(04-15-2017, 08:11 AM)Al Stead Wrote: [ -> ]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
All I can say is, thank-you Al for sharing! Have been in and out on this site for many years now. Unbelievable! I will conveniently blame my big "D", now 6 years ago for dawdling about and not building Vacationer. Have always loved her lines. Kudos to you! We have similar eyes, as soon as I saw Autumn Leaves I wanted to ask John about a gaff rig. BTW, bless you John for setting mine and I'm sure "many" other souls free! Just had to put to rest my 13 yr sheltie companion. I am unashamed and stupid excited to build Autumn Leaves for "Just Me!" And to you Paul, as always, I love to hear your input. About that topside flare...
I'll admit that after getting the sides hung on, the boat looked kind of funny. Those huge slab sides looked more like they belonged on a submarine than a sailboat. However, I soon came to appreciate the interior volume. I also expect it to have substantial initial stability which won't hurt my ability to move around the boat.
In order to mitigate the look from the side, I intend to paint the bottom up to the water line as though it was coated with bottom paint. By breaking up the area along the length, it will make it look like a shallower boat. I also plan to add a waterline stripe to further breakup and accent the two areas. Along with that I intend to add a white boot stripe and second rub rail at the bottom of the stripe to further breakup the area and make both my boats share a family resemblance. Both my Weekender and Autumn Leaves with share a color scheme.
Al
(04-16-2017, 08:04 AM)Al Stead Wrote: [ -> ]I'll admit that after getting the sides hung on, the boat looked kind of funny. Those huge slab sides looked more like they belonged on a submarine than a sailboat. However, I soon came to appreciate the interior volume. I also expect it to have substantial initial stability which won't hurt my ability to move around the boat.
In order to mitigate the look from the side, I intend to paint the bottom up to the water line as though it was coated with bottom paint. By breaking up the area along the length, it will make it look like a shallower boat. I also plan to add a waterline stripe to further breakup and accent the two areas. Along with that I intend to add a white boot stripe and second rub rail at the bottom of the stripe to further breakup the area and make both my boats share a family resemblance. Both my Weekender and Autumn Leaves with share a color scheme.
Al
Hi Al, I agree with you about "the look" w/ paint. Mr Harris seems to have done that with his paint scheme. Might you have a teaser with the gaff rig applied in drawing? I have been more and more attracted to Layden"s Enigma for "beautiful simplicity". And then John goes and comes up with the "Winnebago" Enigma!!
Fantastic!!
I will try to figure out how to get a picture from the plan to a pic on here. The main I drew will probably be adjusted a bit, but as of now it looks to me like it should. The foot is the same as the foot on the Weekender main, but the luff is 13 ft. The gaff is 8 ft. and the angle of the gaff is still up in the air. I think I might angle it a bit more upright which shouldn't affect the area, but I won't know until I mess with it more. Mr. Harris indicated that he would draw a gaff rig if someone commissions one. I may go that route, but first I want to try my hand at it. A tarp sail and homemade gaff won't break the bank.
If you have downloaded the plan, you could messaround with it and get a good idea of what it will be like. I highly recommend that you download the plan for $50 and study it for a while. I jumped right into the job and paid for it with slow progress and mistakes.
By the way, I flipped the boat today with the help of my niece and her husband. It took all of 3 minutes and 0 muscle. I think I have figured out a way to use the same lifting set up to flip my weekender. I would have to drill a hole in the stern post large enough to pass a stout line through and use the hole in the stem for the other line. With the lifting set up I have, I could lift and spin a weekender in exactly the same fashion as I did with the yawl.
Al
Yeah, most folks find with just a little preparation the rollover is fairly uneventful, which is good. I've rolled a lot of boats over the years and few have had major issues, though once, I was rolling my Cooper design (28' on deck powerboat) and I dragged it out onto the driveway, lifted up up with a backhoe and rolled it to it's starboard rail. This is when my other half decided to take a picture which shows me, a few friends, the boat standing on its rail, with the backhoe chained to it. In the excitement to get her out and rolled over I'd forgotten how I was going to move the cradle into position, which of course needed the backhoe.
