been the plan to install a wood stove, but time had put that to one side... Now was the time!

Oscar found an old stove in one of the barns... Very rusty and sad... 20 minutes with the Flex machine and it looked perfect for the workshop.










Chimney pipes were installed. I took the pleasure of climbing on the roof - a good sunny day, but kind of cold up there - to complete the installation. Oscar welded a new flue to the stove...Oval to round.

Then we got into some of the disposal of scraps from the boat!

Nomenclature

I've been having a few "stress-moments" concerning some of the nomenclature I have used on this blogg... It all revolves around my use of the word ribs!
People in "the know" of the boating world are careful of their use of words: the use of the wrong word signifies a sense of ingnorance, and can convey mis-understanding. This can be disconcerting for the most experienced "boater"-  finding the correct word - to not show ones ignorance and to clearly convey what one means.
This would not be so much of a problem if "boating" wasn't full of so many weird words. We take it for granted that right and left disappear aboard - replaced by Port and Starboard. Where these words originated is open to conjecture... But my second language - Swedish - gives us some clue to starboard. In swedish this is styrbord... Literally the steering board! It was common practice to have an oar "thingy" on the right side of the boat to steer with... Styrbord... Starboard.
"Boating" has also introduced words and phrases into our language whose origins have long been forgotten. One such is filibustering... English speakers might not know this word, but our american cousins will know this from their government. The word comes from the age of square-rigged ships: while racing, they killed time before the start by spilling wind ( in contrast to the manouvering done by sail boats racing today).. This was termed filibustering.

Now to my dilemma! I have been calling parts of the boat ribs... A number of people claim I am incorrect and should be calling them frames. In some respect they are correct... But...
Frames are supports to the planking of the boat that reach from the keel to the deck and connect to deck beams.
None of these supports on our boat connect to deck beams.
If there is such a supporting member that sits between frames, but does not connect to a deck beam, it is called a timber... Highly inapropriate for our steel-work!
Henceforth all members that stretch from the keel to deck will be called frames... Those steel-oak composite members will be called timbers for the wooden bit, and ribs for the steel bit.

Finally putting things back!

 The work on the boat hasn't been going so long... But it has all been removal and destruction. While this is necessary, it can be a little demoralizing. Not to mention a little worrying as less and less seems to be holding the boat together.
But little can be done about it... Just look at these rusted frames and ribs...

As I mentioned in the last post, we had removed 10 pairs of ribs from the boat. These came back from the fabricators, and needed fitting before we could remove any more of the half-ribs or frames. As you can see - Large holes in the structure.

These half-ribs needed some work to "fit" them to the planking and the hog ( or where we assume the new hog will be when we fit it - there being too little left after vacuuming out the rot!). Then they need drilling and bolting in place ( we are using M8 A4 Stainless-steel bolts with washers and nylock nuts to replace the 8mm mild steel rivets that were used - with some luck these will last longer than I need to worry). As most of the planking, that is left, these are fitted to will be re-placed we "dry-fitted" them after cleaning up the planks as best we could.

Once fitted - even though they were not attatched to the hog - they look right, and the boat "feels" stronger... But I was never going to grab the old ones and try and shake the boat!
When we have all the frames and ribs fitted they will need to be tested for "fairness" with battens and "tweaked" with a lump hammer before we can continue with planking and replacing the hog. But they look good so far...

And the starboard ribs ready to fit...