Keelson on - Stems Glued - Tent up

There has been some fits and starts with the Charlotte build. Some friends from the Wooden Boat Association also starting builds have applied peer pressure with a mutual guideline - "do at least one thing on the boat project every day".  I got off to a good start but then a few other priorities got bumped up and that "one thing" became just thinking about what I would like to do next on the boat project,  Well I am now on top of these other things and , weather permitting, it's game on with the boat.  I'll try to post more regularly as bits get done. This post covers quite a few things done over the last couple of weeks.

The keelson was cut some weeks ago but before fitting it I champhered the internal edge with a small brass spokeshave (I'll post a pic of this later). Then I sanded the three internal faces.  This is all much easier to do now before the hull is built. Here's a pic of clamping the keelson on the jig and checking for straight.

Then I got to work sanding the faces of the Stems for similar reasons and planing the glue faces  
flat.  I then clamped the stems to the keelson, I cut wedges which matched the curved profile of the stems so that I could clamp perpendicular on both edges. I used some strips of that non-slip mesh used in kitchen cupbords so that when it comes to be glued, the stem won't slide off the mark.  You can see all this in the following pic.

Next step was to mark the shape for a filler piece that goes between the end of the jig and the stem.  This will be glued to the jig but left free at the stem edge and clamped while all the shaping work is going on with the stems.  I made my stems a bit longer than the plans so that I can firmly clamp them to the end projection on the filler piece.  I am also giving myself the option to have higher stem projection on the canoe above sheer for holding it and maybe securing an anchor line.

 Then finally as the sun set today I got the stems glued to the keelson so the actual boat itself is finally on it's way!

And now with the next five days with rain around it's time to erect the canoe tent. I built 5 arch supports from 50mm PVC plumbing tubing and two of these are secured to the tressles holding the jig. You can see the wooden attaching pieces I made with circular cut out to fit the PVC tube. Yes there is a chance of a grey flying canoe house crossing the Tasman (with canoe inserted) if we get a big blow!  But it is easy to dismantle on building days and re-erect and leaves me with room to move around the building jig. The arch supports fit inside one another at the end of the deck and don't take up much space. Here's a couple of shots inside and outside the tent.  I have ridge poles for the sides but didn't get time to fit them today when I took the pic.