Getting caught up.
The pic of the assembled boat shows a few of the things I had to get done before I could start putting pieces together. You can see that the bilge board trunks are red and black. The interior surfaces of the trunks are fiberglassed with epoxy and carbon powder which is why they are black inside. The outside of the trunks have been painted with one coat of rustoleum paint which is why they are red. The rustoleum is only a primer/sealant coat. I will either finish them with topside paint or exterior house paint. I am leaning toward the house paint because these areas are going to be sealed, so they won't be exposed to the elements and the house paint is made to stand up to the weather, so it should stay good pretty much forever. I have installed vents for both trunks by way of a PVC coupler and threaded cap that opens to the cabin interior. I expect to leave the cap off most of the time, only using them on the water.
If you look closely, you should notice that there is a rope wrapped all the way around the boat. I used a stick to twist the front of the rope in order to pull the sides together bow and stern. Apparently this is called a Spanish windlass. I found that I can apply an astounding amount of pressure to the boat this way. Ultimately I couldn't get the stern to close up because the stringer wouldn't accept the tight curve needed for the stern. I had to kerf the four stringers with my angle grinder using a tile cutter disc. I didn't end up actually cutting the kerfs so much as burning them. I had to wear a gas mask or die of smoke inhalation. I had done a similar thing on my weekender on the stern stringers. In the end I didn't fill the kerfs on the weekender, merely filled the gaps with paint. On this boat I will fill the gaps with either bondo or epoxy after the glue up of the sides.
Today I am going to check the boat for square and true fit. I can't have any twist or unfair curves. I expect this process to take a day or two. Once I have done that, I will start to glue her up. After that, I have to mount the shear logs and roll her over. Then the fun begins.
Al
Diamond blades burn good don't they. Great on 'glass and concrete, but not so much on wood. Fill the kerfs with epoxy, which will mostly restore the strength and stiffness of the stringers. Bondo will not (lousy compressive strength).
The Spanish windlass is a trick I've used for many decades. It's very powerful and can quickly apply way more force than you need. You can also be fairly precise with the amount of pressure you need.
Keep up the good work and more boat porn needed, BTW . . .
I've had to take a break from building for about 10 days to let the stitches heal. If you think that you might like to use an angle grinder with a saw blade, don't.
While I have been idle, I decided to take out my drafting tools and draw up a gaff mainsail for her. I wanted to match the sail area of the design sail so that I would keep the power and use the design boom. I ended up with sacrificing two square feet of area which I won't notice. The mast will be five feet shorter and the gaff eight feet long. As I expected, the centroid of the sail moved aft, but not much. If anything I might have to move the forestay an inch or two forward of the design location. The new sail looks good to me. I overlaid it on the picture of the complete boat on page two of the plan and it looks like it belongs there. I am pretty pumped about it.
I have been trying to figure out how to add the shear clamps without putting so much strain on the hull that I would pull something out of shape. The clamps are supposed to be 1 1/2 X 3/4 and have to bend in two planes. I wasted a couple perfectly good boards coming up with a plan that should work. It was going to be a pita to assemble so I was never quite satisfied. Yesterday I decided to try laminating up a three piece stick out of 1 1/2 X 1/4 strips. I cut them out of a two by six pine board I had laying around and viola, it worked like a dream. I will have to stagger the butt joints in the twenty foot stick, but that is nothing. I dry fitted one side and came up with an assembly plan which should give me a seriously stiff and strong shear clamp. Once I heal up and can close up the bow, it won't take me an hour to add the shear clamps. Once that is done I have to flip the boat, and that is another story.
Al
When I have to bend in a clamp, which can often be uncooperative, I've found using square stock works best, so it reacts the same way in both planes. So for you, try stacking 2 pieces of 3/4" square stock, which will twist and bend uniformly, compared to fighting an "edge set" situation with rectangular stock. Trying to stack 1/4" x 1.5" stock and bend it up to match the sweep of the sheer just causes it to buckle, cup and twist in unpredictable ways.
