Can we go sailing now daddy?

"Is it finished yet?"

"Daddy, when can we go sailing?"

"Can we go sailing tomorrow?"

"When can we go sailing?"

And the winning question from my 3 year old daughter....

"Will I be older then?"

The Cut.....

So I have 2 pieces of oak, 3" x 1" x 10' for the Carlings. (good luck finding that on Google without coming up with larger, or sports - try "Carling and Deck)

All I have to do it cut them to fit.

At each end, there's a compound bevel. And the wood curves along the length of the boat. So if you don't take account of the curve, it will end up short.

You can see here how you cut the angle to get the length right.

I was accurate to about 1/10" over 9 foot on one side, and a snug fit on the other.

Measuring and marking the wood in place, if you can, it easily the most accurate, and least error prone way of doing things.

Making Sawdust....

The last consignment of wood arrived yesterday, so I took a days holidays to.... get the wood tidied away out of the house.... yes. Get it Tidied....

I have a cheapo shop vac that I can connect up to the power tools, after ripping various oak and mahogany planks into over 20 1", 2", 3" and 4" wide slats, each over 9' long, I had enough sawdust to fill a large kitchen bin.

I now have all the wood I need to finish the boat. All I need now is time and good weather.

I now have to round the edges of over 400 feet of wood. And then Oil it all.

I'm going with deck oil rather than varnish. It's more continuous maintenance, but the maintenance is a lot easier. Just rub in more oil. No Sanding, stripping back to the wood. Just rub in more oil every 6 months and you're done.

D

A weekend of progress...

I got out my Bevelator 1000 again. This time to bevel the sheer clamps where the deck will go on. I also cut 2 of the three beams that will sit under the foredeck.

The remaining wood arrives over the next week or so. So I should have a deck on the boat in the next 3 weeks.

Then it's the seats & floors.

I found this for making up foils. Nearly as good as a 3d Cad system.

New Toys....

Against the day that I might actually have to sail the thing, I've started accumulating various bits and pieces that I'll eventually need.

I picked up a marine compass a while back, and a last week I came across this http://www.opticron.co.uk/Pages/trailfinder_ii.htm

Note the Inter Pupillary Distance. 58~77mm. For those who can't get a one size fits all baseball hat to fit, the normal ~72 mm IPD on binoculars leaves you with a very cumbersome monocular, with a spare attached.

Many of the other Binocs with a large IPD were Lecia or Swaroski or Steiner, and the prices were quite exotic.

If you are to look through both eyes at the same time, these may be worth a look, so to say.

The are (to my unpractised eye), pretty good, solid, the focus mechanism is reassuringly free of play, and they have a 5 year guarantee.

I don't have any real experience with Optics, so someone more knowledgeable may pour scorn on my advice, but two eyes able to see at the same time is a huge improvement.

I would have preferred the traditional 7x50, but they were ~74mm IPD, and I could not try them out locally.

Snow ?

This is Ireland, we get 3 or 4 flakes of snow each year. That's it. Unless you are up the "mountains" (hills) and you might get enough to make a very short snowman.

This year we had several inches, and real cold. Not the 2 Celsius (35 F) that we usually get, we were getting -10 Celsius (14 F).

I took my 3 year old out on a sleigh. She loved it till she got cold.

People's pipes froze, and burst. Lakes froze over. Some people I work with took 5 hours to get home.

All this means that I have done very little on the boat since I took the pictures.

I've sharpened a few hand tools, and read a lot, but real no progress.

Pictures at last

As I could now put it in the water, and get in, and it would float, I now claim it's an unfinished boat. It is no longer a pile of sticks.

I’ve started painting the inside.

I’m painting at night, in the cold, with a site lamp and a head torch. I must look even stranger than usual.

One thing I realised is that when you have lots of battens, chines, frames etc to paint, you get a lot less than the advertised coverage for a tin of paint. They assume you are painting a large flat area. When you have to work in nooks and crannies, expect to get about half the coverage.

I’m using Blake’s (now Hemple) paints. The inside is coated with epoxy, then white primer and then 2 (soon to be 3) coats of pale cream multicoat.

