Daggerboard trunk glued up and rear seat glued on

Ok my patient mates, heres some photographic evidence of my work on the boat last week before I left for self-imposed exile at work.

First, I finally got that bedamned daggerboard trunk glued up.  Somehow, I wasnt forward thinking enough, and I glassed up the daggerboard without really giving much thought to how it fit in the already made trunk.  Well, I did but discounted further planing on of the daggerboard and decided that I was done with all the planing and sanding thank-you-very-much and whatever I had, I had.

This was most unfortunate, because I few more minutes of planing would have produced a superior quality board, and it would have fit in my daggerboard case.  So then I was stuck with the project of widening my case, but only by 2-3mm at most because really, all I needed was 1-2mm.

Fortunately, I found 3mm Okoume marine plywood at Goose Bay Lumber, and cut it to fit over the framing for the trunk.  This widened the trunk appropriately.  Here is the widening sequence in pictures:

Very self-explanatory, I think.

Next, I still struggle with the hardward issues for the rudder and transom gudgeons.  I dont know how Im going to get this rudder assembly attached to the boat.  The problem is that the hole to accomodate the tiller does not have the vertical clearance required to use a gudgeon-pintle scheme, which is by far the most convenient.  I toyed around with it and thought about enlarging my tiller-hole, but my pintle arms didnt fit around the rudder cassette.  A second order of larger, more heavy-duty gudgeons for rudder and transom fit great, except not with each other, and the arms were too long for the spacer in the cassette... A rod pushed through the gudgeons would not have fit cleanly and I would have had a clunky feeling rudder, the round peg in an oval opening thing, if you can visualize that.  So I still sit, wondering how I will fix this conundrum.  Many people have done it successfully, but Im still hunting around for the best hardware.

Because of all this drama, I have delayed gluing on the rear seat.  I got tired of having it loose, and glued it on before I left.  Here, yet again, is my "Forest of Bricks" holding it all down.

And the gratuitous parting shot:

Quick Fair is amazing!

HOLY BALLS its been a long time since my last update.  Work has been eating me alive, folks, eating me alive.  Im actually home now for more than one day, so I can update this blog, and work on the boat, but in the reverse order because the boat comes first.

Several weeks ago I ordered some Quick Fair from the fine folks at Duckworks.  This stuff is A-M-A-Z-I-N-G.  Its well worth the money.  It mixes easily, quickly, with little fuss.  It applies itself with astonishing ease, especially using a plastic spreader.  It dries quickly.  It sands easily.  I made several corrections over time as I got used to the stuff and ended up with a chine that is-- wait for it-- very fair.  It filled in the little weave bumps left over from the fiberglass tape, it nestled into the ridge between the tape and the hull that hadnt been filled with epoxy, it filled in some holes, and it faired out the gap between the hull and the stem-dowel-thingie.

I am in love with Quick Fair.  To boot, it even looks like chocolate pudding, except if you ate it, you would die.  The smell tips you off to this.  It smells, bad.  I used my respirator.

I also bought a little digital scale for twenty bucks at the local pharmacy.  Its a "The Biggest Loser" scale, named after the TV show, I believe, I wouldnt know because Ive never seen it in my life, but the box talked about it.  This made mixing the Quick Fair in the appropriate manner mucho-easier, because frankly, theres no way to tell how much you have.  It doesnt pour into a graduated cylinder or anything like that.  I am also using this little scale with my epoxy, and it cuts down on waste.  Another "shouldve thought of this a while ago..." moment.

Heres my chine, needing some serious fairing, including little holes in the fiberglass tape that sanded out because there was air trapped underneath and Hand of God seriously pissed:

And bingo!  Quick Fair to the rescue!

Heres a progression of working around the stem.  Slop it on, spread it out, sand it, touch up, presto!

Oh boy!

For all your fairing needs, Quick Fair is the way to go.

I watched this video for some very good tips.

Rudder stock design 4 Mast gluing

In yet another installment of "I try to re-design the rudder stock" I have received yet another set of plans from a Goat Island Skiff builder in New York.  He has graciously supplied me with these two schematics of his own design, as a solution to removing the tiller from the rudder assembly without having to take the rudder off the transom.  It is self-explanatory:

I really like this design, it is better than mine for two reasons:  1. It maintains Mr. Storers rudder stock design and hopefully solves the structural issue that he was concerned about, 2. There is less time fiddling over the transom pulling very critical pins over water of yet-to-be-determined depth, if you get my drift.  I can remove the tiller from the safety of the cabin.  Unfortunately, I will still have a stub of tiller sticking into my domain, but I think, for now, this is the idea Im going to go with.  The great thing about the rudder stock is that it is simple and easy to construct, I can always make another.

