Tech Tip Tuesday

 

Sometimes, perfect is the enemy of the good.  This could have been one of those cases.

We deviated at little bit in the method that we used to apply the gunwales to the canoes in my class.  I discussed this in my last Tech Tip Tuesday.   When we constructed the first tapered gunwale samples, we did this at the front of the boat.   When looked at the gunwales at the rear of the boat, we discovered a small issue.  At the 2' form near the stern, the width of the frames was such that the gunwales had a slight hour-glass curve to them.  Some of my students absolutely panicked when they saw this. 

HORRORS!

No.  Not horrors - calm down a bit.  Think.

We solved this issue by tapering the inside edge of the gunwales instead of the outside.  This minimized the hourglass look to nearly nothing.  The boats will look fine.   Is it "perfect? - maybe not.  Is it good?  Yes, it's very good.   Some of the students were ready to try to figure out how to remove the 2' frame from the boat now that it's bonded and screwed or pegged together.  This, however isn't necessary.  We've solved the issue until the point where I can make some minor tweaks to the design.

In future, I will change the form design to totally get rid of this concave curvature - the image at the beginning of this post shows the comparison.  On the left is the original design.  On the right is the design as we've modified it for width.  Not a massive change, but a good one.

So back to the original point.  Some of the students would have let perfect be the enemy of the good in the building of the canoes, slowing down their build and clouding their judgement and causing them to question their confidence to achieve "perfect".   By not doing this, we've stayed with the "good" and will continue to move along.