It Floats!

There wasn't really any doubt in my mind about it floating and not leaking but it was good to see it float away from the trailer to the limit of its painter before I pulled it back in. First time out I rowed too far and ended up with some very sore muscles (but not where I expected to be sore). The next couple of outings I didn't overdo it and am gradually improving the hardware involved in rowing. A footrest (to brace the feet/legs against) appears to be important. The balance of the oars is important (there is now 800 grams of lead sheet wrapped around the inboard end of the oar).  Last on the list of improvements is my technique which is gradually improving (it's important to rest between strokes).

Third time out I managed to arrange a camera person and have some pics:



And, finally, a short video:





Days 44 to 62 - The End Result

It is about a month since the last entry in the blog. The inside of the hull has 10 coats of varnish, The outside has 3 coats of paint. The oars are finished. The trailer is built. The boat is ready to go for its first sail. Here are a few pictures of the end result.

Days 40 to 43 - The Last Stages

Over the past few days the forward thwart knees and the rest of the spacer blocks have been fitted. The inner gunwale could then be shaped, scarf joints at both ends made it a tricky job with lots of trial and trimming, and glued in place. The backrest for the stern seat was laminated from 3 pieces of 4 mm ply over a curved former and, after the epoxy set, shaped to fit.

The photos below show the boat as it is today. The next jobs are to do a lot of sanding followed by varnishing and painting it inside and out respectively. This will take a while!

Day 39 - Spacer Blocks for Gunwales

After a long break I have finally returned to boat building. Since the last post one of the laminated knees for the forward thwart started to delaminate. This is a bit of a mystery and I can only guess that the problem was caused by glueing it while there was too much moisture in the timber (I had to soak them to achieve the required bend). I glued up another knee today.

I also glued the centre thwart in place. The parts were all shaped and ready to go so this was a quick job.

I glued about 3/4 of the spacer blocks for the inner gunwale. This is a tedious job because there are a lot of them, about 40 of them on each side of the boat. The spacers are 55 mm long with a nominal 75 mm gap between them. Marking out their positions involed several iterations to get them spaced evenly taking into account the position of the thwart knees.

Today's pics show the spacer blocks towards the stem and aft of the centre thwart (still with their clamps in place).

Day 38 - A Status Report

The floors are all glued in place. So are the thwart cleats and the breasthook. Here are a couple of photos showing the state of the boat today.

The thwarts and floor boards are just resting in place. Since the photo was taken the forward thwart, its riser and the mast step have been glued in place.

Same situation but looking towards the stern. The sternsheets are only resting in place.

The only parts that still need to be shaped are the thwart knees. These were laminated some time ago so should not take long to finish. Jobs still to do are:
1. Glue both thwarts in place.
2. Shape the thwart knees and fix in place.
3. Gunwales (big job!).
4. Finish sternsheets and screw in place.
5. Stern seat back, laminate ply and shape to suit boat.
6. Floorboards, finish and screw in place.
7. Other, something must have been forgotten!.

Day 36 and 37 Forward Buoyancy Compartment and Floors

Making and fitting the floors to the inside of the hull seems to have been going on for days but they are now all ready to be glued in. Before doing that the hull has been scraped and sanded inside to remove the last of the epoxy squeezed out from the plank laps. The frame for the forward buoyancy compartment is complete and the vertical face has its ply panel glued on. This photo shows the buoyancy compartment, it is a bit hard to see behind the clutter!

The first 2 floors from the bow have been glued. I have put masking tape along the glue lines (it is hard to see because it is just about the same colour as the wood) in the hope that it will make the clean up easier. The gaffer tape across the ends of the floors is to stop them sliding about. The vertical white strips are "sky clamps" to hold the floors down against the hull until the epoxy goes off.

Day 35 - Buoyancy Compartment and Sternsheets

I have glued the ply covers on the aft buoyancy compartment after painting all of its inside with two coats of epoxy. The round plastic screw top hatches are a bit ugly so I made a ply cover for the lid. The photo below shows the cover; I will add a strip of wood across it to serve as a handle. The quarter knees, laminated and shaped some time ago, have now been glued in place. The photo also shows the sternsheets shaped but not finished yet. These will be screwed in place so they can be removed if necessary.

