Gone traveling!

There will not be much posted here until I get home in November 2015. That's the plan unless I decide to spend longer in the UK. Stay tuned.

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.

Fitting the Hairpin and Adding the Frames

Fitting the hairpin was fairly straightforward. It sits on the cross supports at the camber of the deck and is attached to the hairpin with blocks screwed to its underside and to the cross supports. The support at the stem was a bit fiddly to organise mainly because I hadn't thought it through! The forward end of the hairpin is in the photo below.

At the stern of the boat there is a laminated block glued between the ends of the hairpin. I had been glueing up pieces to make this block over the past week or so. Now it is in place I think it might need another layer adding to it. Most of this block will be cut away to make it conform to the shape of the hull.

With the hairpin in place the ends of the cross supports are trimmed off so they don't interfere with the planking when that begins.

Fitting the frames was straightforward; they stand on top of the hairpin and are attached to it with blocks screwed to it and to the frames. That all went smoothly and I was pleased that a batten along the line of the keel touched all the frames nicely. The three photos below show that the boat is taking shape and beginning to look like a boat!

With the frames in place I am reclaiming some of the space in the shed which was taken up with the stacked frames. Tomorrow's job is to do some more reorganising so that I have more working space and don't need to be continually climbing over things that are lying in the way!

Building Frame

With the hairpin finished I could lift up the lofting floor and put it to one side. If needs be it can be reassembled but finding enough space to do that would be difficult. Hopefully it won't be needed or, if it is, only part of it will be needed.

With the floor cleaned the building frame could be put together. Here is the basic ladder frame. I was lucky some months ago to find the 2 Glulam beams (200 x 50 x 6 metres) in the local Bunnings store where they were either surplus to an order or had been returned, either way Bunnings wanted them out of the way and they were cheap! They are like 50mm thick plywood, dead straight and will stay that way forever.

The frame is in the right position and the sides will be shortened so that the shed door will close and to provide space at the back of the shed to walk around. The shed is 6 metres and the boat is 5.48 so it is a tight fit. There is enough space under the sides for me to wriggle under and then sit up. This will be awkward  and hopefully not something that I will have to do very often but it will be possible.

The station positions were marked out putting the stern of the boat so it will almost be touching the tilt-a-door when it is closed. The ends of the side beams were cut off, a string line on the centre line and 100mm below the water line organised and the cross beams at each station fitted. Here it is:

More cross supports are needed to support the hairpin or deck shelf. These supports follow the height of the sheerline and are cut at an angle so that the hairpin sits at the camber of the deck. Each of these supports sits on 2 legs coming up from the station cross beams. Getting them centred, at the right height and level was tricky but a batten laid along the centre line touched them all nicely with no kinks!

Next step is to fix the hairpin to the cross supports so that it can be disconnected when the time to turn the boat over comes in quite a few months. This is one reason that I will need to crawl under the frame.