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attachment=1602]
Yep, that'd me scratching my head, trying to figure out how to solve this issue . . . Another lesson learned is old tires will leave very hard to remove black scuffs all over your fresh paint job . . .
(04-16-2017, 02:01 PM)Al Stead Wrote: [ -> ]I will try to figure out how to get a picture from the plan to a pic on here. The main I drew will probably be adjusted a bit, but as of now it looks to me like it should. The foot is the same as the foot on the Weekender main, but the luff is 13 ft. The gaff is 8 ft. and the angle of the gaff is still up in the air. I think I might angle it a bit more upright which shouldn't affect the area, but I won't know until I mess with it more. Mr. Harris indicated that he would draw a gaff rig if someone commissions one. I may go that route, but first I want to try my hand at it. A tarp sail and homemade gaff won't break the bank.
If you have downloaded the plan, you could messaround with it and get a good idea of what it will be like. I highly recommend that you download the plan for $50 and study it for a while. I jumped right into the job and paid for it with slow progress and mistakes.
By the way, I flipped the boat today with the help of my niece and her husband. It took all of 3 minutes and 0 muscle. I think I have figured out a way to use the same lifting set up to flip my weekender. I would have to drill a hole in the stern post large enough to pass a stout line through and use the hole in the stem for the other line. With the lifting set up I have, I could lift and spin a weekender in exactly the same fashion as I did with the yawl.
Al
Definitely Al. Will be downloading plans in a couple months. Going to KY to see my son shoot archery in Nationals Tourney in three weeks. Going to be a long hot summer this year in Fl. Good summer to fiddle on drawing table and build scale model of "Leaves". Have some personal "thoughts" I want to explore but there is absolutely no doubt "she" is the one! Take care and thx again for sharing.
Today she is a boat. I just got done laminating the second layer on the bottom, so now if I tossed her in the water she would float without leaking. The bare wood would soak up a bunch of water, but she won't leak. I have never gone through so much epoxy at one go in my life. It took more than a half gallon of goo and all of my fiber thickener. So, now the bottom is 3/4 inch thick which makes me feel pretty comfortable. I had to deviate from the construction plan because I didn't have enough space in the shop to assemble the bottom on the floor as well as keep the boat inside to boot. I ended up fitting the bottom pieces on the boat itself such that the major joints across the bottom would fall on the bottom of the two biggest bulkheads where I could screw them down securely. I reversed the pattern so that the second layer would overlap by a foot or more on all the previous joints.
I figured out that I will probably need 30 yards of cloth to finish this boat along with what I have already in the shop. I'm thinking I should buy stock in Marinepoxy for how much I am going to need. I am going to glass the hull before putting on the keelson and then glass over that and covering the end grain with an epoxy fillet along both sides of it.
The next step is to round off the chines and fair the hull. That is going to take some time. I have a couple places in the stern where I broke some of the longitudinal stringers and it shows up as bumps on the sides. They aren't terrible, but they piss me off. I also learned that when using a Spanish windlass, it is best to back that up with two by stock perpendicular the rope to keep the tremendous forces from collapsing the plywood under the rope. I guess that's boat building for ya. If I don't learn something new all the time it isn't worth the effort.
I'll include some pics next time after I take a few more.
Al
Pulling off all the clamps, staples, temporary screws etc. is just like opening Christmas presents. This morning I unloaded the hull and cleaned it up. I think it came out pretty well. I took some pics of the difference between just glued and after an hour and a half of pulling and sanding.
In the pic of the fresh glue I show a joint that is unsupported by anything but the layer below it. The joint runs fore and aft for about half the length of the boat, so it is a major feature that I have to deal with. Because it is unsupported along its full length, getting it to match its mates requires a bit more attention. I used one inch staples shot through quarter inch plywood bits and angled into the hull so that they wouldn't poke all the way through, and they would hold down the plywood better. And for the most part they did exactly that. There will be a little bit of fairing along the joint, but not enough to get excited about. All the other joints are held down with 1 1/4 inch SS finishing screws set into either bulkheads or chine logs. I like these because they don't put too much pressure on the joint, with their heads being so small. I get a little squeeze out, but I don't push out all the glue. They also countersink themselves as deep as I want them to go.