To the left of the photo one of the floors (stiffens the hull and supports the floorboards) is visible. These are shaped to fit the inside of the hull and glued in place. There are 7 of these and most of them have been shaped. I will finish the rest and glue them in over the next couple of days. The parts that fit to the inside of the hull are tricky to clamp while the glue sets but a way will be found!

Brisbane Boat Show

No work done on the boat for a week because it has been at the Brisbane Boat Show in a display of wooden boats by the Brisbane branch of the Wooden Boat Association. It was displayed as a "work in progress" to give people an idea of the construction process.

Here is a poor photo of my boat in a line of finished boats. It was difficult to take a photo of the boat against the light coming through the large windows.

I brought the boat home today so I should be able to get back to work on it tomorrow.

Day 34 - Glued Up More Floors and Boards For Sternsheets

Glued up the rest of the laminated floors for stations 3, 6 and 9. Here they are sitting in the sun to give the epoxy a bit of a hurry up.

Glued some narrow boards together to make wider boards for the sternsheets. These boards are about 1.7 metres long so the clamping was a bit tricky - have to keep them flat while applying pressure the the edges. Need more clamps!

Started shaping the floors laminated earlier and found a mistake. The first batch of laminations should have had another strip when they were glued (fortunately todays batch have an extra strip). Here is a photo of a finished lamination next to one that is still in its grotty state. The lower piece has been shaped to fit nicely against the planks of the hull with a nice fair curve across the top. Unfortunately, it is too thin. It may be possible to fix this by gluing another lamination to the top - at least I hope so!

Day 33 - Breasthook, Quarter Knees, Thwart Cleats, Aft Bouyancy Compartment

This post covers about 4 days work spent cutting various weird shaped pieces of timber. Individually they weren't very photogenic so the blog hasn't been updated. The breasthook was made of 2 pieces of 1" thick oregon, glued and screwed together with 2 lengths of threaded brass rod. The quarter knees were laminated some time ago and have been cleaned up and shaped to fit the transom and gunwales. There are 6 thwart cleats which are glued to side of the hull to support the thwarts. Each one had to be shaped individually and there is hardly a straight side on them!

The boat will have two bouyancy compartments (bow and stern) to help with flotation in the event of a capsize. The framework for the aft compartment has been made and glued in place. Here are a couple of photos of the framework. The gaffer tape (grey) is holding the two lower strips in place until the epoxy sets.

The two lighter strips in front of the compartment are a pair of the thwart cleats. Not glued yet, they are help in place by gravity and gaffer tape, magic stuff.

The last photo shows one of the quarter knees held in place temporarily by a clamp. These knees and the breasthook will be glued in place after most of the other work is done inside the hull and before the inner gunwale is fitted.

Day 32 - Turned the Boat Over

Since the last post I have spent a lot of time sanding the blue and pink undercoat back to a smooth surface. This was a dirty and tiring job!

Today I turned the boat over to begin work on the inside. It isn't heavy and two or three people could simply lift it up and turn it over. Working by myself I set up two pulleys with rope slings around the boat. I raised and propped up one end at a time and tightened the sling at that end. With the boat supported by the slings I simply turned while the slings ran through the pulleys. Here are some photos of the process.

Up she goes. Three moulds are left in place to keep the gunwales apart.

At the half way point.

All the way round.

Here is the inside. The three moulds have been replaced by temporary braces that can easily be removed and replaced to provide better access. The next task (about as tedious as sanding the outside) is to remove all the epoxy that squeezed out of the plank joints on the inside. If you double click on the photo you will zoom in and be able to see the epoxy glinting along the joints - about 60 metres of it!

Day 31 - Three Coats of Primer

The boat has been four different colours today! It started out with the clear epoxy sealing coat. This was sanded gently, mainly to provide a key for the next layer of paint but also to flatten out the craters left by the bubbles where air came out of the wood under the epoxy.

The primer I used is Aquacote, a water based high build two part epoxy paint intended to build up a thick layer that can be sanded back to a smooth surface. The instructions on the label say to apply a thick layer at a rate of of 3 - 5 square metres per litre and follow this with a second coat when the first is tacky. I can't put paint on thick so I gave it three coats. The outside of the boat is around 6 or 7 square metres and I used 1 litre of paint per coat. By this reckoning the primer isn't thick enough but hopefully it will sand out flat.

