The Bottom

I've started the bottom planking.

2 sheets of 8x4 are now rough cut on the outsides, and fitted at the keelson.

You can see the work in progress here

When you place an 8x4 sheet up on the boat, and try to line up one side with the keel, you quickly notice that since the hull is curved the edge of the ply does not line up nicely with the center of the keel.

A quick snap of a chalk line, or just running a marker on a jig down the side of the keelson will mark the curve you need to cut. Japanese saws are fantastic for cutting long fair curves in 1/4 ply as it's so easy to line them up with the curve as you saw.

I tacked the first panel in place, and then marked the second panel against the first by tapping it down on carbon paper while pulling the carbon paper through the gap. Where the second sheet meets the edge of the first, you get a neat black line to saw to.

I've more scarfing to do, and I have to then fit the forward bottom panels, but very soon I'll have a hull.

Incidentally, this weekend I spent a whole lot of time watching for rain clouds blowing in, covering everything over until they blow by, and uncovering again. A real PITA.

Next boat I build will be under shelter.

I forgot to oil the screws....

When you put in temporary screws to hold everything together while the epoxy kicks, you really should oil or wax the screws so that the epoxy cannot stick to them.

Otherwise you will break off two screws about half way down and leave steel bits embedded in the oak frames well out of reach, and then spend the next hour heating each screw with a gas powered soldering iron to soften the epoxy so that you can extract them. You will find that about 20 seconds of blowtorch setting per screw works. When you have use large washers, they act as a heat sink and you will need more.

If you have not used washers, and the screw heads are in the wood, then a traditional electric soldering iron touching the screw will probably work, it will just take longer.

Perviously I had tried the trend grabit and concluded that bronze was too soft and it would not work, but after reading a review where they emphasised "slow speed" as the key to getting it to work, I tried it again after I stripped a haed on a 2" bronze screw which was supposed to hold down a batten. It was still proud about 1/8", like the Grand old Duke of York, neither up nor down.

Sure enough the trend grabit grabbed it and it came out nice and slowly.

Stripping one bronze screw out of 28 x 2" screws into Oak is a reasonable record.

It's all done now. Though I now have a pair of 1" long broken screw bits in my framing and no good way of getting them out. The deck screws broke in half as I started to unscrew them so the bits are about 1" down.

Glued and Temporarily screwed in place

The battens are now glued and temporarily screwed in place. Deck screws, and large washers pull everything together while it all sets up. In a day or so, I'll pop out the deck screws, and redrill the holes and countersinks, and then pop in the Bronze screws.

I've epoxy coated all the areas that won't be accessible when the skin goes on, and the block and tackles still hold down the ends of the battens to pre-bend them.

Note to self: I still have the limbers to cut.

An hour here and there....

That was about all I got this weekend, but it was still progress.

Here you can see me checking that the ply will sit nicely across the battens, and if you look closely at the outside batten, you can see the end is tidied up, it's curved, tapered and clamped down to induce a suitable curve in it.

I have the last batten sanded on the inside - I won't bother sanding the the outside where it will be glued and screwed to the plywood until I have cut and fitted the ply and I'm ready to get sticky with it.

The battens are all now drilled and held in place by deck screws.

I did remember to unscrew all the blocking that becomes inacessible once the battens are in place.

The next patch of good weather should see me able to epoxy the battens in place, and as with the chines, I'll used deck screws to draw everything up tight and then replace them with bronze when the glue sets up.

Bronze screws are just too soft to try screwing 2" into Oak and pulling a bend into battens as well.

Notch up a few more notches !!

The forward frame is basically done. A decent Rasp makes life easy. And a sheet of carbon copy paper put inbetween the batten and the notch lets you mark high spots for rasping.

I clamped a large scrap peice of ply in place at the forward frame/stem to make sure that it would all sit nicely.

Next I have to glue and screw them the battens in place.

I have a tiny block and tackle in place to pull down the front of the battens. I've clamped some offcuts to them, so that I can pull them down from one side, to introduce some twist as well as bend into them. This will make it a whole lot easier to bend the front of the ply.

I'm not entirely sure how I find the battens when the bottom plywood is in place, so that I can locate the screws. Any thoughts / detailed photos would be welcome.

When I get to turning it all over....

On thing that I have realised, is that the second frame, which has a cross piece that goes through the building scaffold is going to make things kind of fun when I get to rolling the boat.

I had initially thought I'd just disconnect the boat from the scaffold before putting on the bottom ply skin, and the weight would keep it in place, then I'd lift it off the scaffold and turn it.

While looking for all the things I'd want to do before putting the bottom on, it dawned on me that the frame that goes through the scaffold, second from the front in the picture opposite, is going to be a problem.

My scaffold is spiked into the ground. So I think that I will have to reach under the boat and cut the scaffold legs, then turn the whole boat scaffold and all and take apart the scaffold after the turn.

I'm glad I am trying to figure this out now, not later.

It still looks the same....

I got a good bit done this weekend.

The fitting at the transom is done.

All the battens are now trimmed to their final length and tapered, the two pairs of battens that continue forward of the front frame are tapered by thickness as well as by width. The other pair required less bending so they are only tapered width ways.

I tapered the thickness of the battens on the surface that will be inside the boat, this leaves the surface that will mate with the plywood skin as a smooth fair surface.

5 of the 6 battens have been re-sanded, as it's easier to do it now than when they are in place. The last one remains to be completed as rain eventually stopped play.

The front frame remains to be fitted.

But to look at the boat, it seems unchanged from before all this work.

Before I glue and screw the battens, I must remove many of the screws that attach the boat to the building frame as these will become unreachable once the battens are in place.

I will also coat all the bottoms of the frames with epoxy as these will be equally impossible to reach after the skin is in place.

The weather cleared up

So I got out for another hour or two and finished off the notched on the other side. The transom notchs on the second side remain to be done, as do notched on the forward frame. They are only cut to half depth, as I need to taper the battens from the second frame forward to help them bend with the hull.

Then I need to sand the battens, dull the corners with a block plane, and screw em and glue em.

I thought it would take a couple of weekends to do all the notches, so I'm pretty pleased with the notch jig.