The Center Board

The Irish Rainy Season has started. We learned in school that Ireland had warm sunny summers. This was obviously a Blatent Lie. I've been wearing a coat to work in the mornings.

I can still work in the shed though 8-)

I used a router to cut slots at the correct depths base don the NACA foils. This gave me a guide for sanding.

You can see the lines cut in the CB here.

Here you get a good idea of how it looks from the end

And here's what it looks like as I start to sand one side.

The angle of the chine

I used a bar clamp, and a cord to a bucket full of water to hold the chine at the correct angle. A towel soaked with a few kettles of boiling water gave the oak enough flexibility to twist.
A Japanese pull saw really is the best thing since sliced wood.

I was pretty happy with the result.
The chine on the other side is another days work.

Realising that It would be easier to do the slot for the Center board case now rather than later, I took a break from steaming. I used the template that I made up earlier and a cheap and cheerful JCB 1/2" router. I just used a simple trim bit without a bearing (the shaft acts as a bearing). I cut out most of the centre of the slot first with a jigsaw. This made for less routing and less sawdust), but it did mean that some of the cut was lifting the grain. Not usually a good plan . Luckily Epoxy, and the fact that this will be well out of sight will save the day.

Steaming the Chines

I had planned to use a drain pipe. But a little reading led me to the inconvient truth about PVC. It starts to melt if you run steam through it, and it collapses under its own weight. So this is Aluminium Air Conditioning ducting. It arrives compressed concertina like and you simply stretch it.

Without a little insulation, it would not keep the wood hot, so some cheap attic insulation and a bit of cord and we are set. I just used a steam wallpaper stripper as a steam source and left if cook while I got on with some other bits and pieces.

Here you see the two chines clamped roughly in place. There's still work to do, but progress is progress.
Oh, yes, heavy gardenning gloves are your friend here, the Aluminium is hot, the steam is hot and the oak is hot.

Various other commitments....

That's always the reason for so little progress. This weekend I managed to steal about 2 hours to work on the boat.

An hour spent sharpening up some chisels. A flat waterstone grinder is the thing for flattening the back of your chisels. But the jig is really for planer blades. It's not great for chisels. A 120 grit Japanese Water stone will reshape your chisel in short order, and a set of Ice Bear Waterstones will get it silly sharp.

I cheat and use the Veritas Mk II sharpening Jig. Maybe with more practice...

All this sharpening was to allow me to spend the second hour changing the angle of some notches in the frames that join the transom. Of course if I had cut them right in the first place....

At any rate, it's kind of scary to see how easily a truly sharp chisel will cut through Solid Oak, even end Grain. Fingers Behind the blade and all that.

Beale Park 2008

In spite of promises of dark overcast days and heavy showers, the main concern this weekend in Reading was sunburn.

We made our second annual visit to the Beale Park boat show.



Amongst the highlights for me was bringing Sarah - my 18 month old daughter out sailing on a Bay Raider. Lovely boat. I want one. Actually, How about a Sea Raider.


Sarah appeared to love it, though she was trying to lean out overboard, and was saying "swim swim swim". We did manage to avoid testing her life jacket on this occasion.

Some time later I managed to find a kind gentleman from the wooden boat builders association who taught me to eye splice.

It's one of those things that's not really that difficult when you see it done, but try learning it from a book. If you follow the link to the eyesplice above, it all hinges on picture 9.

Some of the work there on display was amazing, including a newly build Salcombe Yawl. Nice, but a little spendy at £25,596 (a little under $50,000). I guess you get what you pay for.

There were rowing skiffs, sail boats, electric launches and steam boats..


To top it all off - we stayed at the Beetle and Wedge a nice restaurant along the thames which has a few rooms for B&B. The food was fantastic. The staff made us feel like old friends, and Sarah got to feed the ducks at the river bank. The ducks were simply brazen. While Sarah was tearing bits of bread a slice off to through to the ducks, one came around behind her and snatched the slice clean from her hands.

Four days of very civilised living in the english countryside. Excellent.

Thanks Bro'

I convinced my brother to come join me for a spot of boat building. I had 4 long (14'-16') oak planks to plane down to 22mm and cut into long strips for battens.
Hard to man handle all alone.

My PT85 was quite inadequate for the task. It would plane oak just fine for a while, but then just overheat and give up the ghost. Unless I wanted to run a board through, then shoot the breeze for 20 minutes and repeat (not a bad idea, but my time is limited) then I needed bigger iron.

I rented a Makita 2012NB from SamHire for the weekend. Like many hire shops they treat weekends as non business days, so I got it for 3 days for the price of 1.5 - In the end, due to various commitments, I only used it for about 3/4 of a day - but that was enough.

We spent quite a while running 15' planks through the planer, and got things down to a fine art. In retrospect, I should have just paid The Lisnavagh Timber Project a few bob to run it through their big industrial planer and it would only have taken an hour or so. You live and learn.

Cutting the battens is made easier by a very simple trick. Clamp the planks to bits of scrap on top of your workbenches. Then set the blade so that it cuts the oak, and cuts into, but not through the scrap. Now you don't have to get inventive about how you clamp the wood so as not to cut your workbenchs in half. So simple.

In fact for the first few battens, the oak was heavy enough not to even need clamps - do clamp the scrap bits - unless you want to see how far your saw can fling them.

Next up will be steaming the chine logs and the sheer clamps.