I have a good story about angle grinders with saw blades. It was several years ago and I was replacing a few planks on a big lapstrake powerboat hull. I was in the field, so tool choices were limited, but I had a 4 1/4" saw blade that would fit my little angle grinder and I needed a fairly precise cut, between frame bays to remove an offending plank. I figured I could "steer" this setup pretty well, so . . . Now I'm sitting on the ground, with one end of the plank released from its butt block near the bow and I had to cut, just past midship on this plank, to release it from the hull. All the fasteners have been cut, including the lap clenches, so I put the blade on the plank, figuring I could just break the area under the lap joint, once I'd cut 90% of the plank face. Well, the blade made short work of this 5/8" plywood plank, until I dinged the edge of the lap I was trying to avoid cutting. The grinder popped out of the saw kerf and working between my legs, seated on the ground, the blade walked right up my paint leg and imbedded in the heavier bunch of fabric around my crotch. The saw, being fairly small stalled, in my crotch and I sat there waiting for the inevitable pain, that I just knew was about to occur. Fortunately, it missed everything of significance, though did make a mess of my heavy weight jeans. I couldn't believe how lucky I was and this is when I started to shake, nearly uncontrollably. Naturally, during the cursory inspection for self inflicted damage, the marina forman happened to stop by. I guess, seeing a guy with his pants down next to a customers boat, was enough for him to have a question or two. After a quick explanation, he seeing me pretty rattled about how close I came to losing my crown jewels, we laughed pretty good and I called it a day, walking directly across the street to the little tiki hut bar and had a few beers. He joined me a couple of hours later and since I've never been able to live this particular incident down with him, a guy I've known for about 25 years. Naturally, he likes to make a quick slashing motion across his crotch, uttering a "zippppping" sound in the process, just to remind me how foolish trying to "wing it" in the field can be at times. This is the same guy that caught me using a circular saw (between my legs again) as a portable, mini table saw to cut some small scarfs, on some 1x2's once. I'd like to be able to blame my youth, but I've done this portable, mini table saw thing many times previously, though he still thinks I'm nuts . . . so whatthehell does he know.
These things happen so fast that it is hard to know what the heck happened. A couple days after I cut myself, I went out to the shop to see if I could figure it out. It turns out that as close as I can figure the blade caught in the kerf and instantly jumped out of my hand, and because I was laying on my back working above me, it fell across my wrist. Good thing I had a pair of leather work gloves on or my hand would have been damaged. I instantly rolled out from under the boat because I was afraid that little bugger would end up chasing me around looking for a second bite as it were. I shut the saw off and looked around before I thought to check my wrist which didn't feel right. It was pretty torn up as you can imagine, but it didn't hurt or bleed much.
The bib overalls I wear in the shop have a big glued up spot on the right thigh, from using an upside down belt sander held between my legs. Sometimes a guy just has to improvise. Tear Mender is a great product. It will permanently patch almost anything even though it looks like hell, but I'll get a couple more years out of my bibbers.
I dry fitted the shear clamp and found that as you say, it wanted to kink a bit. In response to that I clamped the pieces near the bottom and they set just fine. My layup is three strips of quarter inch to make a 3/4 stick. I am setting them high of the side so that I can shape them down to the proper height. Because of that, they don't have to bend too hard in the second plane on either end. I did cut 3/4 X 3/4 sticks as my first plan, and they set fine, but getting the laminations the way I wanted them was going to be a Chinese fire drill. I intend to staple these sticks together as well as to the hull sides, so they will be supported wherever they need it. I also found that the scarf joints that I had to cut into the square sticks was something of a problem. I wasn't able to get them clean and they were starting to pile up with the other scarf joints in one place which I didn't like. Being able to butt joint staggered joints along the line of the shear is easier and gets the joints to another part of the hull. Maybe I will cut angles in the butt ends so that they won't have to bend in the second plane quite so much. I'll try that when I do the final dry fit.
All this is in the future. I just got the stitches out today but it is going to be a while before I can put any pressure on my wrist. It's going to be a little while before I can pull the bow together, so the shear clamps are going to wait. In the mean time I think I have figured out how to flip the boat by myself. I think I can mount an eyebolt to the stems and lift with those. The boat should roll over on its own then.
Al
Okay, I got the bow pulled together, so she has taken her final shape more or less. When I checked her she was actually better than the last time I looked at her before glue up.
