Building a boat at home, from scratch is about 10% cutting, assembling and cursing, 5% adjusting for mistakes and changes to the plans, 3% drinking and wishing you could get out of the moaning chair with more authority, 2% painting and lastly about 80% sanding. This is mostly because you put paint on and discovered how bad the fairing was, so you sanded what you just did off, to fix low spots and other surface defects and still weren't completely satisfied, but found you could live with it or your elbows won the argument and they decided you could live with it. Why anyone would want to build a boat from scratch isn't rational, but simply a not so well known illness, that afflict some of us. There's no known cure, though continued and occasional (or more so) additional building, can ease the pain quite a bit.
Welcome to our disease, Bob.
If it is from scratch, you forgot measuring, drawing, erasing, re-drawing, cutting, throwing away and starting over.
Al
And if you want to add a bit more fun to the mix, buy something old and very tired so you can take it apart piece by piece before embarking on all of the above!
Thanks for the detailed and (sometimes humorous) thread as you continue doing a fine job on this build. I'm enjoying it immensely, having fallen in love with Harris's design since I first saw it. I have a feeling one of these is in my future as well!
Cheers from the west coast.
I dunno, I swore that this would be my last boat build, but I could see myself fixing up an old mirror dinghy.
Yikes!
Al
This has been a pretty great winter. It has dropped below zero almost every night since before Christmas. Unfortunately, I have been running through propane like it is going out of style. I had the same issue when I built Duckie. I had an unreliable oil heater back then so I had to learn to adapt. This time around, I have a pretty good propane setup that is saving me a ton of money. I turn the heater down as far as it will go when I leave the shop at night and fire it up again in the morning. Usually I only go as high as it takes to be comfortable which is around 50. That isn't enough to get goo to cook in this lifetime, so I had to do something about that.
I can't paint for a while under any circumstances, but I am not going to stop building, so I have come up with a system that works pretty well. I try to time my use of goo for around dinner time, or when I hang it up for the day, but I do like to keep an eye on the stuff for a few hours before walking away for the night. After I have cleaned up everything for the day I toss a 20X10 plastic tarp over the whole boat and set a small electric space heater inside it set it at maximum temperature and medium output. I make sure that the heat won't escape too easily before I am done, so I tuck her in pretty good. So far, when I go out to the shop in the morning the goo is set well enough that I can get right to sanding it. And if I double team the shop over night with both heaters, neither one has to work too hard. This has turned out to be the most cost effective and efficient method I could come up with. Winter hasn't slowed me down at all.
When I get a little further, I will do another update. I am pretty happy with how Indie is turning out. I got a 150 lbs of lead yesterday with the promise that I can get all I need by spring. Boy, those 22 slugs turn into dust when they hit the steel backstop.
Its going to be fun.
Al
Al,
I am following along with your build and I am enjoying seeing the progress.
I plan on starting the same build late summer or early fall this year.
I would get started earlier but I have garage/shop that won’t be done till June.
Once I finish that I will begin the boat.
It is good to see the pictures of your progress, it reassures me I am picking the right design.
Mike
I hate this computer! I just blew out most of this post with a single key stroke and now have to re-do it.
There are some additions that are pretty noticeable that also turned out to be a bit more trouble than I figured they'd be. The most obvious one is the forward hatch. After I got it done it looked like a good size suitcase laying on the deck. That's okay though because it is really beefy and I am certain that it will be watertight no matter what. On a trailer sailer that can't be over emphasized, because who wants to sleep in a wet bed?
I wanted to reduce the size of the hatch to just what I needed to get through it because I don't expect to use it to go forward. Following the plan, mostly, I ended up with a real beefy hatch and brace for the foredeck that will also act as part of the tabernacle. I adjusted the frame for the hatch to provide a substantial coaming around the opening that i will gasket the same way I did my weekender. Even though I reduced the size of the hatch, it still stands prominent while still as the plan anticipates. I may have misread the plan, because what I have in the shop doesn't look like the images that I've seen all over the web. Oh well, I am satisfied with the strength that it seems to lend to the forward end of the boat.
I also made up the bowsprit. I got frustrated with having to wait out some epoxy cooking, so I decided to slap this out. I used a couple real nice 2X4's to make up a 9.5 inch board by keying them together. It was easy to cut out and finish, so now I have yet another part that will have to wait until spring to get added to the boat. I'll have to wait until I put some real strain on the rig before I see whether it will need a bobstay or not, but if so, I am all set up with the eyebolt from the lifting set up.
I got the roof nailed down after only a week of hanging in the cold barn. I figured out that if I added a second stringer across the back of the cabin interior I would have enough to mount a single piece as the cabin roof with only one inch left to finish it. So, the piece is fully supported around its perimeter and I have added a one inch piece to finish it. The way it is mounted now will be stronger and hardly noticeable inside.
The design of the tabernacle is coming together in my head. I hope it doesn't detract from the look of the foredeck, but I am determined to make it strong enough to last through repeated use. I am certain that I won't use this boat very much if it is a pain to to rig and take down. To help with that, I will figure out some way to leave her rigged such that all I have to do is stand up the masts and tighten the forestay. We'll see.