An our here and and hour there

I started by screwing strips of ply around the Centerboard case onto a logn 3/4" board. Then I cut out most of the slot with a jig saw, and tidied up the rest with a router and a bearing guide bit. A little work with a chisel to sort the corners and it's a perfect match. I should be able to use this template to cut the slot in the keel.

Easier than trying to screw separate strips of ply to the keel itself.

You can see the start of the CB case here with the template.
Cutting the actual slot in the keel is a big step as this is a 12 foot long board, carefully cut and planed. A mistake there would be painful.

Incidently, I have found that a large nail punch helps so much in avoiding the hammer marks. 8-)

It seems ok....

The CB case seems to have glued up ok.

I tidied it up today, added a few bronze ring nails for good measure. An oversized nail set allows you to smack these down flush without leaving hammer marks all over the place.

There was a hole to be drilled through the Oak at the forward end of the case the would have been whole lot easier to drill before I put it all together. The main problem was not drilling the hole, but cleaning up the break out from the drill bit. Since the line to raise the Centerboard is deadended through this hole, a little rounding of the sharp edges was required.

It's amazing where you can fit a dremmel.

Next step is the keel. I need to clamp it in place, and tidy up the CB bed logs to fit. Then I have to cut the slot for the CB through the keel.

That's one of those jobs that if you mess it up, there really is nothing else to do but start again with a new peice of wood. An a clear 4" x 1 1/8" x 12' is an expensive peice to mess up - never mind the time it took to cut and plane it.

Again, wish me luck.

Epoxy - A batch gone off

I started to glue up the Centerboard case today. I sanded the Oak and precoated it with epoxy.

Then I mixed up a batch of epoxy and filler, but while I was working on one side of the CB case, the remaining epoxy and filler was just getting warmed up.

When I went back to the mixing cup, it was hot, really hot, and had a big solid lump in the middle.

By now I had a half glued up CB case, and no epoxy ready. I mixed up a second smaller batch as quickly as I could, but still making sure I stirred it enough. So now I have to wait until tomorrow evening until I can see if it glued up OK.

Wish me luck.

Glassing Pictures

First up is my epoxy stir stick. Add a cheap battery powered drill and a good pair of protective goggles and you can go to town on stirring your epoxy.


Here you can see the corner where the glass lifted, I have cut away the lifted glass. I will sand this down and patch it up later.

When you add the epoxy, the glass becomes almost transparent. You can see the pattern of the weave, which apparently is about right. Too much epoxy in the first pass, and the glass will float off the ply.

Alway wear overalls, goggles, gloves and impermeable shoes when you start slopping epoxy around. The stuff gets everywhere.

Imagine if these had been sneakers, I might have found out later when I tried to take them off that the epoxy had soaked through and bonded my shoes and socks to my feet.

Centerboard case in progress...

The first glassing went well.

It's amazing to see what was a white opaque glass cloth become transparent with the application of a litte epoxy. The grain of the ply looks wonderful. I still need a second layer of epoxy to fill the weave. Apparently that's the way it should be, too much epoxy in the first pass, and the cloth floats off the wood.

I need to fix a corner where the glass lifted a little. I see my first practice at lapping glass cloth. Wish me luck.

D

Starting the Centerboard Case

Now that the new shed is in place, and all the boat parts are out of the kitchen (really) I've started back at work on the boat. I have more free space in the new shed, then total space in the old shed.

I took one side of the centerboard case and made an attempt at glassing it. Later today I will know how well it went. It's like the good old days of film cameras, when you had to wait to see the result of your work.

I had no idea of how much to mix, but since I was working on a small area, I was not too worried about the epoxy setting up while I mixed up more. I can see that for a large area, having an assistant to do the mixing would help.

I had left the cloth long around the edges of the plywood panel, but as I squeeged in the epoxy, the weight of the hanging cloth was causing the it to lift just inside the edge of the plywood, in much the same way as if I was trying to glass a right angle, once I trimed the cloth to an inch or so, it was fine.

Now I simply have to wait till it sets up, and see if it had made a good bond, or not. Then I'll bang on another layer of epoxy and see how it all looks.

Pictures will of course follow.

I have shed my shed

In the quest for more room for high speed, sharp, spinning thing I have decided to move up from an 8 x 6 shed to a 10 x 8 shed.

Now all my stuff is in the attic - moving it up two flights of stairs must constitute my exercise quota for the day.

You would think that knocking down a leaky, somewhat rotten shed would be trivial. The down side it that it's only rotten in places.

In order to fit it in a mini skip, I need to break it up pretty small. This takes a whole lot more effort than you would expect. I really wanted to avoid using power tools since all this wood is treated with nasty preservatives, and I did not want to leave fine toxic sawdust in my back garden.

Now I wait for the new shed to arrive, and I catch up on my Maths degree. Boat work may be delayed a little.... 8-(

Mixing Epoxy

I took a tongue depressor (bought by the box) and a disposable chopstick.

I Cut about 4 inches off a chopstick, then cut the tongue depressor in half. Taped them together to make a long narrow spade.

I put the chopstick end in an old cheap variable speed electric drill, and Voila, one gloop mixer.

When adding Silica and Glass Beads to the mix, I folded them in by hand first, then mixed it with the drill.

I wore gloves, a face mask, goggles and a boiler suit and did this in a shed.

I do appreciate that grabbing a handful of trigger on the drill would result in a hazardous epoxy spray.

I intend to get a chuck for my electric screwdriver, since this has a fixed and slow rpm.