Because this boat has vertical sides, I was able to use a round over bit in my router to round off the chines. On my weekender, I had to spend the better part of a day doing that by hand. I used a 1/2 inch round over bit, but I may go to 3/4 inch if I don't get the fiberglass cloth to drape over it very well. I am going to order the cloth today so that the second I get sick of fairing I will be able to start glassing. I'm hoping that my skill have improved enough that I can get through all that and on to paint before I start sailing in earnest this summer.
Al
I'm waiting for some goo to cook so I thought I would do an update.
After applying the bottom sheathing and fairing the joints, I had to cover up the end grain on the 3/4 inch plywood sheathing of the bottom where it met the bottom of the trunks. The best way I could think of was to use my circular saw to cut the sheathing back from the edge of the trunks and back fill that with thickened epoxy. I cut back the bottom by 3/8 inch all around the trunk using a chisel to cut the ends. I was a little nervous to do that, but in the end it was easy to do and came out pretty nice. In one of the attached pics, you can see the finished job on one side of the hull and the cooking goo on the other. I cut some scrap plywood to make dams that would fill the trunk opening and covered that with plastic. The plastic did the job, but it somehow wrinkled while the goo was cooking and left me with an unfair edge. If I ever have to do this again I will cover the dams with duck tape so that won't happen. I found that duck tape will not stick to epoxy, so it should do a nicer job.
I have the bottom faired as well as I think I can get it, and have moved on to fairing the sides. I used my lifting set up coupled with my camper jacks to flip the boat. I lifted the boat off the cradle and found that as I suspected it wanted to roll over by itself. Not good. I jammed a camper jack under one gunnel to hold it up and carefully lifted it more until I could get the other jack under the other gunnel. Once I had it stable, I removed the cradle, and set it aside out of the way. I then removed one jack and let the hull rest in my hands. Now I was stuck. I let the side down slowly until it was too much to control, then let it go by itself hoping that it wouldn't swing too hard as it rolled over. I had laid some movers blankets on the floor just where I expected it to lay on its side, and they stopped the roll nicely. I then adjusted the lifters to support some of the weight of the boat so that the side wouldn't have to bear all the load. It is now balanced between the floor and the lifters so that it is nice and stable.
With the boat set on her side I finally got a look at the inside after adding the bottom. All the glue joints looked real good. There was just enough squeeze out to make little fillets with my finger when I did the clean up after gluing on the first layer of plywood. All the joints between the bottom of the bulkheads and the bottom were nearly perfect. She really is a boat now.
With her on her side it is easy to fair the scarf joints on the side panels. I made quick work of it by scraping the majority of the excess compound with cut glass before using the long board to finish it off. Right now what I hope is the final coat of fairing compound is cooking after which I will glass the side and part way under the bottom. Once that is done and faired I will roll the boat on her other side and do the same. Finally, I will roll her back to bottom up and glass that. I will then apply the keelson and skeg.
I'm getting there.
Al
Light weight plastic sheeting will distort when the goo gets to the higher points in it's exotherm reaction, during the cure. The only way to prevent this is to use thicker plastic. Most painter drop cloth types are 2 - 6 mil stuff and this will distort. I have a roll of 12 mil stuff that I've used for years and it doesn't distort. Also mylar sheeting doesn't distort. Lastly, I use plastic packaging tape on stuff as a release film. Because it's stuck to the surface, it doesn't distort, though on a few big pours, I've gotten some wrinkling. These got hot enough to light stuff off, if anything around was flammable.
There's no such thing as the final coat of fairing compound, just the ones you hope will be the final coat. Every time I say this to myself, I paint on some primer and hit it with some fine grit and the long board, just to prove the previous sentence is true. In the end, you just toss your hands up in the air and say, "I've had it, this has to be good enough", usually forcibly invoked on you at gunpoint, by your elbows.