Live the Dream

Fall is here in Salt Lake, the daily highs are in the 70's and the mornings are finally cool and crisp.  We have been slow to update, but climbing season is back and its hard to want to sit down and blog.  Beth and I had been getting out climbing a couple times a week until two days ago when I sprained my ankle hiking to the crag.  I actually sprained it on the trail about 100 yards from the car, two days and I still can't walk, but I'm close, probably tomorrow.

Before my unfortunate accident Beth and I had climbing projects right next to each other, in fact, one on top of the other.  We don't have any pictures of us on them, but here is what they look like.

This is "All chalk no Action"5.12a , Beth's project, I think she will finish it pretty fast.  And the best part is that I have to climb it to get to my project.

This is "Orange Crush"5.13b Absolutely stunning, a testpiece of very technical rock climbing. 

On to the boat

 This is the sea berth/couch,  After building it I realized there was a serious problem.  Because the decks are not on its easy to forget that they will someday be there, so one evening as I sat on the sea berth I realized that at the present height of the berth I would have to cut a hole in the deck for my head to stick out.  I was pretty bummed, but I cut it apart and lowered it, and now its perfect.

 After debating on what to use for interior trim we have decided to go with vertical grain(VG) fir trimmed with mahogany.  I wanted to buy a sheet of 1/2" plywood with a (VG fir) veneer already on it, but all the plywood we found had particle board cores, which don't hold up in moist environments.

So we ended up just buying a sheet of 1/2" plywood and a veneer.  Usually to put a veneer on you have to use contact cement, which smells worse than bondo.  But I was pleasantly surprised to find that our veneer is self adhesive.

I am peeling of the paper to veneer one of the doors for the dinette.

Here are some patterns for bulkheads and sea berth parts I've been making.

Its crazy, but we are actually getting ready to fit the stove into the boat. Here I built a mock up gimbal to find the center of gravity of the oven, and determine the correct pivot point. 

Lots of clamps for gluing up some mahogany and fir

A deck beam I glued up, that will commence framing out the cockpit. 

The boat shop has been fantastic lately, so much fun work, great temps, and a plan(for now).