You have a point Paul,
Before I can go any further with the hull sides I have to mount the lower rub rails and get at least one or two good coats of varnish on them to keep from staining the wood later when I finish painting. I am not just adding an additional rub rail for aesthetic reasons though. Most of the docks around here are at a height that will hit below the shear rail and reek havoc on the hull sides. I want to make sure that I can protect from that while I singlehandedly launch and sail away. Well, and it won't bother me that both my boats will look like sisters.
Al
The lower rail should have ever so slightly less "spring" in the sheer, than the upper rub rail. This is an eyeball thing. If you simply measure down and make a curve mimicking the upper rail, it'll look wrong to an old salt, though 99% of the others you'll meet wouldn't catch this aesthetic flaw in boat etiquette.
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This is a subtle, but notable thing.
I don't know why, but I did just exactly what you suggest on my weekender. Maybe it was alluded to in the plan, but somehow I got the message that it was the thing to do. I will make sure to do a nice and symmetrical job on this boat, which I didn't do on Duckie, and it bugs me to this day.
Al
Well, this happened faster than I thought it would. I got the mechanism for steering the boat figured out and roughed in. I had an occasion to go Maynerds with the wife so I picked up all the things I thought I would need for less than five bucks. Basically, all I needed was a two foot piece of 3/4 galvanized pipe with threads on one end, and a cast iron galvanized floor flange. The pipe screws into the flange far enough that I can just thread it in half way and it is solid.
I mounted the flange on a scrap piece of fir 2X4 with bolts. The holes for the bolts are countersunk on the bottom far enough that I can get nuts for the bolts in all the way so that they are deeper than the countersink. I mounted the flange with the bolts and tightened them down pretty good. I then backfilled the countersink with epoxy until the nut and bolt were completely covered. By the end of the day the goo was cooked enough that I could back the bolts out leaving the nuts set in goo. Now I can take the flange off without needing a wrench to hold the nuts. This block will be epoxied to the cockpit sole and the aft bulkhead so I couldn't get a wrench at them anyway. I drilled a sump beneath the flange and a trough running from it to act as drainage of the works above. I backfilled the sump and drain with goo also.
The tiller is a 36 inch axe handle. It is a nice piece of white ash and looks pretty nice. It turned out to be just the right length according to the plan. I will mount it to the pipe with 1/4 inch aluminum straps such that it will lift up and out of the way. It will also act to keep the axle shaft threaded into the flange because when it is down in the normal position it will not turn all the way around letting the threads back out.
The pics show the whole works clamped in place, as well as the top and bottom of the flange mount.
Al
Thank you John,
It wasn't a big deal to enclose the seats. I don't think it slowed me down much at all. I am repeating many of the things that made my Weekender so successful for me. For example the dry storage in the rear compartment, which also acts as floatation. I am excited to sail this boat because I have already sailed something similar and was impressed. Autumn Leaves checked off almost all of the things in my personal want list, so in the end I think that it will do the job I have set out for it brilliantly.
I have to have this boat ready by the end of May, so keep checking up on me because I will be busy all winter.
Al
Well, things are moving right along. I've made a few decisions and that generated some progress. I decided to mount the mizzen on a tabernacle. I figure that the mizzen is a pretty small sail and the mast is a bit over heavy, so a tabernacle should do the trick. Also, I will be able to fold the mizzen down toward the main and bundle the whole works together for trailering. Being able to leave the boat fully rigged is almost a necessity for me. I figure that if I am wrong about it being strong enough, it won't be a big deal to add a couple shrouds to hold it up. The pic of it shows the way I am attaching it to the aft bulkhead as well as half of the decking with the hatch cutout. I may add a couple wood braces to the sides to stiffen it and hold it square.
I had a couple nice 2X4's on the wood rack so I laminated them together to make the boomkin. I have been checking out the special 2X4's that are made from doug fir every time I go to Menards searching for the straight grained and clear ones. I always seem to come away with two or three. It took a while to shape the thing according to the plan but in the end it looks nice enough that I am glad I took the time. I didn't want it to get stained or marked so I slapped a quick coat of spar varnish on it. While I was at it I also varnished the boom and the tiller for the same reason.
I spent the whole morning re-cutting the decking at the seat level for the aft of the boat and fitting it to the tabernacle. I had to cut the original piece in half to get it to fit over everything which made the fitting that much harder. In the end that piece just wouldn't work so I started all over again making another two pieces which did fit. Everything below that level will be watertight, so it will need a deck plate to access it and ventilate it. That level will end up being a shelf that I will store things on when under way.
This afternoon I fitted the deck carlins along the entire length of the boat. To make these pieces I had to brace the cut pieces against the wall with a hefty bow in them for a couple weeks. The rough cement floor of my shop held them firm and the joint between the wall and ceiling held the other end. I have my rub rails jammed in and bowed in the same way until I need to use them. I had to scarf the carlins which the extreme bow made a bit more difficult, but they came out okay. Today I cut them to fit and wedged them into the slots that I cut for them months ago. I had to shim them a bit to get a fair curve, so when I glue them I will also have to include a shim in the glue up.
