Making the rudder blade

I decided to make up the rudder blade. This was a fun little project, and I think it's coming out great so far.

I started with rough-cut Honduras mahogany and white oak. Using my Home Depot-rented Makita table saw, I ripped the planks into roughly sized staves and laminated them together with thickened epoxy to form the rudder blank.

Oak and mahogany staves

Staves glued up into a blank 

I made a cardboard template from the plan specifications and used that to trace the shape onto the blank. Using my little band saw, I trimmed the blank.

Rudder blank is shaped and planed. Very pleasing work using a nice hand plane.

Then using the drill press, I bored the holes for the pivot pin and the rudder up-uphaul and down-haul hardware. Gotta make sure they're perpendicular to the plane of the blade!

Holes drilled for pivot pin, and up- and down-hauls

Then I used my router with a round-over bitt to shape the leading and bottom edge of the blade. 

Rounded edges. 

Here's the 3/4 finished rudder. I still need to taper the trailing edge, sand and apply several layers of epoxy to waterproof and harden it.

Shaped, planed, drilled and rounded rudder blade

After that, it's on to the rudder cheeks.

Centerboard cuts

After all the work of scarfing, measuring, cutting and trimming the bottom plank, plus the addition of the keelson and seat stringers, the prospect of cutting a big hole in the bottom of the boat was more than scary. I also have never really used a circular saw, so it was even more daunting. But as it turned out my fears were for naught. The measurements held true, the lines were straight and the resulting slot will accommodate the centerboard trunk very nicely. There's still a little bit of clean-up work to do on the corners, but it's mostly done. 

The chisel and edge-plane proved to be the perfect tools for the job of cleaning up the slot. 

You can see the supporting section braces underneath the cut-out, with a little bit of junk yet to be cleaned up  in the corner.

I also was able to get the first two coats of epoxy onto the garboard plank. Much easier to do now rather than after I get all the bulkheads on. It looks so shiny now...almost as if it were varnished...but it needs another coat, lots of sanding and filling in the weeks ahead.

Epoxied bottom plank

I finished fiberglassing the insides of the centerboard trunk. This will make it completely waterproof and very strong.

One side of the CB trunk glassed. The other...not. 

Now...I need to find a table saw to borrow from somebody. I've got some serious lumber ripping to do...Given some of the severe compound curves in upcoming steps, I was reading from other  builders that it's much easier to laminate the stringers, rather than bend thicker pieces.

A stack of rough sawn Honduras mahogany, ash, and white oak ready to be ripped and cut down to size. This wood will be used to  make up the rudder blank, and the CB trunk logs and top/

All these 1x1 poplar stringers need to be ripped in half. 

If the weather is nice, and I get a little bit of time this weekend, I am going to attempt to melt lead, cut a big hole in the centerboard and pour a 30 lb lead weight into it. Another series of firsts...more to come!

More Progress

 So once most of the parts were cut out and assembled, I assembled the building frame which is shown below. It doesn't look like much, but it is level in both directions and very sturdy and solid. Each one of the cross stations has a specific height which corresponds to the bottom curvature of the boat. Once the garboard plank is fastened on top, it will set up to the final curvature. Further additions of planks, keelson, stringers and bulkheads will end up holding the shape.

Building jig/frame. I see a nice bonfire in the future. :)

 In a previous post, I talked about cutting out the bottom plank. Below is a picture of what it looks like before fastening onto the frame. The plank will be held in place to its shape by a few temporary drywall screws that will be removed when the time comes to flip the boat.

Garboard (bottom plank) laid on top of the frame.  

Front view of the same thing. The curves look pretty fair. 

I tried taking a picture close to the edge. It's hard to get a feel for the sheer (curvature) of the board...but it looks nice. 

