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:

Inwales daggerboard case

OK, first a very rare off-topic rant.

The Mens Downhill is a huge event, very important to me. A Swiss man (Didier Cuche) and an American (Bode Miller from NH) were two top contenders. NBC in its totalitarian control over Olympics coverage DOESNT AIR SHIT when its actually happening (1:30 EST). Theyd rather sit on it until Prime Time, and show you a few select races instead of the whole thing. This is blasphemy. For Chrissake I never watch sports on TV, but this is one thing I dont like to miss, its on every 4 years, whats it take to show the whole thing live? I miss Switzerland in this regard, very very much-- I took complete coverage of one of the most important ski races for granted apparently. I looked everywhere online for live streaming, but couldnt find anything free, no matter how much I tried. Canada in theory offers it, but it would never load.

In the end, Didier DEFAGO of Morgins, a few villages over from mine, took gold in a mini upset (Ill post the run once I find a good link), knocking down Bode to Bronze. I wouldve loved to see it, not knowing what was coming.

I bet Im missing a great party over the pond.

I mean, Ive got a million ESPN channels showing 20 year old basketball games, but only one damn station covers this Olympics!?

NBC, I hate you, go to hell.

************************

Well, my back and I are arguing again at a very good clip. Its frustrating and limits boatbuilding.

That being said, with the aid of my lovely wife I have installed the inwales.

It was relatively simple. A second person is a help in the initial installation, but I did the starboard one solo. A few dry runs, few coatings of epoxy to seal everything, some thickened epoxy on the inwale spacers, a few clamps, some clean up, and the inwales are installed. These bastards really make the boat. She shines.


There are a few things that are not perfect. The inwales lined themselves up with the spacers nicely, though in some areas the inwale rose above the spacers, in others below. Some sanding will even it all out. The port side, interestingly enough was more exaggerated in this regard compared to the starboard side... the port side was also the copied side. Maybe that had something to do with it. Be sure to get the inwale flat up on the spacers, there be some twist in there, arrrr.

ALSO, some intrepid readers will remember BH3 sidearms not meeting the sides. This has been rectified with careful thickened epoxy application, some tape covered wood bits to act as dams, and also a spacer split in two, and placed on either side of the arm to provide extra strength. A good fix, rather than sucking in the side and losing a bit of fairness down the gunwale.

Two days ago, I also glued together my mentally challenged daggerboard case:


I was really intent on only using the wood I had available. For instance, I had leftover pieces from my daggerboard itself, which is more-or-less already the same thickness as the daggerboard will be (a little more since the board will be planed down some). This meant these leftover pieces were ideal. So I put them together the best I could. The vertical lighter pieces that guide the daggerboard are cherry, the same as the front and back end of my board. Again, leftover pieces. The hardwood will provide banging and clunking protection. Youll notice the lower right frame overhangs a bit. This is on purpose, since the shape of the trunk itself, as described in the plans, did not fit what the boat actually was. I have a little less rocker coming out of amidships, apparently, than Storer was imagining. Again, this is why the amateur should not cut specific pieces such as seats until the hull is 3-D. Just my opinion. Side cleats along the bottom will fill the gap that is left, of that I have no worries, but I wanted the base of the wood along the bottom of the hull, for strength.

Onwards!

Gluing on Front seat

YO.

Today I glued on the front seat. I also epoxy sealed the rear watertight compartment.

Im just going to let you know that today was the most productive, least disastrous, most efficient gluing event yet on this boat. Still some mistakes, but NOTHING like gluing the boat together or putting them bottom on. Which makes me worried that I screwed up or was deficient on the most important parts of building, but alas, what I have, I have, and well see if she sinks or swims. Hopefully, she soars.

Anyway.

When I realized that the garage was holding steady at 44 deg. F (7 C) I decided to get with some gluing. I mixed up about 3 pumps of resin and the corresponding hardener and dumped in a bunch of thickener, and applied it to my pre-coated seat cleats and BH1 + 2.


