5) Gunwales and transom

Now then, where was I? Oh yeah, in the garage.

To show what I’ve done around the gunwale I took some photographs and drew a diagram. I think that it’s important to make the gunwale as stiff as possible; with the original GRP deck in place it was virtually immovable because of the large horizontal area of the deck moulding bracing it. Now the stiffness will have to be provided by the wood laminations I have glued in place. So far there are four 10mm layers of soft wood around the gunwale, glued to the steel band on the outside of the hull, and to the GRP on the inside, with epoxy adhesive which has been just brilliant. There will be more wood, with a further 10mm thickness on the outside (possibly even hardwood - oak?) And a capping piece to run right along the top of the gunwale. Then I have to fix in a hefty member each side roughly amidships to support the rowing thwart and the rowlock sockets.







The next photo shows the hull starting to look a bit more like it with the wood in place around the gunwale - albeit with clamps.



There’s also a shot of the transom after I removed the old rudder mounting - a piece of hardwood which over the years had been eaten away by rot and what looked like worms.