This year, 2025 has just begun. Brown grass has turned green. There is ice on the pond in the morning and by 1pm it is 73 degrees (F). It’s a two-coat morning and a tee shit afternoon. It is too early for spring, though I am always ready for it. Not that Theresa cares or even notices. She sits up on her perch in silent praise of my work with seldom a comment. But sometimes I sense she must be smiling. Shafts of sunlight flood through my big door, illuminating her frames. She must be wondering when it will land on her decks. Or perhaps she wonders when she will be turned right side up. Who knows what happens in the mind of a boat. But this week there is another reason she may be smiling. All 78 of her frames are finished. Yes indeed. If it were planking there might be a whisky in order. I don’t know what, if anything, there is for the last frame. It seems shameful to do nothing. Perhaps it could be a beer frame. So, I had a beer and a can of Vienna sausages to celebrate.
Now when I say they are finished, I don’t mean to imply that they are actually, all the way done. There is a bit left to do on them. They are all on and fit to my satisfaction but what is left to do is to lock them down in their sockets with a bronze screw in the heel and rivets and bolts to the clamp and bilge stringer. Then fair them up to prepare for planking. Then I can begin the process of lining out, determining the number and width of planks. I don’t expect this to be difficult or take that long. However, that is what I said about framing. And let me tell you, framing, by yourself, on a boat like this, is a chore you won’t soon forget. I have framed two smaller boats before and there were no problems. This one was eating my lunch. Some days I spent 6 hours and got nothing done. There are dozens of ways to utterly fail at framing and sadly I know them all. I had a pile of broken frames higher than my worktable at one point. They became firewood lest I go crazy looking at them. But in the end, like marching through a wall of fire, persistence paid off. As usual, by the time you finish you finally figure it all out. In the process I learned a lot of new words, expanding my vocabulary in the wrong direction. I’m also talking to my boat. I’m pretty sure that’s weird. But about the frames, I can say they look good, without compromise.