Simon Grillet is progressing with setting up the Mayhi ready for the first two apprentices to start soon. Here, Simon is transferring the complex shape of the stern frame onto a jig for laminating the frame, which cannot be steamed into place, like the others, due to its compound curves; not a task for an apprentice. In this way the tooling and the course are being developed to suit the level of apprentices that will eventually take their City & Guilds at the end of their course.
The keel has already been laminated, allowing the building jig, the moulds, around which the planking will be fitted, to be assembled ready for the apprentices to start planking. At the end of their course, they will be in a position to set up the frames for the next course.
The course is as much about learning to use the tools and machinery as it is about the process of building a boat. Due to the continuously changing layout of a boatbuilding shed, depending on what is being worked on, machinery has to be easy to move.