It is starting to look pretty well.

Just a brief update

The boat is now upright on a combi trailer.

I have two tent poles across the boat holding up a Tarp.

The inside is now sealed with epoxy.

Sanding and painting starts next.

I'm still in two minds about adding a buoyancy compartment forward and aft, or just using buoyancy bags, or using foam slabs.

Thanks Guys

It was like a weird and wonderful Team Building Exercise.

All we had to do was move the boat from the back garden to the front garden.

The boat has a 6' beam. The lane between the houses is about 6'10". Plenty of room.

The fun bit was the 4'-5' high wall running down the middle of the lane.

We had a short false start where we were still bolted to the ground (my Fault, sorry guys).

Then the 7 of us lifted the boat to shoulder height and manoeuvred it up over the wall (sorry about the plants Caroline.)

I somehow ended up standing underneath the upturned hull, with my shoulders to the frame. It was my first real view of the inside.

We did our best to cripple my soon to be wed brother, by trying to drag him across the wall through a bush, but he was having none of it.

The Herculean Effort culminated in The Lady Caroline* being man handled into place, in the front garden and then carefully flipped over.

So Thanks Guys, In Alphabetical order Alan, Andrew, Colum, Connor, Oliver and Peter.

And thanks Andy and Trish for letting us use your garden in the move. I hope Bonnie forgives us for locking her in the kennel throughout.

And thanks again to Caroline, my wife for putting up with this, the boat, the mess, the invasion of the house, the time spent, etc. etc. etc.

* The boat, not my wife.

From the Air

This is from google maps.

You can clearly see the blue tarp that covers the boat in my back yard.

Yes, it will fit out between the houses.

(I hope)

Helpful people

It's amazing how some people are just so helpful. Take the guys at http://www.chinawindyachts.co.uk/ I needed some stuff in a hurry, no problem, I rang on Friday, they got stuff in that was not already in stock and they shipped monday morning. Bear in mind that my order was a couple of hundred Euro, and they know I'm a hobby builder. Peter takes a genuine interest in his customers, he was able to offer help and advice.

Many thanks.

Pics

As promised, pics of the Hull.

I have filled and sanded most of the screw holes on the near side in the top pic. And as of about half an hour ago, I have filled the remaining screw holes.

The Epoxy, Glass beads, and microfibers sands easily. It seems like a good mix for filling.

I used a router, a roundover bit and a batten to round over the entrance to the CB for glassing.

And I have glassed the transom. This is a small and uncomplicated area, but it's near vertical, so you have to be careful about runs.

I no longer feel like a fraud referring to "my boat".

Sorry there are no pics to go with this, but I finished up working last night, outside under lights at about 11:30pm.

It was gluing, screwing and filling screw holes, so the neighbours did get to sleep. 8-)

The last panel is now in place. It needs to be trimmed, but the hull is now complete.

I no longer feel like a fraud referring to "my boat".

I also started the process of filling the screw holes. Some screws needed to be reset a little deeper. That was easy enough. I tried three mixes for filling. Epoxy and:

• Oak Sawdust from my sander
• Glass Spheres and Silica
• Glass Spheres and Microfibers.

The Oak Sawdust is not as fine, and is harder to sand. On the whole I won't be using it again for filling.

The Glass Spheres on their own don't thicken up, and seep to remain runny, so I added a little silica to the first batch. It's smooth, sands easily and is easy to work with.

I also filed more screw holes last night with the Glass Spheres and microfibers to thicken it. This is smooth and works well. I'll let you know how sanding goes.

Incidently, for sanding I used a Ryobi Random Orbital and some 40 grit disks. Worked like a charm. I had tried hand sanding first, but it's unreasonable to expect my grandchildren to finish the boat.

I should be ready to start glassing soon. I'll start with the transom. Less to sand off if I mess up 8-)

Photos will arrive when it stops raining again. 8-(

So close.......

The last panel is trimmed to fit, it is held in place with screws and plywood washers, and it has had boiling water poured all over it with towels to hold the hot water in place.

