This is the first boat I have framed outside in tempatures around zero. I was nervous about the frames being able to retain their heat from the steam box long enough for me to be able to bend them around the mold and get them secured. Because of this concern I gave them all a coat of paint prior to steaming, which helps retain more moisture/heat. The paint sealant and the great framing stock worked great together. They look a bit funny with the steamed paint which will need to be scraped before they get their next coat of paint,  but I only broke a couple frames in the transom where there is a significant recurve and twist.

Once framed I set to making and installing floor timbers. I used a sheet of plastic Mylar to trace a  template off the lofting reduced by only the planking thickness this time, and compared it to the molds. Once satisfied with the fit I took bevels on the hull and transferred them all to the oak. .

Once the lofting was finished and pulled up from the floor I set to building a bending mold for each frame of the hull. These Molds when fastened to the floor will serve as a building plug. As we have gone to such lengths to build a classic Herreshoff design I thought it most appropriate to build it in the Herreshoff method.  This involves making a mold for each frame station. it can be time consuming, it allows you  to retain as much of those nice lines from the lofting as possible and thus minimizes time spent fairing wood later. Also since the molds are symetrical around the centerline a lot of time can be saved by building each mold doubled up in half.  A slight complication is that these molds will have the frames steam bent over them and then those frames will be planked on top of that. The boat was lofted to the outter face of the planks, so I need to make a reduction from the outter surface to the inside of the frame. Where the boat doesn’t have much shape this is easy, but where the boat has more shape this reduction can get more complicated since it’s being reduced by so much.  Again, a little more time spent on these stages (no actual boat parts have been built at this point) will really pay off throughout the rest of the build.

Once i had fabricated the mold I took a series of bevels from the station view of the lofting which enabled me to do a rough beveling before setting up the frames. Given a very cold winter it was nice to be able to do as much work as possible in teh shop before taking the parts outside. The frames are all set on stations perpendicular to the hull’s centerline, With the nice lofting floor already set up and leveled I am able to set each station up plumb and then structure them all against eachother and against the floor.