In other news, the mast was glued in its first step today.  In the previous post, I shaped the narrow staves.  This was a workout, but I worked carefully, and Im happy with the result.  Then, off to make the spacers for the ladder frame.  I used a piece of fir that was lounging around the garage, some stud material.  I used some good parts, and cut them to fit.  The base plug meant a trip to Lowes.  This is the first wood part of the boat that was not bought at either of my two local lumber stores.  Sorry guys.  Anyway, an 8 piece of 4x4 cedar.  I thought about using fir, for a few bucks less, but I went with the rot-resistant cedar.  Its an important piece, its light, and it should be good.  The other spacers Ill goo up with epoxy and make them plastic.

Well, that was interesting how the photos lined up, but I like it!  Notice the base plug.  After a quick mock-up my lovely wife and I took one of the uncut stave stock pieces and brought it into the basement, where I can get an even floor workspace and a slightly higher temperature, better for quicker gluing.  We made sure that we could get the wood in and out of the basement two different ways, so I dont build the mast and then get it out.  I am positive I can get the mast out of the basement.

Layed out ready for the dry fit:

Sweet, I did it again, but I dont know how.  The mast is quite straight, but I decided to use one of the wide uncut staves as a backbone for gluing, that way I could ensure that the mast is straight with no wobbles.  It also gives me a good even workspace for gluing too.  I covered one stave with packing tape, and glued away:  Notice too, the hardwood runners that will be glued to the bottom of the hull, they are long ones and needed to be scarfed.

It went well.  The bricks are slightly nudging the mast into a straight position.  Youll also notice that you dont see much of the wide stave underneath this glue-up, thats because the tolerances are super tight.  I overcut my narrow staves by 1mm and it pretty much ate up all the space on the wide stave.  I briefly considered re-planing the staves, re-working the spacers, and then gluing, but my lovely wife stopped me with some business graduate degree mumbo-jumbo stuff and talked me out of it.  I might have to plane a little extra off the base to get it to fit in the mast step, and I can (with difficulty) enlarge the mast step as well if need be.

Tomorrow, gluing the wide staves and completing the box.
 

New post!

With nothing in it!

Work on the Goat Island Skiff has been temporarily stopped due to a return to work/on the road status.

I have pictures of some work I did just before I left, but they are unfortunately inaccessible at this point in time.  Stay tuned until next week!

Small progress daggerboard gunwales mast step partner

Ok!

I continue to slowly progress on the boat. I am really stymied by the fact that its been all of 0 deg. F (-18 C) here at the house for quite a bit now. The garage has been holding temperature at just under freezing. Im not interested in doing major epoxy sealing work in these condititions because: a) its cold, b) the epoxy thickens and is difficult to spread.

However, I can do small spot gluing jobs. For instance, I installed the mast step and partner yesterday:



My Step was placed in first (obviously) as a whole piece, as in the 6mm ply backing was already glued in position. The fit was relatively tight, but not perfect because my BHs are not exactly perfectly parallel along the bottom. Im talking a few mms here, but still. Anyway, when you drop something into a tight spot to be glued, pay attention as to how youre going to place it in and glue those places accordingly. To clarify: Dont put the glue on the location that is going to get scraped by the incoming piece, put it where it will be squeezed in so the glue remains.

The partner went in nice and simple, except I dropped it on my heater fan. My partner deviates from the plans as in it is two pieces, with the bottom piece extending underneath the seat cleat on BH2. This is for stability issues, I could twist the top of the BH with my hand. This partner makes it very burly.

Notice my heater and my brick compression system. Its a $12 heater I bought at Lowes. With a plastic sheet, temps went up quick.

Next up I screwed the gunwales into place. I didnt want to necessarily do it, but its almost essential.

The next picture illustrates a non-screwed gunwale. Basically, the flare from the sides of the boat in the stern and amidships is translated to the gunwale to the bow, where there is minimal flare, the sides are relatively straight. Only muscling the gunwale with my hands could I make contact. Not conducive to gluing, as you can imagine.

