A Day Of It

Double strands for this seam.

   Well, did 12 hours of caulking today, plus Herbert did a few seams too.  Nearly finished - three seams on the starboard side to go out of about 26 total.  Being an old boat the seams are not very even, not just different from one seam to the next but the width also changes along their length, so you have to keep changing irons, looping the cotton, or doubling strands in certain places.  Unfortunately a previous caulker has been pretty callous and there is much damage to the plank edges where they have missed the seam, or maybe used a larger iron than ideal.  We ended up having to trim out the crushed timber with a pull saw and this was time consuming.  Consequently one seam length took about 40mins on average.

   Herbert glued some repairs into the keel, but won't finish them off yet as all the dust would go into the seams.  Tomorrow night I'll go back after work to give the whole shebang a coat of grey primer.