Many months ago I privately celebrated the fact that I was done with bronze rod. As often happens with Mahdee projects, I was premature in that celebration. It seemed a particularly noteworthy occasion because I had managed to use up almost every scrap of rod. Since we were buying rod in 12 foot sections and 5 different diameters, it was almost miraculous that the largest of the few scraps was only a few inches long. Then there was the fact that I hadn’t broken my last threading dies, but they seemed pretty worn out. I was really happy to think that I wouldn’t have to do any more threading with those dies–its not easy turning a dull 3/4 inch or larger die.

The first clue that all was not as neatly tied up as I thought was when I found a bag of 5/8 inch bronze clench rings while rummaging through the bins. In denial, my first thought was “why are these here?” Then I remembered that we had bought them for the drifts that were to secure the engine stringers to the floor beams. That meant buying more bronze rod and destroyed all fantasies of the existing almost perfect match between bronze bought and bronze used. Then, with that delusion gone, I remembered that we needed drifts to hold the new rudder together, and worse still, 3/4 threaded bronze to bolt the oak onto the rudder stock. Not only did we need more bronze rod, but those old dies were going to get another workout along with my arms.

As usual, the dread was worse than the actual task. I made a form from scrap iron for the 3/4 inch rudder bolt heads and bought an oxy-acetylene torch to soften the bronze to form the bolt heads. In one morning, John and I made all 6 rudder bolts. I even managed to thread the 3/4 inch bolts and with the help of some ibuprophen, actually did more productive work that afternoon.

John bolted the rudder together and installed the rudder drifts and all that remains are the bronze drifts which attach the engine stringers to the floors and the bronze rod for bolting the engine mounts to the stringers. For the latter, we bought all-thread bronze rod–no more turning of dies on this project. Well, at least for now.

Above, David is heating the bronze rod, John is pounding the head, but the swing of the hammer is a blur. Below, the black lines indicate positions of drifts or bolts through the oak of the rudder. The rudder will be faired after the glue has completely dried.

We are constantly asked about progress on Mahdee and it is really nice to be able to give a simple response about how we just passed some easily described milestone. Alas, it is never as simple as that.

We did have a celebration many months ago when the ribs were done. But actually they weren’t. Besides the couple of full ribs that weren’t quite complete, there were numerous riblets (which back the chainplates) and ribs that extend up through the deck to support the bulwarks (bulwark stanchions) all of which look a lot like more ribs to the casual observer. Then there is the planking. We started that about a year ago and its still not done — as critically pointed out by a couple of visitors. But we ran out of planking stock and then took a break during the hot months and then the (planking wood) log went missing in transit, so we started on the deck beams and deck. Then it got rainy so we really wanted to get that deck finished even though we now had the planking stock! But then we realized that it would be much easier to fit the tank cradle if we could see underneath the tank while fitting it, so we left off a few planks for that. But we ran out of planking fasteners again anyway, so we needed to switch jobs while UPS did their job of bringing our fasteners to us. And so it goes for lots of parts of the boat project. Lots of uncompleted tasks that are on hold for very good reasons, but which make it very difficult to check off ANY milestones.

One of the workers we’ve met here in the boatyard has a client whose “project manager” has decided that work can only proceed on one task at a time. A linear milestone approach that in the real world is very inefficient. We know that progress is being made toward our launch, but everyone would feel better if we had more concrete milestones behind us. But that’s the nature of complex jobs.