I suspect this would not be great for a clearcoat, as you stand to introduce to many bubbles into the mix.

Disclaimer: If you try this yourself, take all precautions you deam necessary. This has the potential to go horribly wrong. If you do not understand what will happen if you grab to much trigger, then sit down and think about it until you do understand. All of the ingredients in an Epoxy Gloop are harmful to you in some way or other.

The Stem

I didn't like the idea of putting screws into the side of the ply that makes up the stem. Screws into the side of ply are not generally considered "A Good Thing (tm)".

Instead I bought some bronse rod, a tap and die set (spend some money here. Cheap taps and dies are marginally less use than chocolate teapots), and set about making double ended bolts.

I clamped the stem in place, using a block cut at 90 deg on the table saw, and drilled two holes right through the frame into the stem.

I then drilled through the side of the stem, to intersect with these holes, to put nuts in. This gives me a sort of bed bolt.

I spent some time with a sharp plane making sure the end of the stem was at 90 deg, then I prepared some Epoxy, Silica and glass beads.

I soaked the end of the stem in epoxy first, this was to prevent the ply wicking the epoxy away from the joint. Then I glooped up the joint, and bolted it all in place.



As you can see in the photo, the epoxy could have been neater, but I doubt that anyone will get much of a look at this joint. I'll cut back the bolts next. Then clamp it all back in place on the scaffold.

Just to see the lines

I ran some softwood battens along the frames to see if things lined up, and also to see how it might look.
It is starting to look kind of like a boat.

There's still so much to do. But it's progress.

Incidently, The stem is just sitting there in place I see a bit of goo and some bronze in it's future.

D

Lining It All Up

To get the frames in the right places, I cut a few blocks with accurate 90 deg Angles on my table saw. (A sled helps for this)

Then I clamped these in pairs to the frames, now the frames would sit bolt upright at 90 deg to the scaffold. A roofing square allowed my to check that the frames were square across the scaffold.

I marked off the distances on a long batten and ran that from the transom.

A quick check with Pythagoras ensured me that the difference between measuring along the batten and the strict horizontal distance was less than 1/16 of an inch, so I just ignored it.

The frames are now held in place by these blocks which are pocket hole screwed to the scaffold.

I now need to center the frames left and right and make sure that they are level.

Just to see what it looked like, I cut a half dozen soft wood battens and held them up against the frame notches, They line up pretty well and it starts to look like a boat.

Pictures will follow soon.

Out of the kitchen

In spite the forecast, it's hardly rained at all today, but it always appears to be on the point of a downpour. You know, two or three drops here and there.

I took a chance and clamped the frames in place on the scaffold. They are just roughly in place so that I could get an idea of the final shape and size. Also the front frame needs cut into the scafold to sit a few inches lower.

I think that for final placing I will cut pairs or square blocks to clamp fore and aft each frame so that the frames sit vertically, that will mean one less thing I need to worry about as I place them.

Right now, the blue plastic is covering it all once again, and as usual, I await better weather.

D

I now have a scaffold

You know, in spit of reading Steve Henry's advice on the GlenL Forums, I went and built the scaffold and then looked at the the frame sitting by the wall and thought "Ah fiddlesticks*, Steve warned me not to do that.".

One of the frames has a cross piece and needs to be in place before you screw the scaffold together. A little bit of dissasembly followed.

I now have a scaffold, the transom is mounted, one frame is on the scaffold. I need another good sunday to position the frames properly. Then we get our kitchen back.

I built the scaffold about 6 inches higher than the diagram, to make it easier to work on.

I suspect that I will need to shim some of the frames to make sure that everything is level, since there are a few individualities in them, but that should be easy enough.

Pic's will follow once I have all the frames set up.

* "Fiddlesticks" may not have been the exact word that came to mind.

Inch by Inch....

Cutting the Centerboard Case Logs went well. The bandsaw coped admirably, those dinky 3 wheel models may not be perfect, but they are better than a Jigsaw. I wandered more than the saw blade, but that's what course sandpaper is for.

The wood for the scaffold had arrived. I have also built a simple water level out of a 5 meter clear plastic tube (ebay), a plastic bottle, and some silicon sealant. Add some soap to the water to reduce the meniscus, and it's more accurate than I'll ever be. Total Cost, a whole lot less than a high end laser level, and perfectly visible in daylight.

I now have everything I need to start assembling the frames.

On the next good weather day, I'll be cutting the scaffold. The verticals will be pointed and simply pounded into the garden. I guess that once I am finished building the boat, I will have to dig and reseed that section of the grass.

This will get all the frames out of the kitchen at last. (Thanks for being so patient Caroline.)

So little progress

I blame the Dark,

Since I'm working outside, and it's dark before I get home from work.

But Partly it's the Rain, and the Cold.

There's also Real Life Commitments to deal with.

In the last while, I inherited a small bench top three wheel bandsaw. Which if you coax it just right, and go slowly will cut 1" oak just fine. It'll never cut 1/16" veneers from 5" Walnut Planks, but there you go. It was free.

I am about to cut the side logs for the centre board case. I have planed them down to size, and I just need to cut the curve. I am thinking of cutting the first one on the bandsaw almost to the mark, then sanding it down with a long flexible sanding board.

Then I will cut the other close, and use a Router with bearing guided flush bit to trim it to be an exact match.

I tried a little carving...

Since it's dark in the evenings, there's not much work done on the boat these days.