Storer (el designero) promised that screwing the gunwale would pull it in. I had doubts and didnt want to deal with it, but I tried. Working from the stern forward, I placed one screw in the stern, two amidships, and two right in the bow area where the twist was most apparent. I used the 1 1/4 screws with the ply pads from the bottom screwing event.

SOB, it worked:


Nice and tight, all pulled together. This makes me happy. All ready for gluing. Screws were hidden underneath the areas where I am going to place my inwale spacers. Speaking of spacers, all of them are cut, and I have marked where I will be adding them. I started at the seam between the two pieces of ply for the sides, one will join them at the top, then one will be place next to each BH sidearm, with BH3 sidearms getting two small ones on either side due to the fact that it does not meet the side near the top. Re-enforcements, if you will. I need 52 spacers for this scheme.

Next up, I glued my daggerboard together.


I precoated the sides to be glued, then made a thin epoxy mix with the filler, not too much since the wood had been run through the joiner. The typical GIS clamp scheme as seen below:

And were off to the races! Looking good. Looking good.

She arrives, one step at a time boys, one step at a time.

Daggerboard case intallation spars

WELL Im on a schedule where Im home about 48 hrs a week, which means 47 hrs of boatbuilding, and 1 hour of laundry.  Not really.

So during my past 48 hrs home I got to it and was able to install the daggerboard case and I hit on a major find for my spars.

For starters, I dragged my boat out of the garage into the driveway and noticed a pronounced twist in the stern.  This.was.bad.news.  If the intrepid reader remembers, I glued down my rear seat last time, and gluing down the rear seat definitely locks in and twist into the hull.  Because of this I was super super careful to make sure there was no twist when I glued it in, using a level and some strategically placed buckets.  I ran outside and moved my boat... and the twist was still there.  There was no way I was going to get any work done if the boat was twisted.  Using some brute force and a rigid vacuum tube I rolled my boat to the pond and threw it in the water.... and she floated straight as a die.  No twist.  PHEW!!!  HOLY HOT HEART ATTACK BATMAN!

Back out of the water, I did some sanding in the interior of the hull to make it easier in the future, and went around installing the daggerboard case.  What is most important is that the case is straight.  If it comes off-kilter, Ive got a giant blade dragging me off into some obscure direction that Im going to counteract with the rudder, and its going to be drag city.  In order to make sure that the case is straight, I stretched a string from the center of BH2 to BH3 over the top of the case.

So here it is, mocked into position with my centerline string.  I tried at first to do this on the ground, but I got much better results up on the buckets.  I think the runners are slightly different and offering tweaked ground handling characteristics.

I cut the ribs for the front of the seat amidships.  They actually came out ever-so-slightly larger than needed- a mistake- that ended up helping me out in the end.  When I put the case into position it would slip around with the oversized rib, I could gently cajole the case into position which was verified by the string.  When everything was straight, I carefully clamped everything into position.  Youll notice the square behind the ribs next to the case to increase gluing area.  The port rib is a little higher than it should be (remember, they were a tad oversize) and Ill plane it down level for the seat installation.

This whole skeleton will be glued together by the center seat.  This, with BH3 and the forward ribs will create the lever that will hold the case in place.  Remember, when I capsize, Im going to be standing on the daggerboard to right the boat, with all my pressure on the case.  This massive gluing area will keep it from ripping out when Im in the water in the middle of nowhere.

Here are two shots of my daggerboard case lined up with my string.

In other news, I went over to Goose Bay Lumber to grab some Doug Fir 1x4s so I could glue up some spars.  I had come up with some crazy idea to put the spars together as a laminated structure since I didnt think Id find blanks that were large enough.  I did.  I found some finished 2x6 DF boards that were 20 feet long.  I had them cut to 12 feet.  A quick rip on my table saw, and I had two skinny blanks and one fat blank.

The spars are on average 40mm diameter.  I get 37mm with the blanks.  My spar is about 37mm x 40 mm or so.  Ill keep it like this for the length and not taper it.  Its kind of bendy, and I need some bendy up at the top of my sail, since I hear that the Duckworks sail can be a little flat.  This should help.  My boom will be 37mm x 50mm or so.  If these are too bendy, I can laminate some ply at key areas to stiffen it up.  This was a quick, easy, and totally suitable solution.  Easy!

