Dear Friends
I trust that you are still exercising care out there and looking after yourself - and that does not only apply to COVID-19 - but also to your health in general. So first I want to start with a big shout-out to Piet. Please take care of yourself and take things easy - now is the time to take the warning signals seriously.
I want to start off my update by going back to my previous post and Hans's (
@Hoosterw) comments on the port side berghouten:
Maar daar waar de rode pijlen van Piet staan zit daar geen deuk in het berghout? Of is dat de vervorming van de lens?
Mobiele telefoon foto's vervormen nogal eens.
you are right - my top berghout does not show a "deuk" and that is why I am not happy with it. When I glued it on top of the first plank, it must have moved under the clamps without me noticing it. Well-spotted, Hans!
Now if something is not right, it is not right

and it has to be done over. The problem was that the Chinese PVA glue that I use (even though it is not water-resistant) just refused to come loose with water, acetone or heat or all 3 combined.

So, there was only one solution. Sand down the two berghouten until they were flush with the rest of the planking and do it over again. As you can imagine, that was a big mess and at times I really doubted my decision. But to use Bouke's expression: "Ik het maar doorgebuffeld."
With the gluing of the top wanden above the berghouten up to the deck level, I called in the Admiral to help me check the lines and got more help than I asked for:
At times I glued two planks at the same time to make sure that the alignment is correct this time.
And then left everything to dry overnight.
You will notice that I "nailed" the berghouten to the hull which was done on purpose as they will be "treenailed" or have simulated "nails" put in them later on.
And this morning.

Now I am finally happy with the bakboord side (thank you Hans!) and can start on the stuurboord side. Luckily the berghouten on that side are perfect so it should go a bit quicker. As you can see I have already opened the geschutpoorten (I just have to do redo the one closest to the agterstewe, because of the berghout that was replaced). They still have to be finished off, but for now I am happy with them.
The other news is that I will start teaching at the centre again from Sunday, so progress will slow down. I am not complaining though, because I have been out of action now for almost 4 months.
Thank you all for watching and for following. As usual, your comments and thoughts are sincerely appreciated.
Kind regards - Heinrich