Instead, I tried my hand at a little letter carving, since the boat will need a name.

The boat will be called Lady Caroline.

This is a first try, and a little rough around the edges, but I think it turned out pretty good for a first try.

A mock centerboard case

Next up it the centerboard case. But it will involve using epoxy glue, making epoxy fillets, and glassing around a curves.

All new skills.

The case itself uses a lot of spendy marine ply, a lot of Oak that I have spent time and effort to prepare.

Sounds like a recipe for a test piece.

I've glued up the two halves, and added the fillets.

I need to round over the edges a little more and sand things down before I start glassing. Then I'll trim it, and cut a slot for it in another peice of scrap.

If it all goes well, I'll try it or real.

Incidentally, the fillets today were brought to you by 2 parts glass bubbles to one part cabosil and a plastic spoon.

And then there were Five

It's been a while since I posted. Life got in the way, Exams*, holidays in warmer places, Family Stuff.

I have cut and assembled the last and final frame.

As always I have learned a little, and the frame could be better, but most of the improvements are trivial.

Bronze REALLY is soft. I had been laying out the parts on a marked out plywood board, drilling holes, applying glue and screwing things together. This meant that I could not clamp all the parts together as I could not reach all parts of the frames with clamps. So I just trusted the screws to align everything nicely.

Maybe with a Pine and Steel screws, but not with Oak and Bronze. If things get out of alignment, the screws don't pull it all back into shape, they just shear off when you try to tighten them.

What I should have done was to cut holes in the ply to put clamps through. Hold everything in place while the glue sets and add the bronze screws later. I tried this with the cross piece of the frame and it worked perfectly.

Luckily, the frame is out by about 1/8^th of an inch, so it will either be faired, or shimmed. And also, the sheared screws, along with the additional ones that I added later, are conveniently hidden from sight.

My next job is the center board case. I think that since I have not done any real epoxy work, and this needs to be epoxy glassed on the inside, I will make a small mockup first. See how it all hangs together.

* Some people think that I am a little crazy trying to do a Maths Degree in the evenings, and Build a boat while coping with the changes in life that a one year old child brings. Some people use another word instead of "little"

Cut away anything that does not look like a boat.

Only one frame to go, it's cut, the stem is cut and laminated, the centerboard is cut, the CB case is cut, even the rudder is cut.

I've an exam coming up, so this is on hold for a bit, but it's starting to look like something that might eventually be a boat.

I'll glass the inside of the CB case, glue it up and then I start building the scaffold that I put this all together on.

A better stick.

I took a peice of oak about 1" x 1" about 3 feet long. This time I cut a scarf in it using using a jig and a circular saw. And cut a second matching scarf on the same jig.

I dampened the surface of the scarf, glued it and clamped it.

I left it for 48 hours and then set it up across two bricks. It happily took my weight. Then I started bouncing up and down on it.

After a fair bit of bouncing, It finally snapped. Though as you can see from the photo, the break was not along the glue line.

Broken Sticks

Since I am in a sense running a grand experiment in that I am using PU instead of epoxy for any joints where I have smooth flat surfaces to join, I thought a break test would be in order.

I found two oak offcuts about 12" long, 1" thick, and sloped to a point and glues them up as a scarf joint. Albeit a short scarf joint at about 6" long. PU was applied and they were heavily clamped and left for 24 hours.

Where I have laminated peices with PU, any cuts that have crossed the join have shown a what could be a single peice of wood except for the grain. So I was expecting great things.

The scarfed oak stick took my 200+ lbs quite happily, until I started to bounce up and down.

Then it broke approximately along the line of the scarf, The glue did not fail, rather the wood broke apart. If you look at the two peices of wood, each has hills and hollows where it either tore wood from the other side or wood was torn from it.

In one or two tiny patches the break was along the glue line, but mostly the wood actually failed.

I appreciate that the scarf was short at nearer 5 to 1 than 8 to one, so my next test peice will be 8 to 1 and will be better prepared - this was really two bits of scrap thrown together.

But I was sort of hoping for the wood to break like a single peice or wood. I'll try to post a picture later.

And I'll post the results of a proper 1:8 scarf subject to the bounce test.

I can bounce up and down on it...

I took down the laminated plank that I will use for the deck beam.

I happily bounced up and down on it, not a worry.

It will take some planing, but apart from that it seems fine.

And the cling film / plastic wrap did indeed just peel right off.

Laminated Deck Beams....

I went to my wood pile, to find a peice of oak for the last deck beam.

1" x 4" x 6'.

The longest "piece" I had was about 5' 4". Or I could cut into the lovely 16' plank that I had intended for the sheer clamps.

Maybe I could laminate up a plank. After all, this is going to be supported by a post in the middle. And glue is stronger than wood. And.. And..

I have cut a whole set of 1" x 1" strips, and most of them 5' 4" long, and staggered the joints so that when I cut it to shape, and cut the notches I should not have any weak points.

The whole lot is glues up with Balcotan PU - which does not stick to Cling Film / Plastic Wrap - and clamped with about 30 F-clamps.

It's sitting in my garden shed, awaiting a bounce test.

I reckon that if I can put a block under each end and it will support my 200lbs bouncing up and down on it, then it should be good.

It is for a 14' sail boat, not an ocean going clipper....

Any thoughts or comments.

Short cuts seldom are....

They said draw out the full frame on a board, and use that for gluing up the frames. No worries, I'll just size up each half against the plans and glue up each half. How can it go wrong....

