A Shipwright in Training

plus equals about how close we got to missing our deadline. Phew. Not that it would be huge deal, the price is that you have to come in an hour early every day for a week, but we prefer to have that be voluntary.

In the past few days we finished fitting and painting the sole

and now the inside of the boat is a consistent, boring shade of Beetle Gray. We’ll have all our fun with color on the deck and hull. (more…)

If you don’t live in Rhode Island I’ve heard that you won’t know about the following thing:  Coffee Milk.  Like Chocolate Milk, only with coffee.  I just discovered this stuff the other day and I’m here to say that coffe milk and a bagel in the morning makes everything good and right.

Wow.  Who knew?

IYRS is nothing if not a monument to the romance of building wooden boats.  When you throw in a foggy day like it’s been today, it only adds to the charm of the place.

Out back by all the old Beetles waiting to be restored.

The pier alongside the Coronet building.

That’s it.  Coffee milk and fog in Newport.  The foghorn on Jamestown Island sounding every 15 seconds.  This is a pretty great place to be.

A while back, I left it up in the air about what the final decision would be regarding the mast: does it get a Dutchman or does it have to be remade completely? Well, here’s the photographic answer:

Woo hoo! That’s a jig for making a very straight slot in the mast so I could put in a Dutchman. This is exactly the kind of thing that I love to do: to come up with a way to save materials and time while working out an interesting problem.

The real challenge was to lock in the mast so that it wouldn’t move while I ran the router down its length. If you look at the very top of the mast there, you can see 2 little blocks wedged into either side of the top. Those hold the top centered and straight. The box around the mast is just a track for the router sled to ride on. It worked very well, and I got a nice 1/8″ slot straight down the mast along the epoxy joint. Looks like this:

Add in a spline of sitka spruce and you get this:

It came out nicely. Epoxied that puppy in, planed it down to just barely proud of the surface of the mast, sanded everything round, and it’s just right. From start to finish it took about 2 hours. Compared to the time and materials it would have taken to build a new one… that was a total bargain. For some reason I didn’t take a photo of the finished product. Later I reckon.

So, secret to happiness No. 1: find something interesting to do that will save you time and materials, and then do it. (more…)

One of the unexpected side effects of this blog is that I get to hear about other interesting boat projects from folks who stumble onto the site. For instance, Glenn in Alaska has been working on a 1953 Bristol Bay gillnetter with a really cool transom:

Here’s to BB Twelve, and another labor of love.

There’s this whole world of folks working on their boats, or their programs, or something else that they love, sharing what they know freely to anyone who happens to bump into them online. This open sharing is one of the ideals that the net was created to promote, and I feel proud and lucky to be able to add a little something to it.

Makes me think of a story I heard about monks begging in India. The monks only own their robes and begging bowls, and every day they live on whatever people give them. The monks say that they’re doing a service to the community, because when people give something, they know that they’ve made a difference in a person’s life. That’s the gift back.

We’re all monks on this bus.

(photo borrowed from http://adonai.home.cern.ch/Adonai/Mongolia_Toretes_trip1.htm )

I’m forever amazed at how tricky some of these seemingly simple joints are. That amazement tends to come after I’ve screwed up a piece and didn’t see it coming. There’s a big “HUH…” squinty eyed look, like the part has just told you something you don’t quite believe. What the hell, I measured you, I cut you accurately, what do you mean “I don’t fit??” That’s just crazy talk.

Everyone says that the tough thing about building a boat is the lack of right angles. Personally, I think that’s one of the most interesting things about it. In some cases, you can work out and mark the cuts you’re going to make ahead of time, and in other cases, you have to look at the part carefully and make little marks on it to guide you in what is essentially free-handing when you plane or chisel. Today was a little of both. Let’s start with the Carlins.

Ok, you totally saw that coming.

The Carlins are the longitudinal supports that attach to the ends of the short deck beams around the cockpit. They help support the little deck there. Just looking at them, you’d think, what a simple thing. You cut the piece to length, maybe bevel it a bit, and screw it to the deck beams. How easy is that?? Here’s the starboard carlin clamped above the short deck beams.

A few things are worth noting here.

1. The carlin curves outwards to follow the curve of the boat.
2. The carlin also curves upwards slightly as it goes fore and aft to follow the sweep of the sheer.
3. The carlin also remains roughly plumb as it curves (the inner face stays straight up and down)

Since the carlin curves outboard, you can’t just sit the rough carlin on the boat and measure how long it is. The curve adds some length. Cut it by laying it out straight and you’ll be about 1/2″ too short. Also since it curves outward, the surface where it meets the long deck beams forward and aft are not 90 degree cuts. They’re beveled (you can see this by curving your fingers slightly and holding your fingertips against a flat surface… they don’t meet at 90 degrees), and you have to figure out what that side-to-side bevel is.

Since the carlin curves upwards as well, there’s also a top-to-bottom bevel that has to be taken into account.

Since the carlin ends up plumb, you have to keep it plumb when you pre-bend it to work out your bevels. The carlin is resting on curved deck beams both fore and aft as you’re doing this (you can sort of see that in the above photo) and it doesn’t Want to stay plumb. It wants to sit on the curve of the deck beam. Also, bending the carlin in 2 directions makes it want to twist out of plumb.