My next step is to scarf and cut out the coamings/cabin sides. I need to do that so that I can make some decisions about the size of the forward hatch and the tabernacle for the main mast. I also have to decide what shape the deck will be in the cockpit. I need that to be formalized so that I can laminate a stringer to the seat tops for the seat backs. Once I have the seat backs shaped, I can glue the seat tops down.
The pic of the interior shows my moaning chair for the remainder of this build. I took it from my sailing canoe, and it fit pretty well. Sometimes having all this crap laying around comes in handy. The black paint is the sealing coat for the white paint that will be hidden inside the cabinetry. I figure that if the cabin ever goes swimming, those areas will be pretty hard to get to, so I am sealing them up as well as I can right now.
Al
This turned out to be a real head scratcher.
I needed to figure out a way to clamp the bottom rub rail to the side of the boat down from the sheer seven inches.
I didn't want to screw the rails on because there was a four foot section that I couldn't put any screws into and I didn't want to take any chances of splitting the doug fir. I didn't have any long reach clamps, and I didn't want to go to all the trouble of making a bunch of them. I figured that if I could get a piece of plywood to reach down that far and get close enough, I could wedge it tight enough to glue the rub rail down. I had a lot of off cuts of plywood that I could try different ideas on, which I did. It took me most of a day and a half dozen ideas that didn't pan out to finally come up with this simple solution. I can't imagine why I didn't think of this first.
I used 3/4 inch ply scraps to make the clamps. I needed ply that heavy to withstand the clamping pressure. The scraps were all different shapes and sizes, but they were all big and sturdy enough to do the job and I didn't care what they looked like. I used window shims to apply the clamping pressure. My biggest problem was how to get the clamp over the sheer clamp and tight against the inside of the hull side. I finally figured out that if I cut a nine inch slot into the clamp one inch wide which is the thickness of the hull side plus the 3/4 inch rub rail, I could slide it down far enough. At the top of the slot I cut a 3/4 inch by 2 inch notch to accommodate the sheer clamp and allow the inside edge of the slot to fit tight against the hull. By pushing the clamp outward I opened the bottom of the slot so that the rub rail would slide into it and jammed a shim between the two. Viola! The rail was tight enough for the glue but still able to move around with some steel persuasion. Perfect. I was able to shape the rail into a nice fair curve that I let spring back about 3/4 inch at the bow. I was also able to get both rails exactly the same.
I think they look pretty good. The doug fir wouldn't take the curve at the stern, so now I have to scarf a pre-bent piece to the aft end of the rails which I am not happy about.
Anyway, progress is being made.
Al
One of the best things about boatbuilding is having to solve stuff like this. That's evil genius level! I'm absolutely stealing that idea well done!
Well, I am pretty bald and I do have a white cat.
Well, I have the decks dry fitted and trimmed down to final shape which gave Indie a whole new appearance. I think she has quite a nice curvy shear. When I sit at deck level in my moaning chair and look forward, it makes me real happy. When I built my weekender, I did a ton of that. Sitting like that is for me one of the big joys of boat building.
I cut the slots in the decks for the bilge boards this morning and that got me to thinking about how I am going to raise and lower the boards. I think the designer has an idea of how he would do it, but the lift could be pretty heavy. I think his idea is to place a block on the deck at the forward end of the slot and attach a halyard to the knob at the aft top of the board. By hauling on the halyard the board would rock forward on the pivot that is at the bottom of the forward end of the slot. It seems to me that the mechanical advantage of this style would be very low. In my view a halyard attached to the lower aft edge of the board, and a block mounted to the deck at the aft end of the slot would provide a near vertical lift which I think would be easier. These boards are pretty heavy. I would like to not have to wrestle with them as I get older. Any way I look at it, I think I will need a cleat mounted to the deck aft of the slot. I'm going to have to reinforce the deck there substantially to handle that load.
That got me to thinking about where I am going to place the deck cleats forward and aft. This is a pretty big boat by my standards. (the design waterline is for a boat displacing 2230 lbs) I am going to have to give some serious consideration to cleat placement so that they will do their jobs properly.
I have also run headlong into the reality that I will have to figure where to get enough lead to make up the ballast and a bit more. The price of lead is outrageous so I have to find local recycling opportunities. Recycling could take a while, so in the meantime I will probably use sand bags just to get her on the water at first. I'm not much of a networker, so I figure if I start right now I might be able to round up enough lead by next summer. I have worked molding lead ballast before, so I am not too worried about getting the shapes right, I'm just worried about procurement.
I don't have any interesting pictures right now, but when I get some I will post them.
Al