A Shipwright in Training

With the major varnishing done, there’s an air of calm that’s descending on our little corner of the shop. Nothing hard left to do really, just ticking off the list of things to attach and paint.

And when we make a mistake, we say “it is what it is.” We’ve been saying that a lot, actually.

The perfect is the enemy of the good. But still, we like to see if we can get perfect to come over and give us a kiss from time to time.

We’ve got another coat of paint on the deck. good thing, because the deck was looking quite pale next to the deeper blue of the quarter round molding.

Now it’s all a deep, satisfying shade of blue. You can’t really tell in that photo, but we’ve also put on the final coat of white topside paint.

Along the way, I remembered that we had to make a little block that ties to the line that you use to pull up the centerboard. The block acts as a stopper to keep the line from falling down the centerboard trunk slot. At first I was going to make an octagon, but it was too difficult to work out all the angles precisely. You don’t want to make a thing like that and have it look all wonky… it’s right or you don’t bother. But still, the square block was again too dull, so I turned something close to a ball, and we’ll use that.

We’ve got most of our spar hardware properly located and attached.

We had some trouble figuring out exactly where to place the outhaul cleat on the boom. (more…)

Ok, rushing may Feel like the only viable course of action at times, but really, you don’t need me to tell you that it’s a bad road to travel sonny. And I’m not particularly good at taking my own advice on this one either. It’s weird, when there’s tons to be done but we have to wait (I’ll get to this), I have a real hard time just kicking back and doing nothing.

Here’s the story. I got in a little early today to prep the boat for its last varnishing.

All the bright finished surfaces got a good sanding with 220 grit followed by a red scotch brite pad. All we needed was an extended period of time when there would be minimal dust in the shop. The whole school got a “talking to” by the program director around noon about the level of disorder in the shop, so today we were to do a Major Cleanup. That meant Major Dust, so I wanted to get that attended to as soon as possible. As soon as the dust settles, we’re good to go for varnishing & final boot stripe painting. We even flipped the boat to get the boot stripe taped up for this.

And then flipped the boat back upright again so we could do both the varnish work and the boot stripe. Unfortunately, we ran out of prep work by about 1:30. Cleanup wasn’t until 3:15 and I couldn’t convince folks to do it earlier, so we were stuck for almost 2 hours with nothing really to do. (more…)

The last weeks of finishing a boat when you’re on a deadline, or any project I suppose, does weird things to time. It’s like the once expansive sea of time has suddenly condensed into a very narrow rushing stream. For the last week I’ve felt this continual sense of urgency to get things finished. I don’t want to waste any time because I know there are too many little unknowns at this stage to trust that everything will just fall in place on time. Here’s one such thing.

The deck hardware. Simple enough, take the deck hardware and screw it to the deck. Here you can see the 2 blocks (pulleys) for the sail halyards next to the mast hole, the cleat for the bowline aft of that, and the 2 cleats for the halyards in front of the coaming.

The only simple thing in this photo is attaching the 2 blocks. That’s because, if you recall, beneath those blocks is a solid chunk of oak, the mast partner.

Those suckers will be bolted to the partner and, pod’ner, they ain’t goin‘ anywhere. (more…)

It’s true, varnishing is meditation. Varnish doesn’t care about you, and she doesn’t care if you’re in a hurry, if you only have 5 minutes, if you’re tired, or if just bought an expensive new Epifanes brush. If you’re not fully present and engaged, The Varnish will make you regret it with a shrug of her glossy shoulders.

Here’s the goal: apply a coat of varnish, approximately the consistency of thin honey, about paper thickness to a surface. Make that coat even and shiny, with no sags, drips, curtains or holidays.

Sag: The varnish has developed a thin film but the liquid beneath the film still runs a bit and it bunches up in a lumpy way, like when you don’t pull the covers tight and you get wrinkles in your bedspread.

Drip: That’s easy, just like it sounds. Like candle wax dripping down the side of the candle.

Curtain: A long undulating sag.

Holiday: A spot that’s either bare or obviously hasn’t gotten enough varnish.

This get’s tricky when that surface is not laying flat. Like, say, a mast on its side. The varnish starts to dry the second you brush it on. As it dries, it gets tacky and you can’t work with it any more. Brush it, and you just makes things worse. So, before it dries substantially, you have to brush on an even coat, catch the places where it’s starting to flow downhill and spread it out again. Essentially you have to coax it into place with constant, smooth brushing.

Let you attention drift for a bit, and you’ve left a holiday, or something else unpleasant that you’ll just have to sand out later.

I have got so much respect for good varnishers. It’s truly a skill. So, when you see a boat with really nice varnish work on her wood, take a moment to admire how someone was able to lay that down for coat after coat after coat. We’re shooting for 7 coats on all the bright finished (i.e., not painted) surfaces.