Until next week, intrepid reader!

Epoxy coating the interior and more turtles

Today I took advantage of some free time and some of the most glorious weather you can imagine in beautiful New England this time of year!

Drum roll please.......

I epoxy coated the interior of my Goat Island Skiff! Yeah!

This is big for two reasons:  One, I wasnt looking forward to it, Two, my back has been in such a state that I havent physically been able to do it.  Being able to reach down in there and coat up the inside was a real good feeling, lemme tell you!  I was stoked.  Again, physical therapy = awesome.

So, coating the interior is much like the exterior.  It came out very neat, too.  I am pleased with the result.  Heres a romantic picture of her in the sunset, just her and me:

 

 She looks good.  So far, Ive done two coats of epoxy.  Im supposed to do three, which I did on the exterior, but I feel like two is good enough especially since its not going to be saturated in water.  Not to mention its going to be covered in two coats of primer and two coats of paint.  I should be ok.  Maybe I will do three layers on the bottom and chinelogs...

That all being said, I want to point out again how she can ride on her side when turning her over:

This is HUGE.  To those who have extensive dinghy experience, you all know exactly what Im talking about:  Turn the boat over, get it on a side, attempt to balance it on the gunwale, fail, catch the boat, wrestle around one of the ends in an attempt to get to the other side, fail, watch boat fall to ground in a random direction, wince at possible damage, etc etc etc.  It sucks.  This baby, she rests on her side.  You can walk away.  Drink a beer.  Pick your nose.  Go on vacation.  She will sit, on her side, patiently.  Awesome.

Finally, I caught a Painted Turtle today.  This is a quite common turtle on the North American continent, and not as big or as long lived as the Blandings Turtle that I found a few days ago.  Whats neat about this one is that Ive been trying to catch one for a year.  Now, that doesnt mean Im out everyday like its my job, but many attempts and sneaky approaches have been tried, to no avail.  Catching this guy, while swimming, is a minor coup for you know who.  Me.  Quite beautiful.  Hissed at me when I picked it out of the water.  I put it back where I found it, and I hope it forgives me.

A little grumpy.  

Oar Prototype 1

I lost power and internet for a bit during the big blow the other day, and never posted pictures of the oar. The following day I decided to shape the oar up. Using my plane, block plane, random obit sander, chisel, and wishing that I had a spokeshave, I went to work. In about three hours I got the below product. As you may notice, there is a kink where the blade meets the loom. Also, I screwed up the shaping a bit.



I mean, for a first oar done in three hours, not bad.

The blade is kinked to the loom most likely because each measurement station was taken off the edge of the board as opposed to off a theoretically straight line connecting the two ends. So if there was any deviation in the way the board has been originally cut (most likely) then the oar would reflect that in waviness-- and thats what happened. My next oar measurements will be based off a straight line down the board.

Second, I started shaping the oar without squaring it first. This would have been an easy endeavor, however I was excited to get started and planed the thing into an oval. If I had made sure all 4 sides were square, it would have been a circle.

The grip is also oval, I think it might be rough on the hands. I should not have cut it out in the blanks, and shaped it at a block, that way I could have made it a circle with a 1 1/4" diameter as opposed to the 1" it is now (a little small for me).

In the end, an easy plan, a nice looking oar, its light, and with the pine was easy to shape.

Prototype #2 is in the works. This too, will probably be a scrapper because I already cut out the grip and then realized the advantages of cutting it out when the blank was glued up.

Bottom trimmed centerboard trunk and bat house!

Today was a productive day, the boat went upside down and back again.



My friend Peter ambled over with his router. This, combined with a flush-trim bit for the router, is a fabulous tool at dissolving the extra overlap left over from the over-sized bottom. It was either going to be a hackfest at sawing/planing it off, or this. The router was mucho easy to use, I cleaned up the enter boat in mere minutes. It left a little lip, which was cleaned up by my handplanes. Long strokes parallel to the boat to get it close, and then the smaller block plane held at an angle to the hull to get it finally flush. This took longer but was enjoyable work. The boat got dropped once, and it was not any worse for the wear.

