The making of an open fishing boat hull

 

Last week Fiona said to me that she could not believe the number of steps involved in soldering the fishing boat hulls, masts and sails together. She said it could be interesting to document the steps. This prompted me to contemplate three blog posts on the 100 fishing boats: making the hulls; making the sails; and soldering the bits together.

This blog records most of the steps involved in making a hull such as the one in the opening photos. The process starts with developing a prototype and templates - below.

Because I'm making at least 100 hulls  the next step marking out 100+ blanks and cutting them in the bench top guillotine. Lovely patinated copper from a hot water tank.

Each blank is folded in the vice - I use a trick with aluminium jaws for this.

The folded metal is marked up using a folded template; and then cut using the guillotine again.

Each cut piece is hammered on the anvil to create the curve of the keel and ribs of the boat. The photo below shows some forms hammered and others to be hammered.

Five 'tools' are used to form the boat from this stage - see photo below.

The hammered forms are progressively opened using: oyster knife, cooper's barrel chisel, brass weight and 30mm dapping tool.

The final forming is done with a soft nylon faced hammer on the panel beating stake. The shape is 'tweaked' along the way with metal shearers.

The formed hull is then ground to finesse the shape and remove sharp edges.

And the final product is what appears below.

Now just repeat most of that about 110 times!!!

Grevilleas, callistemons and orchids in the village

 

Autumn does not offer a lot of blossom growth or colour; but the hardy Australian native grevillea and callistemon seem to be flourishing in the cold and showing their beauty as you can see from the photo above and below.

The bees were out enjoying gathering nectar from this grevillea - big blue sky background.

It also seems to be the season for some of the orchids in G's orchid house - a few images below.

It is a joy to find fragments of beauty in the morning.

Market product

 

Over the last few days I have been stamping, melting and pouring metal as I worked on completing 20 more fishing boats. More on the boats at a later date. 

The photo above and below show a few images of the stamped hearts. I do love the rainbow and gold colouring the back of some of the hearts.

I want to complement the heart forms with other shapes and weights including stars, rectangles and button sized pieces as you can see below.

I think I have poured enough shapes no. All these will head to Scotland later this year for sale at a couple of markets.

Preparation and incidental art

 

Today I finished preparing 66 aluminium plates that Fiona and I will use in an etching workshop with high school students in Bettyhill Scotland in September - all going well. I have been trying to do some workshop and market related tasks associated with our next trip alongside the work on my 100 boats - to periodically give my hands and elbows a rest.

I like to think the opening photo 36 painted plates is an fleeting incidental piece of art. I used some leftover black and gold paint to seal the backs of the plates so that they are not etched as part of the etching process. I had set the plates aside to dry and was just taken by the shades of colour.

The following photo shows the 66 pieces of aluminium - all cut, ground and predrilled to attach to the sculpture post. Most of the plates are postcard size but I've included some other offcuts.

When spraying the backs of the different batches of the plates some nice patterns appeared on the cardboard protecting the workbench - more temporary incidental art???

I also drilled and polished some 300mm long plates that I etched many months ago. I think the circle pattern might fit in with the water design element of the sculpture post; and will also help to bind the post together.

In the workshop we will be using Fiona's instructions for etching aluminium plate with salt and copper sulphate. The page is quite crinkled as it sits in the box with the salt and copper sulphate supplies.

I will finish with a couple more images that could be temporary incidental art???  

Autumn house rainbow and early birds

 

One of my joys is seeing rainbows in the house. This seems to be more of a autumn-winter thing when the sun is low and maybe more to the north. Fiona pointed out that a rainbow was falling on some glass art cones on a shelf in our kitchen. After admiring the interaction of rainbow and art I just had to take a few photos.

Morning walks are being done in early morning light these days. My walk is often enhanced by bird calls - birds awakening to the dawn - using human structures to rest and greet the dawn

Fragments of beauty to remind me to be hopeful.