 Once the plank is positioned and fastened on the frame, I spent some time lining off centerlines, bulkhead stations, and stringer positions. I also pre-drilled and counter-sank holes on the bottom of the plank for securing the keelson. The photo below shows the keelson being glued to the bottom plank. I used white oak...a wood that has a very pleasing heft and solid feel to it. It's also highly resistant to rot; not that that will be particularly important as it will be encased in epoxy by the time I'm done with it.

Further proof that you can never have too many clamps when building a boat. Work has stopped until the epoxy sets up because I don't have any more bar clamps!

 I had to crawl under the boat to drive all the stainless screws that hold the keel in place. At this point, I have to say, I'm pretty glad that I build the frame at table height. I have a feeling I'm going to spend some more time underneath there, so it's good that there's a little room to maneuver around. I ain't as spry as I used to be!

View from stern looking forward. 

Side view. Here you can get a better feel for the curvature of the bottom.

Next up, fitting the seat bottom stringers, cutting the centerboard trunk slot, epoxying the entire bottom of the boat, and fitting the stem. 

I couldn't resist...

I managed to get the bottom plank cut out on Monday night, and now that the base shape has been established, I wanted to see what some of the bulkheads and stem look like dry fit. 

Before I actually get to fitting them, I still need to finish the base ladder frame. There will be 9 stations of varying elevations fixed to the frame that will provide the "rocker" or bend to the garboard plank. Once these are installed, I'll glass the inside of the plank, fasten the keelson, and then begin permanently fitting the centerboard case and various bulkheads. From here on out, it will start to look more and more like a boat. 

As many people have written before me, there are myriad details to this project. It's one of those things that if you actually made a list of everything that needs to be done to complete this boat, you might never undertake the project. I'm a bit impatient by nature, and I'm constantly fighting a great temptation to jump ahead and perhaps gloss over details. But I know from my limited experience that the more detail I pay attention to now, the less work I make for myself later on. I find myself having to think several steps ahead of where I'm working. For instance, in order to save myself a massive headache later, I need to fiberglass the inside bottom of the boat now, when there's nothing in the way rather than wait until I have to work around 8 bulkheads and a transom. Likewise, I want to epoxy encapsulate each of the bulkheads now before installing them, as it will be easier to sand and clean up when I don't have to reach round fixed installed parts and stringers. It's something that wakes me up at 3 in the morning sometimes as I come up with little details that I need to attend to before moving to the next step. 

So far, though, I'm having a blast, and greatly increasing my woodworking skills every day.

Oh yes...one big AHA moment yesterday. I splurged on a compact laminate/trim router. Cool little tool, but I underestimated its power. After turning it on, I applied it to a piece of wood to test it out and it jumped right out of my hand. Not once but twice! Luckily it didn't hit me or cause any damage.  But the thought of a router cut in my leg or hand or worse is a good reminder to respect ones tools and make sure to use BOTH HANDS on routers. Even the small ones. 

Starting to take shape

You can almost imagine the shape of the boat!

Making the centerboard

One of the first things I'll have to do once I've finished assembling the building frame and laying out the bottom (garboard) plank, is cut a hole for, and set up the centerboard. For those who aren't sailors, the centerboard is Navigator's primary "keel". It's essentially a retractable wing that provides lateral resistance below the waterline for wind pressure on the sails above the waterline. When wind fills the sails, from the side of the boat, the centerboard will stop the boat from slipping sideways through the water, and channel the energy by providing a hydraulic version of "lift", and help the boat move forward through the water. 

So it's a critical part of the construction. I've chosen to make the centerboard out of a laminated pine blank, coat it in epoxy and sheath it in fiberglass.  It has a very specific shape defined by something called a NACA profile. I made a template out of scrap plywood, like Robert Dieterich did for his Annie build. See his blog for photos. This was used to channel out the general shape of the foil. I then used power and hand planes to shape the board down to the router cut-lines. 

Once the board is finished, it will be "housed" in the centerboard trunk, which is exactly what it sounds like: a box (waterproof) that the board can be retracted into for downwind sailing, or beaching and trailering the boat. 

