A Bad Week for Knees

Wales' warm up game at the weekend took a toll, with Rhys Webb, the brilliant scrum half, sustaining the sort of injury that makes you turn away from the screen. If that wasn't bad enough, the same game resulted in a knee injury to Leigh Halfpenny, probably the best goal kicker in the game, which has ruled him out of the World Cup. Given that we went out of the last one because we couldn't land our kicks, the significance of this loss is enormous.

When Joe and I turned our backs on this project to pursue other interests, we had pretty much made all the bits we needed and, crucially, we had sealed everything with epoxy, oil or varnish. Not so our knees....

There are knees everywhere in this boat: basically, L-shaped or triangular fillets that give structural strength to the boat. Those in question were intended to tie the thwarts (seats) to the hull, as in the picture below.

The knees in place on the two nearest thwarts

We made these knees from ply, which, though a fairly mundane composite material, can yield surprising results (regular readers will remember the striking pattern on our ply rudder). Here's one, close up:

The grain on this would have looked wonderful, once a few layers of varnish had been applied.

To our dismay, the damp weather that is a feature of Wellington for much of the winter had been at work while we were elsewhere and our elegant knees have been blighted by a mould that has penetrated beyond the reach of our trusty sandpaper: 

The black stuff

Nothing for it, but to make some more, this time with a solid wood that will match the Fijian Kauri of the thwarts. Fortunately, our high level of acquired skill with the bandsaw made that an easy task... except that this was when the bandsaw blade decided to snap. 

While we search for a replacement, I had a go at making the knees with the other tools: a jigsaw, a hand saw, a belt sander and a sanding block. Not a bad attempt, but the task got an awful lot harder...

I should have made an extra one for Leigh.