Day 37

Now for the finer part of building a steel hull, fairing up those horrible coned out vertical joints! As you can see in the pic below left, most of the welding was done on the inside as a matter of convenience at the time. This wasn't what caused the coning of the butt joins. The curvature at the joins was almost impossible to predict so we just left them pulled in as far as possible. Now that the whole radius plating is completed, there is more strength in the hull to make suttle changes. At least it seems that way!
	<< Coned out section before cutting out Checking for fairness>>
It also seems that the steel has yielded somewhat and doesn't want to spring out as it did before. First we used the grinder to cut out a 1/8" slot where the two had previously butted together. In some places, where the cone was more nasty we cut out a bit more. Then a chain was attached to the support framing over each side of the radius join, and a hydraulic jack was used to push in the cone. Once it was pushed in enough, a tack would be placed just above or below the jacks foot to hold the join once again. A couple of times the tacks snapped and we had to start over at that position, but to our surprise, it worked quite well! ( Gena's idea ) Most of the fairing was done by eye, and I must admit, it looks much better now the "humps" are smoothed out. The difference in appearance makes us want to to an even better job of making the whole hull fair and flowing.

Day 37:
8 hours - faired in the butt joins of the radius plate down the starboard side

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