When I look at the two half, one is just about perfect, the other is off by about 5/16" at the top.

The three other frames where I did as I was told, and drew them out on a board, and then glued them up are just fine.

Now I am faced with - re cut and re glue or shim and trim.

I suspect I will shim and trim.

Since the side beam of the fram is 1" thick oak, and three inches from outside to inside, trimming 5/16" off the inside, and adding a 5/16" strip to the outside should be fine. The added strip will be under compression, and I suspect much of if may get faired away anyhow.

More haste less speed.

This looks like it may become part of a boat.

Now that the bits are starting to come together, it's starting to look like one day these could become part of a boat. Yes, that is the kitchen table, and yes - I have a very tolerant wife.

Sharp Things

No surgeon could have cut a thinner slice from my thumb.

The rule is simple, don't put anything on the sharp side of a tool that you are not happy to cut.

Using a chisel like a paint scraper to remove glue while holding the workpiece with your hand across from, but in front of the chisel is just not very smart.

It didn't even hurt, the I keep my chisels sharp, real sharp, so after the chisels arc intersected with flesh and blood the tiny nick on my thumb just bled quietly.

Just enough to let me know that if I had been less fortunate, I'd be wandering down to A&E asking the nice doctors if they would kindly stitch me back together.

Skin, tenons, ligaments, and even bones will offer little resistance to a sharp chisel moving at the speed of stupidity.

It's cold comfort that nothing more than good fortune stood between me and an afternoon in A&E.

Never enough clamps

I've started putting the frames together...

This is a big step. I am going from a pile of funny shaped bits of wood to things that are starting to look like they may belong to a boat.

Part of this is the drawing out of the frames on the layout board (the crappy 6mm "marine" ply that I bought before I knew better - came in useful after all)

Given he half plans, you draw a center line, then draw the plans out on both sides, and measure a few times to make sure that you are symmetric.

A word to the wise, Do this before you cut your frames. Cut the side frame parts from the patterns, and then cut the bottom frame parts to fit. Otherwise, you can end up with your bottom members too short. (I cut mine long on purpose, so I just have to trim to fit)

Since I am using Balcotan PU glue for the frames, I need LOTS of clamping pressure, the nails are fine for holding things in place, but I use about 10 F clamps per joint. Since I only have 10 f clamps - this means one joint at a time. I see more F clamps in my future.

The Balcotan is great for flat surfaces, but it had no strength in gaps.

Horses for courses - it has no fumes to speak of - so I can happily glue up on the kitchen table, if I were using Epoxy, I would need to set up outside, in the garden, and given our biblical summer (raining for 40 days and 40 nights), setting up in the garden is not always easy.

Once I have a few of them glued up, I'll post pictures.

Fixing Frames

Along the way I had about four frame parts that needed recutting, so this weekend, since the weather cooperated, I recut them.


I have a batten of plywood that I cut with the jigsaw, this is exactly the width of the distance between the side of the jigsaw base and the blade. By lining this up with my cut line, and clamping a guide beside it...

I can then run the jigsaw along this guide and get a perfect cut every time. This has the benefit that the entire base of the jigsaw is supported for the cut. Using the Jig I use to use... Old JigSaw Guide only one side was supported, and cuts were not always square.

One thing to bear in mind while you are congratulating yourself on a perfect cut, is that a Bosch Jigsaw is powerful enough to cut through the bench as well as the oak, and you won't notice it slowing down, or working any harder. If it can slash through 1" White Oak, then an extra half inch of Black and Decker workbench is nothing.

Some Snaps

Just a quick snap of the foremost frame, and some of the concertina shavings that suggest that its getting to be time to touch up the edge.


The layout board is the 3 ply plywood that I had bought in the local builders providers. I had to find some use for it.

Once you have the lines drawn out on a board, it becomes a lot easier to make sure things line up just so.

Rain, Interspersed with Heavy Showers and Occasional Drizzle.

I had great plans for this weekend. I long list of things that I was planning on doing. The weather had other plans. This summer has really not been suited to outdoor boatbuilding. It's been best suited to getting on a plane and going somewhere else.

I did get some work done, I had to plane a simple Oak batten to fit between two plywood gussets, The slats for the seats will screw into these battens. Given that I had gone to the trouble of buying some decent blades for my planes and some waterstones and then going to the trouble of reading all about sharpening, I thought I'd leave the Bosch in its box and break out the Stanley.

The blade was sharp, bald patch on my arm sharp. Gillete eat your heart out. I set the plane to take very thin shavings and started. I had to take about 3/16 of an inch off the batten to make it fit, and I had to square it up a little.

Damn, It's hard work. Oak is hard stuff, and I had the "benefit" of trying to do this on a fold up work bench, so I had to use my weight to hold the bench steady and my arms to plane. I gather that with a proper bench you get to use your body weight to do the planing.

I found that Oak will blunt a blade quite quickly, you can feel it getting harder and harder to push the plane, and you find the shavings concertina. This is a good indication that 30 seconds on the waterstone is required, sacrifice some more hair from my arm to the Sharp Gods, and off we go again.

It was a great experience to square and thickness the wood the old fashioned way, but I will admit to dragging out the Bosch in order do the second batten, in about 1/10th of the time.

When you look at pictures of old wooden sailing ships, and think that they didn't have Bosch, Makita, or even Black and Decker, you start to look at them in a different light.

Oh yes, and never try a crushing handshake on someone who actaully uses a hand tools for a living.

