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.