Workflow

The progress is continuing.
I have secured my oxyacetylene supplies and I think I have a solution for the universal joint (it was mocked up with a piece of rubber hose).  I am in a small stand still until I get a lathe and some other supplies, so I took the time to do what I should have done before I started: organize my work.
This starts with organizing my space.
Anyone who has built anything knows that a clean shop gives rise to a desire to work.  Further it facilitates the tasks at hand by stopping us from endless searches ("I saw that wrench over next to the coffee pot....I think") and distracting tasks of immediate organization.  The former is most common, but the latter will kill hours at a time.
It always seems to begin with some sort of rooting around in a box of parts or tools.  You're in there, and you can't find exactly what you want cause it's just a mass of things.  You find stuff you needed yesterday and a part you replaced cause you couldn't find it.  Then, having reached the point of utter frustration which is bordering on anger, you dump it all out and reorganize it.  Good work, but you just lost two hours of your project because it needed to be done.  We had a word for this when I worked at Scott Padiak and Associates: protocol.
Keep your stuff where it goes.  If you use hammers at the vice, the hammers should live together near the vice.  It's simple, but why walk across the shop to get a hammer when you really use it at the vice most of the time?  Goes for every tool.  Drill bits lived at the drill press, saw blades with the saw, and so on.
I set mine up that way last spring.  It's not done (my hardware section is a mess) but I know where my tools are and don't look for them.  What I did organize is of a similar nature: my workflow.
When I run a big job, I like to keep a running list of what needs to happen.  I envision all the tasks by type- in this case hull and mechanicals -and I break those down further into components or tasks.
The mechanicals are broken into drive and prop.
Under drive are the gears, the shafts, the universal, and so on.
It doesn't matter how you do it.  What matters is that you do it.   This time I am using an antique mirror that was in the loft.   I cleaned the bird stuff off it and wrote on the glass with a sharpie.  I like to be able to add and erase entires, so I use something like a white board or glass.  Some people prefer big pads of paper.  It's a preference.   I do recommend using something big enough to see it all there at one time.  If you have to flip pages it will not serve the same purpose.
Anyway, I need to get back at it.  Today I need to do some digital modeling and some drawings.  I got some feedback on the blog, and it seems people would like to see the big picture a little better.  So, next post will contain some images of where this is going.   Seventy-seven days till show time. Need this thing in the water soon.