Laminating the centerboard blank

This is a full-size template for the NACA foil shape. Effectively a horizontal cross-section of what the centerboard should look like.The finished side will be the smaller foil in the inside right. The rectangle is the blank shape. The larger outline is the offset for the router template I made to guide the initial shaping/carving of the blank.

The roughed out centerboard. You can see the pivot hole a the bottom (top) of the board. The rounded rectangular protrusion will be where the up-haul pennant shackle gets attached for raising and lowering the board during sailing.

Roughed out board

Carving out the pennant shackle attachment point

Back side shot of the same area

Front top view of the board. You can see the blade shape emerging.

Cutting and shaping the sides of the centerboard trunk.

The "hump" at the front end of the case accommodates the radius of the pivoting board and holds the elevated pennant shackle block.

Scarfing the garboard plank

It's been a while since my last post, but it doesn't mean that I haven't been busy. Lots of progress in the past few weeks. I'll put up a few posts with pictures to give you an idea.

By the way..."scarfing the garboard plank" is just nautical speak for "tapering and gluing the bottom of the boat together".

Now that all the main pieces of the hull structure are finished, I built the ladder frame and laid out the bottom plank(s). Because the boat is 15 ft long, I have to join two pieces of 9mm ply. Lots of ways to do this, I guess, but the general consensus among Navigator builders is to do an epoxied scarf.

Following others, I went with a 8:1 ratio. So a 9mm plank will have a taper that is 72mm long. In order to do this, I stacked both pieces offset by 72mm. I scribed a reference line across both sheets of ply, and hand-planed them down. Sounds daunting, but really isn't too bad. The layers of ply actually end up providing a pretty decent reference point, as you can see from the pics. The idea is try to get the lines as straight and parallel as possible. When this is done, flip one sheet over. Line them up, and glue with epoxy. Voilá! a 16' sheet of ply of uniform thickness.

Next up...work on the centerboard and centerboard trunk.

Initial planing work

Here you can see the individual layers of ply showing through the tapered planing

Used a piece of lumber as a guide for the plane along the scribed reference line so as not to plane too much

Getting close

Gluing up the scarf. That's a thickness planer being used as a weight to hold down the improvised wooden bar clamp!

Glue

Or more accurately, epoxy.  Ugh. What a sticky mess. Last year, when I built my CLC Tandem Wherry (see the 'Andiamo' pix), I got my first taste of working with this miracle stuff. It's very intimidating at first, but it turns out to be not nearly so daunting once you get into it. There are lots of ways you can use it:  It can become a waterproof coating, glue, a bonding resin for fiberglass or other strengthening composites like kevlar or carbon fiber, a strength-providing fillet, filler for mistakes and gaps, and it can even be molded into structural parts.

In this case, I'm using it as a super strong glue. After cutting all my bulkheads and doublers, it's time to start gluing them up. You mix small batches of resin and hardener, in carefully measured amounts. You add some filler to thicken it up to the desired consistency, and get to work. The stuff can get pretty goopy and drippy, and once it cures, it's crazy hard to sand and smooth.

So last year I learned that it's much easier to clean up epoxy while it's still wet. I downloaded the Russell Brown's booklet Epoxy Basics, which gives some great tips on how to really do this work in a craftsmanlike way. I'm making an effort to put his techniques to use.

Another day or two of this procedure and I'll be ready to start setting up the building frame, garboard, keelson, and bottom stringers. It's by no means the end of epoxying...I should become an expert at it by the time this boat is done. More in posts to follow...

Meantime, it's Antarctic weather here in Wisconsin this week, so what better way to spend the time than working in a nicely heated garage on an enjoyable project!

Bulkhead #4

Pleased with the hole cutouts. I used a plunge router with a circle jig to cut two holes and then connected with my jigsaw.

You can never have too many clamps. I ran out tonight.

An example of cleaning up a glue joint before it sets. See...no drips or clumps.

I made an epoxy mess out of the stem, and paid the price sanding and scraping with a heat gun later.