The centerboard trunk components are also all glued up, but in two pieces. They will not be glued together until the daggerboard is complete, and then I can appropriately take the down the spacers inside (made from daggerboard jetsam, hence same width pre-finishing) to match the daggerboard, plus 2mm for a cozy fit. The daggerboard is being worked on on the side... I think I have a tempestuous relationship with the board and Im taking it slowly.


Peter, while he was over, made a three chambered bat house for his own house. Hes hoping to attract a small colony of bats to summer with him in his moist woods. One brown bat will eat 500-1000 mosquitoes an hour (yes, read that again) and a large bat house could contain tens upon tens of bats if not well over a hundred. Thats a lot of mosquitoes that are going to bite the dust. Additionally, bats eat truckloads of insects that attack farmed crops, help in seed dispersal and some species can be key in plant pollination. Bats do not equal gross, bats equal important. In New England (and spreading south!) we are afflicted with "White nose syndrome" which is hacking away at our bat population. The more bats we get, the better off we all are.

Each chamber is 3/4 of an inch. There will be a plastic grated landing zone below the chambers. The box will be painted a dark brown, and affixed on his house. They like it hot, and hot it will get. Bring on the bats!

Cutting holes into the bottom of the boat

There comes a time when every man needs to pass through some hurdle and move from childhood to adulthood.  Theres a small period in between called "limbo" by various anthropologists.  In the course of building this Goat Island Skiff that rite of passage is the cutting of the daggerboard slot in the bottom of the boat, the limbo is staring at the hull and imagining what you are about to do.  Translation for the non-boat crowd:  I have to cut a gaping hole in the bottom of my boat, and its gotta be dead on with the case on the inside, or else gallons of water will pour into the hull and my expedition is over.

The intrepid reader will remember the positioning of the case in the interior of the boat.  Now, I have to cut the hole on the other side.  In an ideal world, I would have drilled two pilot holes before I glued in the case, so I wouldnt be hunting around in the blind.  However, the way my case was built and how it fit (badly) this was not possible without severely complicating matters.  It was in my best interest to install the case and figure out the slot later.

So I carefully measured the exact middle of the boat from edge to edge, then again opposite, then again from the runners.  I knew that the seam between the two pieces of ply that comprise the bottom fall where the slot is, so I only needed to make lateral measurements. Then, a small pilot hole:

Success!  I hit it on almost perfect!

Then, thanks to my very good friend Peter who takes pity on me, I was able to route out the slot with his amazingly slick router.  He has to give me a primer on how to use it everytime, but thats ok.  I drilled a 1/2" hole, and then began the terrorizing task of cutting a mondo sized hole into the bottom of my boat.  I used a flush-bit.  If there is ever a time for a man to get nervous this is it.  This is where I left boat-building childhood and became a man.  I stuck the router bit into the hole and routed away.

It smoked some, but in the end, the result was mega-awesome.  Precision slick.  Slot, accomplished!

So this is all very awesome.  Sailboat now she is, for sure.  This is the one unmistakable sign of a sailboat, a slot in the bottom.  Vindication and satisfaction is seeing that the slot lines straight up with the centerline drawn on the bottom of the boat from days long gone. 

Shaping up a set of store bought oars

OARS FOR SEI.

Lets get the jokes out of the way, the one about this being a “two oars-power cruiser”  and the one about “keeping things on board oar-derly “. Oh, and the one about the Greek Bireme that docked too close in at speed, “Dis-Oared-‘er”.

With that out of the way,  I want to show how I go about turning a pair of off the shelf machine made oars into something that I like to use.  As they come they’re robust, but very heavy and unbalanced, tip heavy so a lot of downward pressure on the handles to lift the blades on the recovery.

So to make them easier to use, more pleasant and just “nice” I cut the oversize blades down a little, shave the blades thinner with a ridge down the middle to keel them sufficiently stiff, and slim the shaft from the “leather” down to the “neck.

Oars should ideally be matched to the boat, this one being a sailing boat will have a little more resistance than a lighter and more slender boat, so needs oars that are slightly more stiff than the ones for the pure rowing boat.

They need to be practical too, which means a thicker blade and a more robust tip so I can use them to pole the boat in the shallows or push off a jetty somewhere.

The species of wood used needs to be taken into account, European Ash (Fraxinus Excelsior) used to be commonly used and is tough, resists damage and makes a reasonably good utility oar .  But its heavier than I like, and the costs more than I like to shell out for a pair of oars that I’m not going to use as the boats primary propulsion.  This is a sailing boat after all.

