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...