Today's task was going to be marking out and cutting the side deck panels but the temperature out there is up near 30 Celsius and way too hot to be doing anything too strenuous. I may have to delay this task until early Friday morning. So instead I finished the rubbing strake timbers, these are now ready to be steamed, and worked out the shape of the padding needed to fit the gammon iron to the bow as this needs to be done before the rubbing strake is fitted.

The angle of the legs of the gammon iron are not the same as the angle of the hull at the bow and I need to make two weirdly shaped pieces of timber to fit between the hull and the gammon iron. Doesn't sound like too hard a task but this is one of those "measure as many times as needed to get the same result at least 5 times before cutting and then check again" jobs.

The resulting template seems to be correct, more or less, and I think it will not be too difficult to make this using the table saw. A rectangular batten passed through the saw with the blade set at an angle should give the two long sides in one pass. Then set the blade angle again and run the now triangular batten through the saw to give the short side. I'll cut it on a piece of scrap first and see how it works before making the real ones.

But first, a cup of tea.

The rubbing strake timber glued and planed ready for steaming.

This is the shape of the bow where the gammon iron will be sited.

Like this.

And this is the inside faces of the gammon iron legs.

Like this.

The top piece of card is the shape of the bow.

And this is the difference. Well the bit above the line is the difference.

The padding timber cut with a scrap piece of softwood.

It seems to be the correct shape, so now to try with some good wood.

The padding cut using an offcut of Douglas Fir.

Again, it seems to be the correct shape.

And it matches the template but I won't really know until I cut the gunwales and foredeck back to fit the iron.