I took a couple pics to show some of the things I have been talking about. The pic from the stern gives a good idea of the shape and what all is defined by the bulkheads. Behind the aft bulkhead is where the mizzen is stepped. Below the deck will be open storage on the top level, with everything bellow acting as floatation that I will vent with a deck plate in the bulkhead. On the starboard side will be a cutout for the boomkin set such it will line up with the centerline at its tip.
The next bulkhead is support for the seats. I intend to box in the cockpit seats in the same fashion as my weekender with sealed chambers behind the seat backs and another chamber below both seats accessed by deck plates. I want to keep the footwell as small as I can without inconveniencing myself.
The cabin bulkhead shows the opening to the aft storage compartment. This space is enormous. I will have to plan an expedition before I would ever come close to filling this up. Ahead of this bulkhead the volume is hard for me to wrap my mind around. I the pic it disappears into the distance. I will easily have sitting headroom in there.
The other pic shows the entire side of the cabin proper. To the upper right is the vent for the sealed chamber outboard of the trunks. In this pic the cap is on, but I only intend to use it when on the water. To the lower left is the inboard side of the bilgeboard pivot mount. I made bushings out of HDPE because I couldn't get my hands on UHMPE. It is a step down, but if I ever have to repair it, I think that I shouldn't be too difficult. The platform where I am keeping tools is going to be the galley/ice box. Again, there is more storage than I will probably use. On the other side of the cabin is an identical set up that I will use to store the head and household goods.
I am finally at the stage where I want to sit inside my boat and think about sailing her, and where we will go.
Oh yeah, and her name is Indigo. She is named for my best lead dog. Indie always took me out and brought me back safely and with the best speed and all around performance that I ever had. I miss her desperately, and this will help me remember her.
Al
When I do cockpit seats, I've for years hated when the designer doesn't address a common issue, the wet butt syndrome. Water will board the board and it invariably lands on the seats, rolls back against the hull sides and will moisten you asss in no time at all. For an old, dried out guy like me, not such a bad thing, as our water is usually in the mi 70's or warmer, but I remember the old days when I sailed cooler water.
To address this, I always place a trough at the back of the seat, along the hull side, often an inch or so deep, by maybe 2" - 3" wide. Sometimes I plan for a clever scuppers, others just a place where it can drain directly onto the cockpit sole. The last one I did I placed 1" drains in the trough, with vinyl tubing leading to the bilge, where a pump can get rid of it. Most of the time on small boats I just make a channel to let the water run out of the trough and onto the sole. A cleaner setup would be a combination of the two, with trough mounted scuppers and tubing running to a hole at the bottom of the seat boxes. FWIW . . .
Looks great, although I have a hard time getting used to seeing all the bulkhead work without the bottom of the boat in place!
Looks so different then the concept drawings, way better to see it in wood.
Paul your idea is brilliant! I had that issue on my super skipjack, would've been great to have water drain off
Keep the picks coming Al, nice work
I'm still working out my plan for the scuppers. Because I am not following the plan, I need to think carefully about draining the cockpit both on the trailer and the water. My CP has drains at the stern somewhat below the sole, so all I have to do is tilt the trailer tongue up and the cockpit stays dry. The plan calls for scuppers just behind the cabin bulkhead and near the aft bulkhead. I will probably keep them there, but I will have to use tubing to get from the sole to the hull sides. I am looking forward to having a self draining cockpit, even though I have only taken water into the cockpit once on my weekender.
Al
My wrist is mostly healed up so I am pushing on. I am at a point where I need to flip the boat and have been thinking about how to do it by myself. I came up with the idea to put two braces attached to the ceiling at each end of the boat and attach a block and a trailer winch on each. At the bow, I can screw the brace to a gusset holding up the roof truss, so that isn't a problem at all. At the stern I had to get creative. I attached a 3/4 inch by 4 inch piece of plywood to a ceiling joist and braced the vertical brace to that. I had to enclose the brace with bits of plywood to keep it from slipping out when weight was added to it, and it seems to work just fine. I drilled out and inserted 1/2 inch eye bolts in each stem which may have been overkill, but I expect to flip this boat more than once before I am done. I have already lifted the boat to check how hard it will be to flip, and the weight is nothing for this setup. The problem I have now is the boat doesn't like to be upside down in the air. I have to either get someone to hold it steady or try making counterweights that will be enough to hold it steady. I think this is going to be fairly easy as these things go.
Al