Anyway the next thing is the sliding hatch. That is going to be a project. I hope to show it to you all soon.
Al
Boy, this was a project and a half! I actually had to make two of them. The plan sort of confused me so I decided to make a test cover before I commited to the real deal. I bought some cheap pine for this bit so I didn't feel bad if I messed up. I did however build the final hatch cover out of the oak I intended to use as the final one because I couldn't see any benefit in doing that simple piece twice. I took my time to make the cover right, nice and square and flat, and true to the plan, because the frame was going to have to fit to it no matter what.
I cut the frame pieces and fit them to the actual shape of the roof. The plan called for all the curved parts to have a 48 inch radius along the top, so I made a template that I used for all them. The cabin top didn't exactly fit the way it should, just exactly the way Duckie's doesn't. And like Duckie's, I spent too much time trying to figure out why and how to fix it. In the end, I let it go because I couldn't see the deviation, so it doesn't exist. It is critical that the slides are exactly lined up so that the cover doesn't rock while moving so I had to hand fit them to any deviation in the roof. I also had to make sure that the whole magilla was square and centered on the boat, as well as stand plumb. I needed some shims and fancy shaping to accomplish that, but I did get it done. I think that the hatch gives the boat a real classical look. I am having a hard time to quit staring at it so much. It also is quite the yawning maw. For a stiff old man like me, it is perfect. I can drop down inside with ease and aplomb.
Once I got that far, I glued down the roof just to force me to move along. I know that is going to make things more difficult, but I would just stop here if I didn't do it. My next step is to glass the roof before gluing the hatch frame to it. As long as I am doing that I figure I will also glass most of the decks that I have ready. The seats and the decks are mostly ready for glass, so I figure I will save some propane and do them all at once. I joined the coamings and seat backs to their partners with fillets. I hate those things. I could never get them to set without sagging. I since learned what thixotropic means. Now, no big deal.
I have cut a tentative deal to have my mainsail made by somebody who knows what he is doing and I couldn't be more excited. I figured out that I could put Indie on the water with the weekender sails. It should be like sailing with a reef in proper sized set. My lapper will work for the jib and the weekender jib will work for the mizzen. That's a load off of me for getting in the water as soon as possible. I also nabbed 180 lbs of lead. Four more loads and I'm good to go.
Al
On the jib, being used as the mizzen, have it recut flatter, especially the lower few panels. As a jib, it'll have a fair bit of luff sag built in and more camber than desirable for a mizzen. Your sail maker should know what I mean. Also take the specs and construction method to your sail maker so he can adjust the luff and foot round to suit.
Sure a lot of height to the companionway slides, though an easy way to get more enclosed headroom. I make these quite differently, preferring the slides to be internal, rather than external, but to each their own.
I hope those drywall screws are temporary, as they'll rust very quickly and aren't very strong, compaired to a steel (no, drywall screws aren't steel) screw. I use to use drywall screws for temporary setups, but have stopped, after getting tired of digging out the easily broken ones.
Yeah, I agree that the cover is pretty high, but after climbing around on it, I think that it will serve very well. You are also right that it provides a lot of headroom which could be put to use in various ways that I haven't thought of yet. I have a page of plans from you laying on top of the CLC plans that shows how you do things. I like the way you do cover slides better from a practical standpoint and may switch over to yours after I have played with this one first. Because Indie is the first one, I want to do things according to the plan, at least at first. I would like to show those who are following this what the boat looks like according to the plan if they are considering building it. Pretty much all the mods I have made have been for safety, to accommodate the materials I have, and my lack of skill. And I am applying some of the features of my weekender because they just work so well.
As to the sails, the sail maker is going to make the sails on the boat in my shop, or on the boat at his shop. I would like to have a full suit of sails made, but we'll have to see if I can afford it all at once. If this doesn't happen until later, I just figure that I can launch her with what I have laying around. The sails that I am contemplating using now are my homemade tarp sails so they are all flat cut. The main is smaller than the one I have in mind for Indie, so that it will be like sailing with one reef tucked in. That should get me by until I can get the sails professionally made. I am going to go whole hog and have multiple reefs in the main and a reef line in the jib. Going all the way forward on this boat may be a real bad idea, but I want to be able to reef the jib, anyway.
I was trying to build this boat with one box of drywall screws. I didn't quite make it. My biggest problem was getting goo in the square drive hole so they couldn't be re-used once I got them out. I don't worry about breaking them because I don't crank them down. There may be three or four screws left in the boat and they are either buried beneath layers of wood and glass, or buried inside where they hopefully won't be exposed to water. There are stainless screws left in where it is unavoidable, and some staples that wouldn't come out also. If I were ever to build again like I am doing now, I would make it a priority to get through with one box of screws just to say I did it. Oh, and my screws are steel. My grabbit magnet picks them up just fine.
I'm going to start glassing the topsides hopefully by Monday. More later.
Al