A centerboard case.

Having a lifting keel or centerboard in a small sail boat seems like a wonderful idea. A nice deep fin for beating upwind, and a nice shallow draft for coming in to shore. And it makes trailering easier.

Of course there's the whole problem of the big hole that you make in the bottom of the boat to allow you to lower and raise the keel.

The design calls for a centerboard case which passes through a slot in the oak keel, and there are two oak bedlogs (planks) either side of the box which sit on the keel.

That would be fine if the keel were flat, but the 5/4th thick oak keel is actually curved. The bedlogs have to match perfectly, or the centerboard case will leak like a Government Department. And they have to be aligned so that the trunk case sits vertically upright.

To make matters more interesting, the ends of the centerboard case need to butt up perfectly to the frames - So I need to build the centerboard case before I bend the oak keel over the frames, but I need to bend the oak keel to find the shape for the bed logs.....

- Here's the plan.

I'll build the CenterBoard case with the logs just tacked in place with a screw or two. I'll shift the logs away from the keel so that they only touch the keel at the frames. I'll also just screw the Case to the frames that it buts against.

Then when I've bent the keel into place, I can trace the curve of the keel, cut them, take the case out and complete the assembly and replace it. Glue and screw the whole lot togehter and I'm sorted.

What do you think ?

Plywood

There's plywood, and there's marine plywood and there's Marine Plywood.

The local builders providers sells marine ply. Excellent. Less than half the price of the stuff sold by Waller Wickham. What's not to like.

Well - specifically, there's only 3 plys on the 6mm boards. And the veneer ply is as thin as paint, leaving a big fat ply in the middle with all it's strength along one axis. Not likely to hold up to much of anything.

So I bit the bullet and wandered down to Waller Wickham and got a sheet of 5 ply 6mm to make up the gussets and the centerboard case. I believe the ply they stock is Robbins Elite.

Who was it that said "Light, strong, cheap, pick any two". This stuff is light, strong, well made, but not cheap.

I didn't feel as though I even had a decision to make though, the builders yard marine ply was totally inadequate, even though it was stamped with BS1088.

Fun with Epoxy

In the end I went with GRS for my epoxy. They were very prompt about delivery.

I mixed up a small batch and epoxied some glass cloth across two peices of ply. I let it set for 24 hours and then tested to destruction.

With a lot of abuse, the cloth delaminated where boards were joined together the. Not easily - I was jumping on the boards where they were set up against a step. The plys actually separated.

In addition I glued two scrap prices together with thickened epoxy and a very quick and dirty fillet. After much jumping up and down, I managed to break them apart - the wood broke, not the glue.

I am quite certain I could do a much better job, both of glassing and gluing, so I have every confidence in this Epoxy stuff. 8-)

Next tests,
* Gluing Oak to Ply.
* Gluing Oak to Oak.
* Glassing a trailing edge.

Ruining Wood

I'm getting to the stage where I will start assembling the various odd shaped bits of wood onto a frame to make the skeleton for my boat.

In order to do this I need to build the Center Board Case, as two of the frames but up against this.

The Center Board case needs to be glassed. Since I'm making up the Case, it seemed appropriate to make up the Centerboard at the same time.

This means I need to Shape and Glass the Center Board, and Glass the Case.

I have never used Epoxy before for much beyond fixing the pendulum of a clock - please don't ask. So I reasoned that I would make up a test rudder from cheap ply instead of the good marine stuff, and glass it. This would be a learning experience, and I would not ruin anything expensive.

Along the way I figured out the following

* Prime the epoxy pumps by pumping out a little into a scrap cup and bin it. It means wasting a little epoxy, but not nearly as much as if you pump out too little hardener and work everything up only to find it doe not set.

* Epoxy goes a lot further than you'd expect. I made up what I thought was about half what I needed for my test piece only to have twice what I needed.

* How to glass the trailing edge is not obvious - try this link, go to the foils section - mothboat

* You can use the glue lines in the plywood to keep you rudder or center board symetrical.

I made a lot of mistakes, which was good, it meant I learned at least what not to do.

Beale Park Boat Show

I went along to beale park boat show, Wonderful place. I got to sail around in a deben lugger which is a lug yawl, using carbon fiber spars. A nice mix of the old and new. I saw the Bay Raider and a build in progress of a Secret. There was a Thames Punt with a nice rack at the back to hold one Champagne bottle and Two glasses. Just two mind, three would be a crowd.



The real highlight was meeting the builder of this, a retired pilot's first build. If he had told me he'd been doing this for a living for most of his life, this boat would have made me believe it.


And along the way I came across an interesting car...

Getting Epoxy in Dublin

Prices in EUROs, as converted June 07.

Note: DiscountMarines info is from their OLD web site.

As far as I know this information is correct as of today 6th June 2007. This is not a comprehensive list. If this infomation is incorrect, or you have another supplier that I could add to the list, drop in a comment and I will try to update the list as and when I have time. Free information is worth what you pay for it. If you are buying large quantities, go do some further research 8-).

Epoxy and boat shows.

Currently trying to source epoxy now in Ireland. I will post a table here soon with prices, delivery, and landed cost per liter.

I'm also off to the Beale Park Boat Show on the thames this weekend. Expect Pictures.

I've cut most of the plywood peices that I traced out on the 18mm ply. You really gotta love a decent JigSaw.

From Ply to Sheaves and Bronze Strips.

