![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
catsittingstillToday was an absolutely beautiful day. The high was supposed to be 78 degrees. It was sunny, with just a little wind. After Tennessee's wet-wool-blanket-over-the-head-in-the-sunshine summer, that is *perfect* weather.
I had planned to go canoeing.
But instead I woke up this morning and my back hurt. It has been alternating between not good and really pretty bad all day.
I probably brought it on by too much bending over the canoe yesterday. I didn't dare bend over the canoe with a heavy sander in my hands today. I hate not working on the canoe so I have been trying to do other things, that wouldn't be so hard on my back.
I spent most of the morning working on a study (a scale drawing on paper) of Constance and specifically her gunwales. The outwales are simple--well, I want to do a "wrap around" gunwale that will involve a very precise wooden plug at the bow and stern but I don't need a drawing for that. The inwales will be more complicated. I need them to be thick near the canoe's balance point, because I intend to make a clamp-on removable yoke for her, and I need the thickness to clamp to. I will actually need to glue on extra material there because my inwale stock is only 1/2 inch thick, and will probably end up being planed to 3/8ths. However I want them to be thin near the bow and stern, because thick gunwales look clunky. To handle the transition gracefully I will put in spacers to make scuppers (holes between the spacers), which I haven't done before. Now the thing about having scuppers is that the thwarts that go across the canoe need to contact the gunwales where they have a solid connection to the hull--in other words, at a spacer, not a scupper. This wouldn't be an issue except that one of the thwarts goes behind the (very low) seat, for the paddler to lean back against. I have a bad back, so I want to get this one in exactly the right place--and the problem is I'm having to more or less guess what the right place is.
The other thwart just goes in the front somewhere, doing the usual work of stiffening the hull, and its placement is not very critical, though it will be the right height to brace my feet against if I can get it in the right place for that.
And handling the transition between spacers and no spacers, I want to have gradually decreasing spacers so the gunwale just tapers nicely to touch the hull, right before the decks.
Now I suppose I don't really need to freak out over the thwart location--I can always cut and shape a new thwart that bends toward the bow, or toward the stern, if I don't like where the first thwart contacts my back. So maybe it's not that big a deal.
Anyway, I produced a relatively nice drawing (considering I had only graph paper and a triangle and a pencil to work with--I couldn't even find my french curve because I couldn't stand up long enough to shift all the junk on my desk to locate it.) But the canoe is no different than she was this morning so it doesn't feel like I've done much.
Plus I'm going to build Kip some boxes for his gaming index cards, because the plastic ones are pieces of trash that keep falling open at the wrong time, or shattering. I have lots of leftover white pine bead-and-coved plank left over from Constance, so I thought I'd use that.. I sawed enough pieces for the front--which will have a cedar strip in it, just to fancy it up a little. For glue-up I improvised a clever extra bench dog from 4 inches of 3/4 inch oak dowel (fits fairly handily in my dog holes--just a trifle loose) in which I carved a notch with my douzouki saw. I can lay out the strips between two dog holes, insert 2 extra (won't be glued) strips to get the spacing right, then put in a brass bench dog and the oak bench dog, and wedge in a walnut wedge (left over from a gunwale scarf) between one of the bench dogs and the strips until the whole thing is gently snug. That leaves me a second brass bench dog and the wonder dog to glue up a matching set for the back.
But my back started to hurt too bad and I had to quit before I glued anything, or even sawed the set of strips for the back. I got out my cane, even. I tried lying down on the bed, and slept a bit, but got too restless to stay there in the middle of the day, and moved first to my Poang chair, and then to the couch when I couldn't stand the Poang chair any longer.
I have been lying on the couch, reading. Kip went out and bought me fruit and potato chips and mountain dew and peanut butter m&Ms. I better get better soon or I will be round like a watermelon.
I had planned to go canoeing.
But instead I woke up this morning and my back hurt. It has been alternating between not good and really pretty bad all day.