Strong directional light is not just you’re friend when you’re varnishing, it’s a critical tool. The technique is to brush on a bit, spread it, and check your work by looking at the reflection of the light on the surface of your varnish.

See the twin holidays just to the right of the light reflection?

Here you can see a variety of rough spots on the left side, and a slight holiday in the left foreground. (more…)

The changes in the boat these days alternate between obvious progress and subtle things that you’d probably never know about if you weren’t watching carefully. Here’s an obvious one:

Woah, deck’s on! We’re fairing it here, hence the longboard and shavings all over the place.

Woah! Fairing is done, and the deck’s primed white. Looks pretty spiffy this way, but this is the last record of how the deck actually looks. Next comes the deck canvas to cover everything up.

It looks like we’re almost done here, and there’s nothing like putting the mast in (just to test for fit, mind you) to make it seem like we’re almost ready to go.

Trust me, it’s a total illusion. There’s a ton of stuff yet to do. Here’s a short list:

• cut and install the coaming
• cut and install the rub rail
• install all the deck hardware
• put 7 coats of varnish on all bright finished surfaces (the spars, the coaming, etc.)
• fair the hull where the planks were replaced
• fair the entire hull
• paint the boat

Oh yes, miles to go before we sleep. Launch day is June 2nd, that’s less than 3 weeks away. (more…)

The angels must have been lonely after you fell from heaven.

Now I can say I’ve actually met the girl from Ipanema.

Ok, enough before breakfast comes up. Not THOSE kind of sweet lines. These kind of sweet lines:

We’ve finished the ceiling planks, and it was fascinating how something that looks so straight is in fact so curvy. Anyone with a decent exposure to topology I’m sure would give a big eye roll and a DUH, but for the rest of us, it’s just cool. Here’s my ceilings in place. Remember, they’re the boards that go up the inside of the boat. Notice how, with the exception of the lowest one, they seem to be straight…

However, the boat is bowing outwards, curving up, and making a very subtle sweep up as well; those features change everything. So, to get those straight lines, you end up with boards with that subtle sweep that you see in the top photo. (more…)

That’s how progress has felt these past 2 days. Case in point, here’s the sum total of Monday’s work:

One board, primed red. I came home, read about celestial navigation for 20 minutes and went to bed. It was that kind of day.

In case you’re wondering, that lovely board is the first of 5 ceilings. The ceilings go up the inside of the hull and form a little wall between you and the frames and planks. They serve to stiffen the boat as well as protect the planks for a poorly placed boot. I know, I know, they should be called wall planks or something like that, but they’re not. It’s a boat, deal with it. Like calling the bathroom The Head.

I can’t really explain why it took so long to produce a single board, other than to say that it involved spiling again, this time on the inside of the boat, and I was a bit out of practice.

I took the opportunity to use another method of spiling that I’d seen over at Jim’s shop. Instead of making marks on a spiling batten, you hot glue little tabs of wood to said batten.

The spiling batten is temporarily nailed in place, and these little tabs of scrap are hot glued onto the batten so that they run along the marrying edge of the outer sole. That defines one edge of the first ceiling plank. I’ve measured down from the sheer clamp along each frame and marked an equal distance on each frame that will leave me a minimum of 2″ width for this plank as well, and that defines the other edge. The little tabs of wood sticking out of the left side of the spiling batten reflect those marks. And here it is along the whole length.

Take this and transfer your marks to a board, just like with a plank…

And you’re back in familiar territory. Batten, bandsaw, plane, fit. That’s how it should work. Fitting took a lot longer than before, and there were many odd little inconsistencies that I just couldn’t figure out. Usually I can look at the places where the spiled plank doesn’t match up and say, “Oh, right, there’s where I messed up.”  Not here.  The inside curve of the hull may be a problem with this method of spiling since I’m measuring from the middle or top edge of the sole plank, rather than measuring the base of the plank where it meets the frame, but I’m not sure. At any rate, much fitting had to be done.

And fitting a thing that has to be sprung into place is not easy. That’s all I’m a gonna say about that.

Today I moved a slightly faster pace than glacial.

Yes, two, count ‘em, two, ceiling planks. It’s an improvement, but still painfully slow. I made an adjustment to yesterday’s spiling method that saved me a little time. Yesterday I glued the little tabs so that they met the marrying edge of the lower plank with flat edges. Today, I had them touch with their corners only. The advantage of this shows up in the de-spiling.

When you despile this way, you don’t have to mark your board and then connect the dots with your spiling batten. You can rest your spiling batten directly against the tab corners and you have your batten laid out.

Voila! Easy and quick. Nail your batten down, mark it, and proceed to cutting and fairing.

This method went a little faster, and the planks needed less tweaking than before. But still… 2 days and 3 planks seems way too slow.

Oh well, I’ll finish another chapter in my celestial nav book, get up early to work out, and maybe I’ll actually do 3 whole planks tomorrow!