I've marked out a 4x8 18mm Marine ply for the transom, centerboard and floors and laminations for the stem and breasthooks. Now all have to do is to cut it out.
Marking it out was made far easier by
* a little spiked wheel with a handle, bought in a fabric shop. Put down the carbon paper and roll the wheel along the lines.
* a T Square made from two offcuts of PLY screwed together at right angles. Or you can buy one for €20 - really if you are building a boat, a T Square should be trivial to make :-)

The only down side is that the forecast for the weekend is rain, so I doubt that I'll get much cutting done.

In the mean time I've been trying to find a good source for for the cute little bronze bits and for fibre glass and epoxy (ouch that's expensive stuff, and it's considered hazardous for shipping which means I can't just buy it in from the US.).

I plan to make the cleets from wood - just for fun. But for things like the strap that holds the sheave for the centerboard, all I need is about 8 inches of 1" x 1/8th" bronze strip. Fine. Only nobody wants to sell less than an 10 foot strip. And shipping a 10 foot strip of anything is expensive.

It's the little things. It's always the little things. The Devil is indeed in the details.

A weekend off

Life is full of deadlines, work, college and full of things that need to be done, like putting up a security light, or wiring a light in a cupboard, or handing up another stats project. I need another deadline like I need an itchy rash.

Building a small boat, should not be like that. And this weekend I did nothing on the boat. We visited my parents in law. Went out in the evenings, looked at a house for sale that we couldn't afford anyway - didn't like it much. But there was no progress on the boat.

In my actually free time, a scarce commodity when you have a rug rat, I read - admittedly I read books about boat building, scarfing short lengths of wood to make up a mast, and books about woodwork jigs.

So there's not much to report about the boat, other than when I am working on it, I really do enjoy it. I don't work on it just because I feel I have to.

A little off topic

We have a general election coming up.

The immediate impact of this is that

• A tribunal set up to investigate corruption is going to defer questioning our glorious leader until after the election.
• There's speculation that the winning government may reform stamp duty on houses. So no-one is buying houses in advance of the election.
• Everything that stands still for more than 35 seconds has a poster on if of some politician grinning smugly, usually in a suit that costs more than most peoples monthly pay cheque.
• The Canvasers are coming. You get home from a hard days work and have dinner, then sit down to read a good book and the door bell rings. Some twit with a badge whom you have never seen before in your life feels he's perfectly entitled knock on your door and ask if he can count on your vote -
  I'm trying do decide on a new sign - "No dogs or Politicicans*" or "No peddlers of politicial ideology or other useless tat"
• And finally the graffetti artists are stepping up to the mark. "If voting really changed anything it would be illegal"

So please make the effort, go out and vote 1,2 and 3 in order of your choice

• The Corrupt
• The Inept
• The Idealogically Bankrupt

* Actually dogs are ok if they are house trained

The Keel

This weekend I cut the Keel. It's basically a 12'x4"x5/4" board. 5/4" being the thickness that when planned will end up 1" net thickness.

One thing that I did along the way was to put a fresh set of blades in the planer/thicknesser. Big difference, huge. Oak really is hard on steel power tool blades.

Now I need to put a 7 degree bevel either side of the center, and to cut out the slot for the centerboard. The slot will be interesting. I see some test cuts first in a peice of scrap. Actually I see a lot of test cuts in a lot of peices of scrap.

It seems like a milestone. I still have one frame peice to cut, then I start trying to assemble things. I can imagine having to recut some of the frame peices, but it should be easier now that I have learned a few things along the way.

I can see me recutting the transom frames. It was a bad plan to start cutting them first. What was I thinking. Cut the bevelled frames first. I also cut them with a jigsaw. Fine for the curves, but the long straight edges to be cut at a bevel really do cry out for a tablesaw.

People keep asking when it will be done. Work has deadline, my maths degree has deadlines. I need another deadline like I need and itchy rash. It'll be done when it's done or shortly thereafter.

Lisnavagh Timber Project

I went down to Lisnavagh yesterday to get some Oak boards, and picked out a few boards with the help of William Burnbury. They have a system to track every board, so they can show you where it came from. They even print you off a photo of the tree. They are very much into sustainable use of the resources. William was kind enough to email me the picture of the tree for my blog. From the history that William provided this fell itself so I don't even need to feel guilty about it being chopped down.

Now all I need is some good weather to turn this old tree into a boat.

More general progress

Yesterday I made a cross cut sled for the table saw. This rocks. Table saws should all come with with a cross cut sled. Only then saws would cost more and you can make them yourself. There's so many pages showing how to make one, this is just off the top of google. It makes cross cutting and angles soooo much easier.

I also started cutting the peices for the frame that I will use to build the boat on. That feels like a big step. I know I have a bit more to do before I start setting it up, but it's all progress in the right direction.

Since I had no good oak, I made use of some bad oak. I took some long thin strips that I had ripped for test peices and made up a test bed by simply screwing some scraps into a scrap plywood board. Then I bent and glued two strips around a bend that one one single strip twice as thick would not have bent around. The glue up went fine.

This is how I intend to deal with curves. Forget steaming, rip and laminate. Now that I've tried it, I will feel more confident about doing it for real on the boat. A test scarf on a batten and on a scrap plywood board are next.

Oh yes, any more toys, a bosch power planer. Much and all as I love hand planes, beveling a 12' oak keel will be difficult on my PT85, so a power hand planer it is. And as a bonus, the guide for my bosch belt sander, which makes bench sander out of it will fit the planer and acts as a parallel guide so that I can plane rebates. (for all the rebates I make 8-)

General Update

I put a decent blade in my table saw, a Freud LP30M. Cuts straighter, and quieter.

