A visit to the heaquarters of the SIBLIM club.
Credit to Paul Gilbert for the photos, much better than my own amateurish efforts. Thanks Paul.
For those new to the acronym above, that stands for “Small is Beautiful, Less is More” and is the philosohy behind Annie Hills life, and the new ship that she is building herself.
I visited last week, had a look over the ship to see the progress since my last call at her shed in Norsrands Boatyard in Whangarei. She’s doing well, all the framing is up, the skegs that will support the twin rudders are in place, these will enable her ship to stand upright on any reasonable surface when the tide goes out. The bottom panel is dry fitted, some of the cockpit panels are in place, there is nice solid wood tongue and groove panelling on the main cabin bulkheads and she is working on wrapping plywood around that distinctly Junkish bow.
View from aft, the shape is clearly visible now and even some of the interior spaces are starting to give an impression of what theyll feel like later on.
A distinctly Junkish bow. There is a lot of good thinking behind this, it will make lifting an anchor and stowing its tackle much easier for someone who is not the strongest person afloat, being small of build makes it easy to get standing headroom in a smaller boat but there has to be thought given to things tasks which are easy for a 6 ft 6in football player.
Tongue and groove panel overlaying the plywood in the main cabin. Nice!
The outboard motor will mount in between the skegs, in a well which makes it an "inboard", if you know what I mean. It makes it easy to access, keeps it well protected, out of sight from people who might think that they deserve it more than the owner, and easy to service without having to dismount it. Good option.
I collect woodworking hand tools, not as a collector of rare and “collectibles”, but rather to rescue and bring back to life old, disused, and damaged second hand tools. I haunt junkshops and garage sales, will buy if I come across reasonable second hand ones, and have quite a collection tucked away awaiting a good cause.
Annie qualifies as a good cause.
Thats the model of the ship in the background, and were looking over tools Annie and I. Youre looking through the space between the twin skegs, good solid legs for when shes aground and strong support for the steering gear.
So I’ve handed over to her a Stanley number 60 bullnose plane, that’s the little short one handed rebate plane, a straight spokeshave, a decent half inch chisel and a two sided coarse / fine oilstone. The plane and the spokeshave will come back at the end of her project.
She’s bought a couple of Japanese style pull saws, and is finding them much easier to use and more accurate than the old tenon saw that she’d been using, and I noted that she had purchased a cordless impact screwdriver and a few other power tools. These will speed things up no end.
Now keep that angle the same as you move the chisel back and forth, gradually work your way around the stone to keep the wear even, lots of oil, not too much weight on it ------
We went over the technique for sharpening hand tool blades, that’s chisels and planes, aome very basic stuff so she can get a decent edge without having to wait until Marcus can do it for her. He’s busy earning the bucks that will allow him to haul his Ferro cement 20 ft Flicka and do some work on her.
Great visit, Annie and Marcus are both good company, and it is a pleasure to have bread and cheese, fruit and a cup of tea with them.
I’m going to be away for a while, so it will be maybe two months before I’m back. I’m expecting to see lots of progress.
Work well Annie.