I just really dumped the thickener into the mix. I figure this: If I have a tight fit, less silica, if I have a loose fit, more silica for a more filling mix. It took me this long to figure it out. This, with some valuable information from the Storer forum has helped me make better epoxy mixes. One rule to follow: Pulling the mixing stick out of the glue, if the point droops, its good for gluing, if the point stands tall, its good for filleting. Variations apply to temperatures, however, as you will soon find out.

After I applied the glue, I realized it was stiffening up because of the cold temps in the garage. This is not conducive to smearing and filling holes. I grabbed a hair dryer and tried to warm it up the best I could. Using this information that is stiffens, I kept my fillet mix a little thinner than the point "standing tall." I applied the seat and it dropped right in nice and tight. I threw some bricks on it to weigh it down, and took a few pictures from inside the compartment to see how I was faring with the glue. Here, were looking towards the bow:


As you can see, good squeezage on the middle cleat, not so good up around the bow. I added some bricks. I DID have good squeezage from the sides of the seat upwards, so I know I have good contact. Im not bothered I dont have excess spilling off the side of the cleat. Next up was some fillet work. I was using a squeegee and then a PLASTIC SPOON that did absolute wonders to throw down a sweet sweet fillet. Nice and clean. I kind of eyeballed what looked good to me, and this was the result:


I think thats sufficient. Heres the forward seat glued in position with the forest of bricks:


Im pretty happy with the result. However, after I was done I wandered into the kitchen where my beautiful wife asked me what I did.

Wife: So howd it go?
Me: Oh it went great, Im the man, Im the next Herreshoff, I glued on the front seat. I am The Man.
Wife: Great! Youre great. Im so glad I married you! Thats the watertight compartment, right?
Me: Yup! The seat forms the forward watertight compartment!

Then I wandered downstairs to get a beer and realized... Son of a GUN... Do I have any gaps between the plywood seat and BH1 that forms that watertight compartment? OH NO! Look at this picture again, pay attention to BH1 starboard side and glue amounts:


Now look at this picture snapped from within the mast-well between BH1 and 2 looking forward on the starboard side!


Gaps! And while I dont think they run through, there are photodocumented gaps on the inside of the tank as well. Dammit.

Im too tired and whooped to worry about it tonight, I will make sure to squeeze some epoxy in there in the future. Its also a strange spot to get to, I have to get into the boat to make this one work, and shes up on buckets, so it will have to wait.

Thank you, wife.

OH YEAH, heres my heater tent. I can keep it 56 F (13 C) in there with my little space heater.

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.
 

Painting Top Coat

This is a big post.  Big as in:  Holy Baloney Batman, were getting close to the end!  Goat Island Skiff, activate!

After priming my boat, I had to leave for work.  I got home 5 days later, gave it a good smoothing sand job, and then cleaned up the dust with the shop-vac blower to vacuum to rag soaked in denatured alcohol.  The denatured alcohol was a tip mentioned on the Wooden Boat Forum-- it will help soak up and evaporate any water that had absorbed into the primer as well as clean up dust.  After that, it was time for painting.

The paint was Interlux Brightside, a one part marine paint.  Its expensive, about 40 bucks or so a quart depending on where you purchase it.  I decided to use the pricey stuff as opposed to Behr Porch Paint or Rustoleum Enamel because I figured Ive spent so much money on this boat already, I might as well use good paint on the exterior as well.  Its just a bit more anyway, and it was well worth it, as you will see.

I used a roller, which left behind little bubbles, and then "tipped-off" with a bristle brush.  I would generally roll vertically and then gently tip-off with a brush horizontally.  Then I let it dry.  The instructions recommend sanding with 320 before the second coat, but I only had 220 and used that, with little ill effect.  A second coat then was applied, and the results are spectacular.  Behold, my painted boat:

Not bad!  Check out the reflection of the towel!  It looks like gel-coat!  I am the painting man, thanks to Interlux Brightside and its easy-to-apply-million-dollar-finish qualities!

Next up, the interior, and sailing.

For the super vigilant, they will notice I still do not have rudder hardware on the stern.  This is bad news, and there will be a post devoted to rudder hardware, Duckworks (awesome), and West Marine (awful evil disgusting chain store I will never frequent again).