I probably brought it on by too much bending over the canoe yesterday. I didn't dare bend over the canoe with a heavy sander in my hands today. I hate not working on the canoe so I have been trying to do other things, that wouldn't be so hard on my back.
I spent most of the morning working on a study (a scale drawing on paper) of Constance and specifically her gunwales. The outwales are simple--well, I want to do a "wrap around" gunwale that will involve a very precise wooden plug at the bow and stern but I don't need a drawing for that. The inwales will be more complicated. I need them to be thick near the canoe's balance point, because I intend to make a clamp-on removable yoke for her, and I need the thickness to clamp to. I will actually need to glue on extra material there because my inwale stock is only 1/2 inch thick, and will probably end up being planed to 3/8ths. However I want them to be thin near the bow and stern, because thick gunwales look clunky. To handle the transition gracefully I will put in spacers to make scuppers (holes between the spacers), which I haven't done before. Now the thing about having scuppers is that the thwarts that go across the canoe need to contact the gunwales where they have a solid connection to the hull--in other words, at a spacer, not a scupper. This wouldn't be an issue except that one of the thwarts goes behind the (very low) seat, for the paddler to lean back against. I have a bad back, so I want to get this one in exactly the right place--and the problem is I'm having to more or less guess what the right place is.
The other thwart just goes in the front somewhere, doing the usual work of stiffening the hull, and its placement is not very critical, though it will be the right height to brace my feet against if I can get it in the right place for that.
And handling the transition between spacers and no spacers, I want to have gradually decreasing spacers so the gunwale just tapers nicely to touch the hull, right before the decks.
Now I suppose I don't really need to freak out over the thwart location--I can always cut and shape a new thwart that bends toward the bow, or toward the stern, if I don't like where the first thwart contacts my back. So maybe it's not that big a deal.
Anyway, I produced a relatively nice drawing (considering I had only graph paper and a triangle and a pencil to work with--I couldn't even find my french curve because I couldn't stand up long enough to shift all the junk on my desk to locate it.) But the canoe is no different than she was this morning so it doesn't feel like I've done much.
Plus I'm going to build Kip some boxes for his gaming index cards, because the plastic ones are pieces of trash that keep falling open at the wrong time, or shattering. I have lots of leftover white pine bead-and-coved plank left over from Constance, so I thought I'd use that.. I sawed enough pieces for the front--which will have a cedar strip in it, just to fancy it up a little. For glue-up I improvised a clever extra bench dog from 4 inches of 3/4 inch oak dowel (fits fairly handily in my dog holes--just a trifle loose) in which I carved a notch with my douzouki saw. I can lay out the strips between two dog holes, insert 2 extra (won't be glued) strips to get the spacing right, then put in a brass bench dog and the oak bench dog, and wedge in a walnut wedge (left over from a gunwale scarf) between one of the bench dogs and the strips until the whole thing is gently snug. That leaves me a second brass bench dog and the wonder dog to glue up a matching set for the back.
But my back started to hurt too bad and I had to quit before I glued anything, or even sawed the set of strips for the back. I got out my cane, even. I tried lying down on the bed, and slept a bit, but got too restless to stay there in the middle of the day, and moved first to my Poang chair, and then to the couch when I couldn't stand the Poang chair any longer.
I have been lying on the couch, reading. Kip went out and bought me fruit and potato chips and mountain dew and peanut butter m&Ms. I better get better soon or I will be round like a watermelon.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2010-09-05 02:54 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-05 12:23 pm (UTC)Thanks for the good wishes.
no subject
Date: 2010-09-05 03:10 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-05 12:24 pm (UTC)It is ... challenging to fall back to "stuff I *can* do" when I can't do the stuff I want. Hopefully it will be better in a few days.
no subject
Date: 2010-09-05 12:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-05 12:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-05 12:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-05 10:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-05 09:18 pm (UTC)On the other hand, it's good to know you've got scale drawings of Constance--I have a bit of a thing for scale drawings of things-that-go, you see.
no subject
Date: 2010-09-05 10:58 pm (UTC)