Mounting the formers onto the foundation was a tideous task. It was almost impossible to precisely adjust the individual pieces in three dimensions the way I have thought.
The bomb exploded two frustrating days after the sentence "Let's quickly errect the formers!".
Robert, my brother-in-law, who is nothing less than into boat building discovered the misery. His comment "There's an ugly bend in the keel line" was one of the deepes points of the FLAME project.
Taking some measurements unvealed quickly that none of the formers were according to the drawings. The way of cutting them by angle measurement led to multiplying any angle error over the length of the element. So the result was anything but a PIRAT design.
Shit happens ...
... but key is to accept it quickly, adopt to the new situation, change the plan and get emotions under control.
As far as I was concerned, I inserted one day of mourning and then decided to send the CAD drawings of the formers to a nearby workshop for CNC milling - along with the plywood parts.
Next thing was to convert the foundation into a false floor (one of Stefan's most valuable advises), which eased the subsequent adjustment of the formers by a big extend. All distances and right angles were constructed using the pair of compasses at a precision that could not possibly be beaten by any other means - except Lasers maybe :-)
This time I drew up all formers 1:1 on my desk to have exact control over the shape when I assembled them.
This step is recommended by each boatbuilding book on page 1, but somehow I must have overlooked this ....
Thanks to false floor and new formers, errection and adjustment was a piece of cake this time. The result was quite impressing to me.
Stefan's leveling gauge was used to bring all formers to the same height level with optical precision, feeding small wedges underneath the floor elements.
Meanwhile the ready cut plywood parts arrived from the CNC milling machine. I coated them with two layers of Epoxy resin.
At last the errors made in the early phase added a delay of about one week and increased the project costs by the material of the false floor, the new formers, plus the added CNC costs. But I was absolutely convinced that the quality of the final product was raised by at least the same extent.
