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On, to making the lid.

I think it has something to do with how I buy new shoes.  Actually, if it was completely up to me, I wouldn’t buy new shoes very often at all.  But, Kate insists.  I guess you could say that I just don’t often feel the need for new steeds.  She says I keep ‘em until they get all curled up.  I say, “You mean, all comfortable??”  No, that’s apparently NOT what she means.  Anyhow.

I have reached that point in this Frankenbuild where curled-up toes are a potentially big problem.  As I have alluded before; I was a liberal arts major.  Actual by-the-book instruction in mathematics and similar dark arts was pretty much a waste of time, for me.  And, believe me, I have attempted to solve this upcoming problem six ways from Tuesday.  Really have.  I’ve even asked - nay, probed - my engineer friends, Mike and Sam, several times about this looming crisis in spatial relations.  They each looked at me as I was speaking gibberish.  And, to tell the truth, I thought I was.

Here’s the deal, as best as I can see it - imaginatively, not actually see it.  Not yet.  This cabin top that I have started to create will have a constant camber throughout its 10-foot extent from toe to heel (to keep the shoe paradigm alive.)  Constant, if my shade tree mechanic solution works out.  If I could have figured out how to vary the camber, all would now be forgiven.  The princess would live happily ever after.  Things would be great.  But, I couldn’t.  So.

You see.  The deck that runs under that constant camber lid rises over one foot per eight feet of travel fore and aft.  That’s why I beat the horses so mercilessly to build foundations for the windows, and ultimately, for the top that allowed for a leveling of the base.  But, this is a pointy bow boat.  Everything curves inward as you go forward.  In fact at the heel of this creation-in-foam, athwartship spans exceed six feet, and it tapers to under four feet at the toe.  This is on a curve that doesn’t exactly match anything; but, it mimics the deck edge and once-cockpit coaming lines.  Sort of.

To make this lid look like it belongs on this boat, I’ll need to cut the outer edge to somewhat parallel the foundation profile (looking down at it.)  Someplace in one of Sam's old college textbooks there is probably a formula developed by Archimedes or Pythagoras, or some other old dead Greek, that gives some sort of magic twanger number that you “plug in” to the formula, as those non-liberal arts types would say.  This Golden Mean sort of thing would tell me how much to increase the camber as I move forward to keep the outer edge all in the same plane.  And, hopefully, that plane would then be parallel with the foundations that I so laboriously created over the past several day and night shifts.  But, I really doubt it.

I think that curved line that I’ll need to follow with my saber saw will CLIMB as it gets closer to the center.  Hey, it’s not just liberal arts majors who understand this.  Boy Scouts, too.  If you start walking around a mountain, with the notion that you’ll arrive at the top sometime; then as you get farther away from the lower margin, you’ll GET HIGHER.   See? Just like my old shoes.  Curling up, toward the toe.  But, since this ain’t exactly rocket science, I’ll just have to wait and see what it looks like.  But.

This is sort of what we’ve got right now.

I was only messing around with possible arcs.  But, when I sort of set this up and held it down with a couple boards that were going to be part of a pretty elaborate frame and strong back system; it just sort of said, “How’s this???”  Not too far from what I was hoping to arrive at with lots of female mold parts and stiffeners and all that engineer speak.

So, I slathered on a whole big tube of PL premium, troweled it around, and stuck the two layers together like a really big, rectangular, Oreo Cookie.  The two panels are staggered to allow for a mating with the succeeding sections.  The basic blank will be a touch over 6 feet wide and joined into two four foot and one two foot piece to add up to something like ten feet.

If it all doesn’t come flying apart, and actually holds onto this shape,  I’ll be able to figure out/guess/stumble upon the next step.  This is getting kinda’ interesting.

Meanwhile, I think Kate is out looking at that pile of sneakers that I use in the shop.  Maybe, I can get the toes to curl down.  Probably, not.

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