The paint in the can is off white so the first coat went on that colour. I tinted the second and third coats pink and blue so I could see where I was putting them during the painitng. I will also be able to see how much paint is left during the sanding.

Here's a photo of the third (blue) coat going on. Don't be upset by the colour scheme, it is going to be covered up!

Day 30 - Hull Sealed With Epoxy

After a final vacuum and wipe over with a cloth moistened with acetone I gave the whole of the hull a coat of epoxy. I am using West Systems epoxy and their advice was strongly against thinning the epoxy so it went on neat. I brushed it on and found that it went on fairly easily. I made up small batches, each enough for about 1/8th of the total area, and washed the brush out in acetone after each batch.

I gave it two coats with the second applied when the first reached the end of the tacky stage. I was very lucky with the second coat - I almost ran out of epoxy! There were about three brushloads of the last batch left when I had finished.

Here are a couple of photos, the second coat is still wet.

Days 26 to 29 - Finishing Touches on Hull and Start Shaping Oars

Finishing the outside of the hull ready for sealing didn't involve a lot of work but was spread out over several days. The first job was to fit a sacrificial strip of hardwood along the keel. This was held in place with temporary nails until the glue set. While waiting the outer gunwales were rounded off on their lower edge and the hull sanded. A batch of epoxy was mixed up with a fairing compound to fill a few nail holes, dents, etc. I must have made a mistake with the pumps (perhaps two of resin and one of hardener?) because it was still too soft to sand 48 hours later so I scraped it off and tried again. Second time lucky! Here is the hull ready for sealing at the end of day 29. It is actually quite shiny with the dust vacuumed off.

While I waited for the dodgy batch of epoxy I started shaping the oars, the blanks were glued up some time ago. The best way of removing the waste timber from the front and back of the blade would be with a bandsaw but, unfortunately, my bandsaw can only cut 100mm so could not be used. Rather than making multiple saw cuts, chopping the waste out with a chisel and then finishing with planes and spokeshave I decided to use my router. I build a jig in the form of a channel wide enough to hold the blade of the oar. The sides of the jig were shaped to the profile of the concave side of the blade. I added a pywood shoe to my router. The router was placed on top of the jig and slid about, increasing the depth of cut by about 5mm increments. Here is a photo of the setup.

Viewed from the side the concave curve of the jig can be seen. The other 3 shaped blanks can be seen in the background.

I made a similar jig to shape the other (convex) side of the blade. This approach may sound complex and time consuming but each jig took less than an hour to make and using them to remove the waste took about 15 minutes per side for each blade. The total time was about 4 hours, far less than than the sawcut and chisel approach. Finishing them will be easier too.

Day 25 - Outer Gunwales Fitted

The outer gunwales have been fitted and glued in place. This was a very sticky job! Lining up the gluey gunwale at the stem and clamping it in place was quite tricky while working single handed. Here are some photos of the result.

There isn't much more actual building work to do on the outside of the hull. I will add a thin hardwood strip to the keel as a sacrificial wear strip to be replaced if/when necessary and then seal the outside with epoxy prior to painting the shearstrake with varnish and primer below that. Then turn the hull over and finish the inside.

Days 23 and 24 - Patches, Outer Stem and Rubbing Strakes

Day 23 spent on various jobs with no photos taken. The strips were fitted at the stem to correct the error mentioned in the last post. The outer stem was shaped to be a good fit against the inner stem and its sides were bevelled. I rough sawed and planed the timber for the gunwales - 5 metre lengths of timber are not easy to handle!

On day 24 the outer stem and rubbing strakes were glued in place. This photo show the outer stem in position. The green strip is a ratchet tie down used to hold the stem in position while the epoxy goes off. The photo also shows the strip, on top of the third plank down, patching up the error with the planking. I think the result will be OK but would rather have got it right first time.

The rubbing strakes are in place held by temporary screws until the glue sets. The screws will be removed and the holes plugged.

