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...