All in all it's so nearly a boat.

But On Sunday it didn't rain as much as it always looked like it would rain any second. This is a problem for building out of doors.

There remains some sanding of the battens to do before I can start gluing. I need to do the this in the daytime (weekend) as power sanding when I get home from work might not be a good way to win friends and influence people now that kiddies are back at school and early to bed.

The forecast looks good for this weekend. I should have a complete hull.

Then I need to set a few bronze screws that are sitting proud, fill the remainder of the screw holes and start the whole sanding and glassing process. There's a bit of tidy up sanding to do at the scarfs, but not too much.

Shortly after this I will be moving the boat out to the front garden to make way for some building work. That should be fun.

burning the midnight oil....

At about 8pm the kiddies were off to bed, so I nipped out to just sand the chines and keel, ready for a glue up the next night. But that didn't take long, so I thought, I'm here now, let's glue.

A good plan and a bad one. I had not yet marked all the spots for the screws. It's best to do this before you start mixing glue. Anyhow... I did the usual, coat with neat epoxy, then mix up epoxy and microfibers, then screw the panel into place.

I knew I had one slight "dip" in the chine, so I filled this out with epoxy and chopped strands, and pretty much left the panel at that point to just follow it's curve. It worked out well.

Half way though my halogen site lamp blew. So I had to finish the job, mixing epoxy and microfibers, and marking and drilling and screwing using a portable flourescent lamp powered off a drill battery. (Makita rocks)

I finished up at about 11:35pm.

Most of that panel is now trimmed back, and I now have only one panel left to do. Tuesday looks like a good evening for boat building. And I have some spare bulbs for my site lamp now.

I can still look inside the remaining "hole" in the boat, and it all looks sort of boat like from the inside.

I then need to trim the centerboard slot back properly (I am still wondering how to use a roundover bit given the gradually changing slope of the bottom)

Then glass it and turn it.

Then I need to get it out of the back garden. I'll pin a temporary "deck" into place to give it some strength before the lift, It should be interesting.

Cutting Limbers after the fact.

I played with a tiny ratchet driver and a 6mm auger drill bit. I clamped a scrap batten to a work bench, and I can make a 6mm hole in the batten about 1mm from the bench. This will do just fine. So when the hull is turned I'll do the job on the three battens. I will probably have to cut the auger short, and glue on a socket to the end so that I can fit it between the battens, but that's no big deal.

I will also reinforce the battens on both sides with an extra 1/2 inch from the transom to the next frame. Since these will be flat surfaces, I'll use Balcotan (Marine PU) for the Oak. Previous tests show it works just fine. My test lamination has been knocking about in the garden and in the shed on and off, unpainted for 2 years and it's still solid.

Getting there....

I've started to fit the foreward sections of the hull.

Both the aft sections are now glued, screwed, and trimmed (Since I took the photo above)

The squares of plywood are used as Giant washers.

And this is what the inside looks like

I just held the camera under the boat.The unplaned wood is the building frame and there is an oak plank in the top left corner of the pic.

Oops

Remember me posting "Note to self: I still have the limbers to cut." back about here. Well I was busy congratulating myself on a nicely glued up panel, trimmed and all, when I realised I'd entirely forgotten about the limber holes in the battens and keel.

I've been on the forums and had lots of advice, from "you don't really need them" to various ways of fixing the problem. I've cut the limbers for the other side now, this little detail will have to wait until I turn the hull and try to figure out how I'm going to drill a hole at the bottom of a 1" batten beside the plywood, with only 2" to the next batten.

The current plan is to use a right angle mini ratchet screw driver to run a screw through the batten.

Once that's through, I will feed a coping saw blade through the screw hole, and start the long slow process of cutting out the limber. I expect to have to make up a holder but that will be the least of my worries. A dowel and sandpaper should help me finish off.

The battens from the transom to the last frame aft will be reinforced with an extra 1/2" of oak. This will mean that even with a 3/8" hole, there will still be 1" of Oak. Add the strength of the . Add the strength of the plywood to that and It should be plenty strong.