Nailing practice and sides partially cut out

What do you do when the project requires nailing a few thousand nails, and those nails are significantly softer than iron nails, and you haven't driven a nail in 20 years?

Bought the skinniest nails I could find in the bulk selection. 1 lb of #6 drywall nails with annular rings, just like the bronze nails used for the boat. I tried to anneal a nail, but it didn't seem any softer than then rest. After 5 rows and no bent nails, called it good enough. Also, added a few on the far side of the vice, and used a 10 lb barbell weight to practice nailing into thin wood where the weight absorbs the blow of the hammer, allowing the nail to use most of the energy.

I laid out the sides, and cut away the aft and forward ends. Waiting for my wife to help push the 8' cuts through the table saw. Bought a new plywood saw blade for the table saw to help get smooth cuts. Only had the cheap generic blade that came with the saw.

Boat model done

Well, almost done. I haven't added the rigging to attach the sail to the boat yet. Excuse the extreme mess, boat building generates plenty of it.

Modeling

All the major wood is now in. I have the silicon bronze fasteners, TB3 and gorilla glue in quantity. So I sat, staring at the instructions. My eyes keep going crossed whenever I start reading to many sailing & construction jargon words in a row. Until I can fit all the pieces together in my head with perfect clarity, it makes me hesitant on actual cutting of wood. Shemaya, from the junk rig forums had suggested that I make a model out of project/foam board. And as luck would have it, my wife was trashing a project board from work, the same day I mentioned I was thinking about making a model.

I have all they "plywood" 4x8 pieces cut out, using a 12:1 ratio (1 foot = 1 inch). It gets a bit messy, as while I can do the math, my ruler doesn't have a .41666 mark, so I have to guestimate. This chart has been useful to find the closest fraction (in the .41666 example above, 13/32 if you were curious). I'll have to adjust some measurements a little bit, since the foam board is all 1 thickness, but it should give me a good visualization tool. And I can feel safe, that if I mess it up, I'm not burning a $50 sheet of plywood. As soon as I have some of the components built, I'll post some pictures.

Ordering supplies

I finally got a quote back from the other lumber yard, and they wanted $72 for 1/2 ACX fir, and $81 for the 3/4. So maybe the $50-55 a sheet at the first yard isn't so bad. After looking into the relative (de)merits of the pine plywood, I think it's worth it to shell out the extra for the fir. I'll look for quotes from a bit further afield, but if nothing new shakes out, I'll be picking up the wood this weekend.

Sent in my order from Amazon for the large containers of glue and Jamestown Distributors for my fasteners.

Sounding like next week, and I'll actually get to start working on the boat itself.