Let me just say this, if my boat gets finished and I dont have rudder hardward and this impedes me from sailing, I am going to freak out.

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!

Knees closer up rear seat inspection hatches

So earlier this month I neglected to show some closer up pictures of the knees and the breasthook.  Here they are.  You may notice that I chose to not stylize the knees in any fashion, as other Goat Island Skiffs do.  I am a big fan of straight lines, utilitarianism, and functionality.  (Also WPA artwork and air travel posters from the early 20th century, for very much the same reasons.)  Curvy knees and breasthooks are nice, but I dont think they deliver the straightforwardness I enjoy in design.  Obviously, this is personal preference.  Curvy knees can look fantastic.  The stem in the bow will be cleaned up at some point, maybe a small cover.

Today I also added the locations of my inspections ports.  I have chosen an 8" Beckson screw-in inspection port for easy ingress and egress of larger items.  The smaller 6" port is for access to the rudder gudgeon fittings.  It is off-center due to the seat cleat that runs down the middle of the compartment from BH4 to the transom.  This could have been circumnavigated had I thought about it beforehand, but I didnt, so this is what I get.  Not the end of the world.

Finally, a quick look on how I glued the knees in place:  Two tape covered shims held in place by clamps for vertical support, and the clamp just to weight it up against the side of the hull.  Not too much weight is needed, because the knee could slide up, also, if its beveled correctly it wont slide down.

Seat cleats gluing daggerboard

Ok my pretties:

Today I decided to start gluing again after a long hiatus. My back is good enough now that I can bend into the boat now if Im really careful. We had a couple days where the temps were above freezing by a few degrees, so the garage temperature came up as well. With a well placed $12 heater from Lowes, I glued up the seat cleats for the bow, center, and stern seats.

This was another typical gluing disaster, messy and sticky. The bow went first. I decided to use two screws to get the side cleats into position, the ply-leverage method is a good one, but I didnt need the added stress of a cleat swimming out of position. Two 1 1/4" drywall screws and I knew nothing was moving. Youll notice that the vertical post has yet to be glued, Im waiting for everything to harden up so I can just get an accurate measurement.


Afterwards, I threw some plastic over it to make a heating tent thing. Very rudimentary, but quite effective.


Next up was the stern seat cleats. You may notice the bricks holding down the cleat along the floor. I did not use fasteners for this one, or its mate in the bow. Alternating the bricks supplied the weight and kept it from sliding around. Also, two screws per side cleat.


I did get some small gaps along some cleats, but when I pour glue all over them for the seat fitting, these will fill adequately. These are not necessarily structural, though they hold the seat which through its fillet along the side will be, but theres enough glue there. Also, no water gets in here anyway. Or put another way: If water gets this watertight compartment, Im really screwed anyway.


AND FINALLY

Ive started on working on something other than the hull. The daggerboard/centerboard and the rudder. Technically, its a daggerboard. Storer and others likes to use the word "foils" which I guess it correct, they are foil shaped, as in airfoil, but Ive never heard that term before, ever. Its always been "blades." So Im sticking with blades. Maybe its a New England thing.

I ripped up my 5/4x6" cedar planks to strips between 1-2". My bro-in-law is making a cherry countertop for his renovated kitchen. I was welcome to the scraps. So my daggerboard has cherry leading and trailing edges, with a middle spice-it-up stripe. The rudder, whose stock is not complete due to wood lackage, will most likely get two strips, for and aft, though I really would like a center stripe to match. This blank was also joined, as in, I used a joiner. Tight. I really went all out for this one!

West Marine Thieving Scumbags

I ordered some small parts (gudgeons for my rudder) for my boat from West Marine.

I received an email stating that the items have shipped.

I received an invoice in the mail stating the items have shipped.

After 10 days I called, looking for my parts.  "Theyre coming."

After 20 days, I called, looking for my parts.  "Call back next week."

I call back today, and they tell me that the items have not shipped.  They dont even have the items in stock.  There is no timeframe available when the items may be in stock.

They have my money, and I dont have any parts.  Need to find alternative plans now.