Arwen's meanderings

Hi everyone and welcome to my dinghy cruising blog about my John Welsford designed 'navigator' named Arwen. Built over three years, Arwen was launched in August 2007. She is a standing lug yawl 14' 6" in length. This blog records our dinghy cruising voyages together around the coastal waters of SW England.
Arwen has an associated YouTube channel so visit www.YouTube.com/c/plymouthwelshboy to find our most recent cruises and click subscribe.
On this blog you will find posts about dinghy cruising locations, accounts of our voyages, maintenance tips and 'How to's' ranging from rigging standing lug sails and building galley boxes to using 'anchor buddies' and creating 'pilotage notes'. I hope you find something that inspires you to get out on the water in your boat. Drop us a comment and happy sailing.
Steve and Arwen

Monday 8 April 2019

Building oars for a John Welsford navigator Part 2

The cardboard templates didn't work very well as outlined in part one. When I taped them together and then put them down on the plank I wasn't convinced that the loom shaft had straightened up accurately.
So I ditched the card templates and then drew out everything on the top plank. This proved fiddly but we got there in the end.



Of course that was wasted effort and I learned a valuable lesson that I had forgotten. One that I taught my GCSE examination groups every single year from whenever.

The lesson?
Make sure you read everything in the question and the associated resource booklet BEFORE you start answering the question!

If I read the instruction manual fully BEFORE marking out the plank - I would have read the bit about where I'd end up cutting off the marked out side when I cut the plank in elevation view.
The reason for making a plywood template is so that you can keep using it because you will need to draw out the plan view of the oars two or three times during the cutting process. Well dur!

So, having wasted nearly three hours, I have now drawn and cut out the plans on some thin plywood. And I have now read through the manual three times from cover to cover!
Sometimes I scare myself at how stupid I really am!


In the meantime clamps have been lightly oiled and opened ready and new oar holders have been cut. These can be screwed to the work bench to hold the oars when planing them down.
Hopefully tomorrow the temperature will be around 11C and with the fan heater on in the garage the temperature should rise a little higher and I can then epoxy bond the planks together.


Beats cutting the grass and strimming the upper woodland slopes. 


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