Now we’re having some fun, eh? (more…)

The boat is looking quite nice with her deck beams installed.

You’d never know that there’s LOTS more to do before she’s ready to sail. The sole (floor boards) and ceilings (the boards that go up the insides next to the sole) are next on the list. And then there’s the actual deck to be built and canvassed. So, don’t be fooled… miles to go before we sleep.

The Beetle Cat has a small ledge of decking that stretches along the sides of the cockpit, and it needs to be supported by something. For that, we use short deck beams and and a longitudinal member called a carlin. The little deck beams were relatively easy to make. You just have to make sure they will be tall enough and long enough so that you can do some shaping on them later. You can see them installed here.

Like the deck beams, they still need to be notched so that they fit snug against the sheer clamp and the inside face of the sheer plank. In other words, you can’t just throw them in.

We use really nice pine for our deck beams. It’s dead clear and just wonderful to work with. However, we are shaving a lot of end grain and that requires sharp tools.

Ok, you always need sharp tools. Period.

(more…)

That’s pretty much the attitude I’ve taken regarding the mast… act as if everything is fine. The fact is, I’m 90% sure we’ll decide to re-make it when I return from Spring Break next Monday. The sealer and keeping it outside appears to have halted the propagation of splits, but the bottom line is that this mast has a huge, albeit filled, split running along her top 1/3. It stands out like a sore thumb because of the color difference. Another option would be to rout out a slot where the split is and fill it with a wood shim, sometimes called a Dutchman… the Apple dictionary defines this as “a wedge or piece used to conceal a flaw in construction.” Hmm. Can’t say I like the emphasis on flaw in construction. Of course the same definition also includes the phrase: “I’m a Dutchman” Brit. used to express one’s disbelief or as a way of underlining an emphatic assertion : “if she’s seventeen, I’m a Dutchman.” I’m going to have to find a way to insert that one into conversation some time.

So, in the service of smiling and walking, I worked out the tenon at the foot of the mast to match up with the mast step. Here’s what I’m talking about. You take the round end of your mast, find the center, draw a rectangle on it, and cut that rectangle out to make a tenon. Here it is in process.

After you finish all 4 corners you make the shoulder angled to match the mast step like so:

“Mast step?” What’s the mast step, you may ask. Clearly I’ve gotten ahead of myself.

I could just do this whole report in reverse, like “Memento” but without the boat builder being shot in the head part. Nah. Let’s start from where we left off before.

(more…)

That’s pretty much the attitude I’ve taken regarding the mast… act as if everything is fine. The fact is, I’m 90% sure we’ll decide to re-make it when I return from Spring Break next Monday. The sealer and keeping it outside appears to have halted the propagation of splits, but the bottom line is that this mast has a huge, albeit filled, split running along her top 1/3. It stands out like a sore thumb because of the color difference. Another option would be to rout out a slot where the split is and fill it with a wood shim, sometimes called a Dutchman… the Apple dictionary defines this as “a wedge or piece used to conceal a flaw in construction.” Hmm. Can’t say I like the emphasis on flaw in construction. Of course the same definition also includes the phrase: “I’m a Dutchman” Brit. used to express one’s disbelief or as a way of underlining an emphatic assertion : “if she’s seventeen, I’m a Dutchman.” I’m going to have to find a way to insert that one into conversation some time.

So, in the service of smiling and walking, I worked out the tenon at the foot of the mast to match up with the mast step. Here’s what I’m talking about. You take the round end of your mast, find the center, draw a rectangle on it, and cut that rectangle out to make a tenon. Here it is in process.

After you finish all 4 corners you make the shoulder angled to match the mast step like so:

“Mast step?” What’s the mast step, you may ask. Clearly I’ve gotten ahead of myself.

I could just do this whole report in reverse, like “Memento” but without the boat builder being shot in the head part. Nah. Let’s start from where we left off before.

(more…)

That’s pretty much the attitude I’ve taken regarding the mast… act as if everything is fine. The fact is, I’m 90% sure we’ll decide to re-make it when I return from Spring Break next Monday. The sealer and keeping it outside appears to have halted the propagation of splits, but the bottom line is that this mast has a huge, albeit filled, split running along her top 1/3. It stands out like a sore thumb because of the color difference. Another option would be to rout out a slot where the split is and fill it with a wood shim, sometimes called a Dutchman… the Apple dictionary defines this as “a wedge or piece used to conceal a flaw in construction.” Hmm. Can’t say I like the emphasis on flaw in construction. Of course the same definition also includes the phrase: “I’m a Dutchman” Brit. used to express one’s disbelief or as a way of underlining an emphatic assertion : “if she’s seventeen, I’m a Dutchman.” I’m going to have to find a way to insert that one into conversation some time.

So, in the service of smiling and walking, I worked out the tenon at the foot of the mast to match up with the mast step. Here’s what I’m talking about. You take the round end of your mast, find the center, draw a rectangle on it, and cut that rectangle out to make a tenon. Here it is in process.

After you finish all 4 corners you make the shoulder angled to match the mast step like so:

“Mast step?” What’s the mast step, you may ask. Clearly I’ve gotten ahead of myself.

I could just do this whole report in reverse, like “Memento” but without the boat builder being shot in the head part. Nah. Let’s start from where we left off before.

(more…)