On Saturday we were ready to add decking to the boat. But first, some rearrangement of the flotation jugs. Our little excursion to the lake on Friday night showed that one of the floats was too close to the wheels, which nearly rubbed a hole through. We don't have any of these 5-gal jugs to spare, so we can't afford to lose one.
Last week I was fortunate to find some complete sheets of 4x8 plywood in the alley. We were looking for 1/4" plywood, which isn't so common in the trash. The dumpster where I found the wood had some interesting stuff, so I went back later to check it out, to discover that its the warehouse to a magic shop. They are cleaning out 40 years of packrat accumulations of card tricks, newspaper clippings, puppet stages and bric-a-brac. Pretty neat stuff in there.
So, with our magic plywood in hand we set to cutting the decking.
I had expected we'd be piecing together scraps to make the decking, but with these two full sheets it was easy enough to lay down the boards and simply trim the corners. With a few jigsaw cutouts to fit around pipes, the decking fits perfectly.
While cutting the rounded corners of the decks I noticed again how crooked and asymmetrical our boat is shaping up to be. It bothers me to some extent, as I imagine how sleek and elegant a homemade boat can be. Even the most lowly materials could be coaxed into graceful forms, with the right patience and artfulness to bring out the essence of the material. But I must remind myself that function is the important thing here. That the materials are all basically trash, and it is good enough for them to be used instead of wasted or destroyed. Besides, I know my style of working enough to realize that my tendency towards fussiness often only results in a tendency to not finish things. Let go of symmetry! Let go of plans and expectations! The boat must be finished!