I also got one of these Digital Angle Gauges. Put it on the saw table, zero it, put it on the blade, it's magnetic, and you can set the angle of the blade to 0.1 degrees

I started cutting the last frame peice only to discover that I had board made up entirely of sapwood. See my earlier post on sapwood.

This put an end to the boat work for the day, so I planed a peice of scrap to the thickess of the mitre slots and ripped 8 battens for use as runners when making various table saw jigs.

One thing that I found very useful was a cheap grout float. The sort that you use for grouting tiles. It's basically a handle on a small metal board with a rubber surface. It give you great control as you feed the wood, with the advantage that if anything slips and makes contact with the saw blade you stand a really good chance of ruining a €10 float rather than your hand.
(It's since been pointed out that the metal in the grout float would catch in the blade rather than simply being cut by it - this could be a really bad thing)

Wet stones and good blades

I had thought that shaving the back of your arm with a plane blade was an urban myth, perpetuated by the Old Woodworkers to make us new guys feel perpetually inadequate.

However, in search of sharpness, I bought some high carbon plane blades from Hock Tools and a set of Ice Bear Waterstones from Axminster. (Nice fast delivery on both counts)

So I spent the time flattening the back of the blade, then honing the front till I found the burr, then removing the burr.

And there you go. It lifted a few hairs from the back of my arm, not quite up to Gillette's standard, but sharper than anything I've managed previously.

I am converted. My old wet and dry paper collection will now be reserved for flattening the wetstones. I've already ordered a course 220 grit wetstone to do the back of the cheaper blades, which have far move visible machine marks.

Curves

They say that to mark a curve, use a batten. They don't say you need 15 hands.

With a batten held in a curve by a peice of twine, you must shorten the twine until it curves the batten to the correct length. This proves difficult. How do you shorten the twine and tie it off at exactly the right length.

I used course twine and twisted a pen into it. Now I can set the curve by simply pulling the twine further up the pen. I can slide the loop of twine up the pen away from the batten, and this curves the batten a little more.

It gives me very fine control over the curve in the batten.

If the pen is in the middle of the batten, then the curve will be symmetric. If I need the curve to be asymmetric, then I move the pen nearer one end than the other. The curve will be more pronounced at the end where the pen is.

Then I just clamp it in place and draw the line.

All with just two hands.

Progress

I know the photo looks like the logo for kids space toy, but to me it's progress.

This weekend I managed to cut all of the 4th Frame. Now I have the transom, Frames 1, 2 and 4. I'm mising frame 3 as I did not have a clean peice of Oak large enough for the cross beam. Frame 3 is next.

(The cross beam on Frame 4 is left long for fitting.)

Once that is complete, I have to get some marine ply for the gussets and for the stem.

And for the Centerboard.

Then there's the keel. That is a 5/4" * 4" * 12' Oak board, and Brookes only sell 9' boards. I think there's a little bit of work with the phone book in my near future.

More Planes

I've inherited these from my Grandfather. They look like they've been left on a shelf for quite a while... I guess some clean up is in order...

D

Why the slow down

In the last while,

* I've build a small tool shed (for the boat parts and heavy tools)
* Wired up some new light fittings
* Built a built in wardrobe
* Gone on holidays

So now I'm back building, hopefully there will be more to report..... And a few more pictures.

Planing Oak

I actually got some work don on the boat today. I took some of my rough Oak boards and planed planed and thicknessed them ready to mark and cut Frame and Frame 4.

It takes a lot of passes to get the cup out of the boards, but at least I can record the exact setting of the thicknessor so that each piece is the same thickness.

When running 7 inch wide oak through the thicknessor (A Woodster pt85) I can turn the handle about 1/8 of a turn each pass, and take off about 1/4 mm. Any more and the machine grinds to a halt. (Previous Posts)

I guess it is a little unfair asking a hobby machine to deal with 7" wide oak boards. But if I go slowly it copes. The finish would drive a cabinet maker to drink, but then I'm making a boat to sail, not to stare at.

I've sort of decided to redo the transom frame. Now that I have a table saw I reckon I can do a better job of the bevels. But that's another day.

I set up the table saw fully last night. The Easiest way of getting the side extension tables level with the main table is to take off the guard, lower the blade right inside the saw, flip it upside down on a large table and attach the side extensions there. They cannot but be level with the saw table. Worked a treat.

The forecast is poor for tomorrow, so I will probably settle for simply marking out the frames and then try to cut them after work during the week.

D

More Toys - A drill driver

I have lived from some time with a cheap and cheerless 18v portable drill. Pretty good when the battery was charged, but the battery didn't last very long, and I drained a battery just doing the floor of my "boat shed".

Then I came across this Makita cordless impact driver set . It's a world apart from my old toy cordless. The quality is obvious in just handling it. The impact driver easily belts screws into solid oak without any of the usual ruining of the screw heads. And I got it up in the US for less than half the price of buying it in Europe. Add a €20 transformer and off you go.

By the way - why are power tools so much cheaper in the US? Who's making a small fortune on the ones sold here in Ireland?

A boat shed

Not so much for putting the boat in, but rather somewhere to put some of the accumulation of tools and parts for the boat, to free up the kitchen.

I couldn't find anything the size I want so I built one myself.