Spruce, (Picea Sitchencis) by comparison is much lighter and is strong for its weight but crushes very easily so an oar made from this may be easily damaged.

All that’s a bit academic though, as the ones that are available off the shelf here are stated to be “Tasman Pine”.  Good old Pinus Radiata,  actually not bad stuff for this use if chosen carefully.

Its mid range in weight for a softwood, fairly strong for its weight and if kept well coated with varnish reasonably stable.

So that’s what I’m working with today.

For a boat of this anticipated resistance to movement I prefer a slightly narrow blade, 90mm wide at the tip, 80mm wide at the neck end, 6mm thick at the edges of the blade, with a prominent ridge down the middle to stiffen it, the neck will be around 30mm through the vertical axis ( that’s in line with the blade) and full width which in this case is about 40mm at 90 deg to the blade, a fat oval section there to orientate the thickest part of the section to the load.

Tools.  Making that hollow section from the ridge down the middle of the blade out to the edges is what stops a lot of people.  I’m fortunate to have come across  a round mouthed spokeshave and as a tool “enthusiast” ( not what my wife calls me) I bought it just in case I found a use for it.

Its not rounded front to back, this one is radiused from side to side so makes a hollow. Ideal.

But there are other ways.  I”ve used the nose end of a belt sander, offered up at an angle and run along it will carve a hollow, a small angle grinder with 40 grit sandpaper on a flexible backing piece will do an excellent job with practice, a random orbital sander would do the job and in fact that’s what I use to do the finishing, and if you are either very determined or very lucky, you can use a hand plane with a rounded blade and bottom.

By lucky and determined, I mean that while those are rare its not that big a deal to make one. To make mine I used a worn out horse hoof rasp for the blade, lots of grinding required but its good steel, a block of beech for the body, an offcut of Australian Jarra for the wedge and a piece of copper rod to retain the wedge.

There is lots of information on making planes out there on the net, but most of them overcomplicate things, but if that’s the way you want to do it, you’ll find it.

So having bought my “store bought” oars,  which incidentally cost not a great deal more than enough of the more “suitable” material in plank form, I first made a couple of simple “holders” to clamp the shaft in order to work on them.

Next was to mark out the blade and the neck with a ruler and a sharpie marker,  that shape being cut out with a jigsaw and the edges planed smooth and straight.

The next step was to mark the center of the edges with the marker, and use a standard block plane to shave a bevel down the face of each side so the outer edge is at the desired thickness.

This is a guide, don’t go much past that. That’s the thickness you are after.

Next is to taper the shaft from leather to neck.  That’s a straight flat, starting very narrow at the leather and gettting wider and wider as it gets down to the neck.

You may need to remove some material at the neck to get this taper right, use a standard spokeshave here to make the hollow from the taper you are planing to the curve where the blade starts to swell out to its full width. 

Don’t round this area off yet, that comes when the blades are done.

Out comes the tool you have chosen to remove the material from the blade to make it “hollow” from the center ridge to the edge.

Work out from the marked centerline down the ridge out to the edge, I work from the tip in toward the neck as with the taper on the edge the grain is better to shave this way.

The random orbit sander can remove all the little ridges that the spokeshave or plane makes, so don’t fuss too much, just try for no lengthwise humps or hollows.

When the blade is hollowed and thinned both sides,  then fair it into the neck, remember that this is the high stress area of the oar, don’t remove too much material here,  where that central spine merges into the wide part of the neck is the critical part.  Don’t thin that down.

Round the flat that you’ve planed onto the shaft into the body of the shaft aiming for a shape at the neck which is more like an oblong with the corners well rounded than a true oval or ellipse, sand off smooth and coat with varnish or paint.

I’ll be painting the outboard end of the blades with white paint, the regular flashing of the white is visible from surprising distance. 

I’ll be fiberglassing the tips by the way,  it reduces the chances of splitting the oar when pushing the boat off rocks or such.  Just a little strip of 50mm tape folded over the tip and epoxied into place.

I’ll go into the leathering and the shaping of the handle when I get around to that stage.

In the meantime, these oars have lost about 15% of their weight, and that almost all of it from out on the blade end which makes them much easier to use.