There will soon be more activity in the boatshed with the impending construction of a John Welsford designed " Navigator" this is a very popular day and Raid boat. This is going to be an interesting build which has different construction techniques to what we are used to.

The Navigator build begins, the first piece cut

Its taken a while to get into a rhythm on the Navigator build but John, Fred and I have got our heads around it now and made good progress today. In order to reduce wasting ply we decided to cut templates from card then laid them out down one side of the sheet and traced them out before flipping them to the other side to give two of each. Next week sees a lot of cutting and shaping.

We made more progress on the Navigator today with bulkheads 1 and 2 finished to size as well as both sides of the centreboard case

Here are some pics of the process of making the navigator components. After we marked them out on card we traced them onto one side of the ply sheet then flipped them to repeat on the other side as there are two of each part. We then cut the parts out with jigsaws making sure to stay outside the lines. Next step was to plane and sand one of each piece exactly to the line so we could then screw that to its twin and use a flush trim router bit in the router table to match the second piece to the first. We then went around the appropriate edges with a radius bit in the router table to create "soft" edges.

The bulk of the Navigator structural components are now cut and finished to shape and now the slow meticulous process of cutting all the notches for the chine logs begins. Accuracy throughout the process so far is crucial to the boat taking shape correctly.

Another morning working on the Navigator and not an once of sawdust. I made a marking jig yesterday to ensure all the stringer notches were square to the apex of the frame angle. Marked all those out this morning then made a routing template so it's quick, easy and accurate to rout out the notches as well as a semicircle guide for routing the limber holes. Now enjoying the view from the boatshed.