Day 22 - Fitted the Shearstrake

Well that's the last plank fitted and photgraphed. That's a major milestone for me. Still quite a lot to do before it can be turned over; I have to fit the outer stem, outer gunwales, rubbing strakes on the bilges, clean it all up and start the painting.

This photo shows the mistake I made with the third plank down from the keel. When making the pattern I picked up the wrong mark on the stem with the result that the third plank is too narrow and, to correct the situation the fourth plank is too wide. The only solution  that I can come up with is to add a strip to the upper edge of the second plank to make it wider. This will hopefully hide the uneven plank widths.

 

Days 20 and 21 - Even More Planks

Two days fitting the fifth and sixth planks. There is only one more to go but that's tomorrow's job. Here is a photo after the fifth plank.

And another showing the pattern being taken for the sixth plank.

The pattern material is 3mm MDF which is good because it is cheap. However, it is not very rigid and can easily be deformed which would result in an inaccurate pattern. This can be worked around by taking more care but next time I will use thicker MDF or maybe try a cheap plywood. This is also the last of the MDF so I will have to take mark out the shearstrake (seventh plank) directly without using a pattern.

Here is the boat with the sixth plank fitted.

Days 17, 18 and 19 - More Planks

Days 17 and 18 spent fitting the third and fourth planks. It takes me most of a day to go through the process of fitting a pair of planks. This involves fairing the stem and transom, bevelling the edge of the previous planks, cutting the gains at the stem, making a pattern for the new planks, cutting the new planks and finally gluing and clamping them in place. It all adds up to a long days work!

On day 19 I scarph jointed the second two sheets of ply. Take two 8 x 4 sheets, rip them lengthways into four 8 x 2 sheets, scarph join these in pairs to make two 16 x 2 sheets and then go do something else until the glue dries. 



Day 16 - Keel, Skeg and Second Plank

Spent a sticky few hours today gluing the keel, skeg and second plank on both sides. The building notes leave fitting the keel and skeg until all the planks are in place but I decided to do it now to avoid having to reach over half the boat to do it. So, the keel and skeg are glued and screwed in place. Both second planks are also glued and clamped in place. The photos below show the result of the days work.

Day 15 - Preparation for Second Plank

This was a long day! I hoped to have glued the second plank down but I ran out of time and energy! What I did was:

• Bevel the edge of the garboard plank so that the second plank will fit nicely against it.
• Cut the gain in the garboard plank towards the stem. The gain is difficult to describe so a picture is included below. The purpose of the gain is to avoid a double thickness of planking at the stem.
• Shape the stem so that the rest of the planks will fit properly against it.
• Shape the transom for the second plank. This can only be done after the previous plank is fitted.
• Make a pattern for the second plank from 3mm think MDF sheet. This is tricky towards the stern where the concave shape doesn't allow the pattern material to lie close against the garboard plank. Several trial fittings were needed getting closer to the final shape each time. This was quite time consuming.
• The pattern was used to mark out and cut two planks together. These planks were tried and adjusted several times before they fitted nicely against the garboard plank, the gain at the stem and the transom.

Here is a photo of the gain in the garboard plank at the stem. The tape on the mould is simply to stop the planks being glued to it accidentally.

The photo below show the second plank laying against the transom. The bevel on the garboard plank moves onto the second plank towards the stern. This bevel can been seen in the photo.

Day 14 - Garboard Planks Glued in Position

I spent an hour laying out all the clamps, putting tape over the moulds so the boat won't stick to them, finding long screws for the block clamps at the bow and stern and then took several deep breaths and mixed up the first batch epoxy.  It is surprising how long it takes to spread epoxy on two mating surfaces about 25 mm wide and 4.5 metres long! The first plank was clamped in position at a few places before the second plank was coated with epoxy and put in position. With the two planks positioned I put the rest of the clamps in place working from the middle towards the bow and stern. The block clamps were screwed to the keelson and stem using screws that would not break through to the inside of the boat. The plank was nailed (temporarily) to the transom with a couple of nails each side; the padding under the nail can bee seen in the photo. Here is the end result:

I thought I had made too many of those wooden clamps but they were all used. I made another 20 or so because the rest of the planks have to be glued edge to edge and get longer as the gunwale is approached. Can't have too many clamps! I think the rest of the planks will be easier than these two because they can be done one at a time.