Adding Padding!

It had to happen sooner or later. I was a bit too enthusiastic putting the bevels on the hairpin at the stern and took off too much, easy to do with a sharp plane! So I had to glue some strips of timber on to replace the missing stuff.

With those bits glued and screwed (same error both sides!) I added the first of the ribbands. These have to be notched into the moulds and, as far as I can see, can be placed anywhere. I think 9 or 10 on each side will be OK so started with one in the middle. It is good to see that it assumes a fair shape when it sits in its notches.

In this photo you can see the bevel on the inner keel. This was hard work! I realised it would be so wanted to do it before adding the ribbands, so that I could get my body in between the frames. If you enlarge the photo (click on it) you can see a hollow in the top of the keel just to the left of my duck. This frightened me (and still does) because I thought the top of the keel should be straight. but what will happen is that the planking fills up the hollow more where the angle it comes in at is closer to flat. At least I think that is what happens, I can see it in my lofting. However, intuition says the hollow should not be there!

Ribbands

At least I think they are ribbands - the fore and aft components of the frame that the planking is made over. Long thin pieces of timber about 16 or 17 mm square and 5.3 metres long, 10 each side of the boat so 20 in total. These are not a part of the finished boat so the choice of timber isn't important. I bought some Radiata Pine boards 184x19 mm and scarph joined them end to end. Then ripped them into 17 mm strips on the table saw, turned them on edge and ran them through again to make them 17 mm square.

Ripping long lengths of timber is an interesting exercise; for starters you need twice the length of the material to operate in. Here are some photos of the setup.

The long view; the roller table is a recent purchase and for this operation is very important. It is possible to hold up and control a narrow piece of timber but the full width board is too heavy and unwieldy to feed in a controlled way.

Here is the saw. The yellow device on the table is a feather board. Again it is a bought one and worth every dollar. I have always struggled with improvised arrangements held in place with clamps. This one has magnets to hold it in place and it really does a good job.

Behind the saw are two roller stands that carry the timber over the space between the saw and the workbench where there is a temporary run way to support the board as it runs through. There is just enough space between the saw blade and the back wall of the shed to accommodate the outgoing timber.

Finally, this is one of the by-products!

Inner Keel and Stem - continued

Cleaning up these two large laminations was a time consuming process but the clean up was easier to do at this stage rather than putting it off until the hull is built around them. Then the trial fitting and cutting the long hooked scarph joint that will join them together was complicated by their size. Here are photos showing the pieces in place but only the keel to stern block has been glued.

The aft section of the keel has to be tapered as it approaches the stern. The whole length of it has to be beveled so the planking has an appropriate surface to land on.

Here is the inner part of the stem sitting in place. I was impressed at how well it fitted, matching perfectly with the hairpin and first 2 station moulds. The scarph joint is visible where the clamp is at the top.

A view from the front (taken through the window!). Again, a lot of the stem has to be removed to provide a fair landing for the planking. I could do most of this with the stem on the bench where it would be easier to work on or with it glued in place. The advantage of doing it in place is that progress can be checked continually using a fairing batten, hopefully avoiding the need to glue filler pieces on where too much has been removed.

Stern Block, Inner Keel and Stem

The stern block was too small both fore and aft and vertically so more wood was glued on with epoxy. When the glue set I rough shaped it using a long batten across the frames to check progress. There was about half a wheelie bin of shavings to clean up!

The inner part of the keel has a 100x50 mm cross section and is about 4.5 m long. Half of it is straight and half is curved as it comes up to the stern. Clearly this size timber would not bend so it had to be either cut from solid timber (pieces scarph joined together) or laminated from thinner strips. I chose to laminate it and tried a 100x12.5 piece of hoop pine over the curve; it broke! Ended up with 5 strips of 100x10 each of them with a scarph joint somewhere to get the length needed. Then the biggest gluing job I have ever done, five pieces of timber, 4 glue lines to be primed on both surfaces and then one surface coated with thickened epoxy before being stacked along the top of the moulds. Usual problem with clamps - you never have enough of them!

While that lot of epoxy has a couple of days to harden I made a start on the inside stem. Again there is a curve to negotiate and this time it is sharper. I didn't fancy laminating this (at least 10 strips to get to the 50 mm thickness plus possible soaking or even steaming to get them round the bend) so decided to build it out of 25 mm thick blocks. Once again it needs to be 100 mm wide so four layers of blocks with all the joints staggered. Here is the first layer of 4 blocks being glued up over the plan from the lofting - how can it not fit? You can only just see it, there is kitchen film under the glue joints so it doesn't get stuck to the plan.

 Over the next few days I will be cleaning up the sides of the inner keel and building up the rest of the inner stem. Here is a photo of the inner stem with the last layer glued in place.