Samson post

I know it doesn't call for one in the plans...but I've seen a few other builds with something of the sort. I know Barrett put some on her boats. I think they look kinda "salty". Plus I'll need some place to attach and snug up the anchor rode, won't I?

So I made a samson post. I think the wood is Brazilian Cherry. Laminated from a couple of pieces, shaped and temporarily bolted to BH2. 

Samson post looking toward stern

I dunno...does it look a little beefy for a boat this size? Maybe I should pare it down to 3" square?

Samson post temporarily bolted to the back face of BH2

Dry fitting rudder cheeks and blade. Looks like it should steer her just fine.

AND THEN...we took a family vacation to the Caribbean. Bareboated a Moorings 50' in St Martin, Anguilla, and St. Barth.

Sunset cocktail anybody??

Sundry important bits.

To take a break from some of my stringer trials, I worked on other fun parts like the mast steps and rudder blade.

Here's the main mast step being dry fitted. White oak laminated and epoxied. 

No boat can set sail without paying homage to tradition. I'd hate to be caught dead (literally) without a coin for Charon, the ferryman, so I ordered up a nice shiny new 2014 silver dollar, and cut a little spot for it in the mast step. I'll epoxy it in place...or maybe just place it in and let the mast hold it in place. Would hate to make Charon have to work hard for his fare. Also hoping that a silver dollar (vs a penny or nickel) will buy me a front row seat at the festivities. ;)

My liberty silver dollar...dry fit. 

I had laminated some white oak and mahogany pieces for the rudder blade a few months back, and it sat collecting dust in a corner of the garage. I decided to get to work giving it its final shape. Here are my results. Not quite finished yet, but getting there. Should wrap a little 'glass around it for strength?

I read someplace that I should fit the cockpit deck before attaching the sheer stringers. So I measured, cut and dry fit them. They'll be glued n screwed in at a later stage...after planking, filleting, sanding, painting...[sigh]

One half in place.

View from the stern looking forward.

Both pieces in place.

View looking forward

Getting awfully cramped in that garage space. Starting to not have enough room to work!! 

Big mistakes...

So, some of the details of my busy-ness over the past few months. 

As I said, I had installed the first 3 rows of stringers. They looked good from far, but far from good. The more I inspected my work the more I sat on the moaning stool and got depressed. Here are some pics. The cognoscenti among you will clearly see my issues:

Note the spacing between middle stringer and the two other ones. Not what I'd call a fair curve. I need to adjust the positioning of the stringer notch by about 1/2" or so.

WOW. Nice fit, huh? Just plain bad workmanship. Also notice I tried some weird idea of doing a double bevel on the stringers to match the apex points of the bulkhead stringer notches. Not how it's supposed to be done.

Here's a really egregious error. Notice how the left side of bulkhead #3 is canted forward, twisting the whole enchilada out of plane. Wasn't paying attention during the glue-up.

How bout the crummy job of attaching the stringers to the bow. They don't fit well into the rabbets and will cause real problems when I have to plane them down to accept the planking. 

Nothing for it but to cut it all off and start over. Small problem. I don't have any more stringer material. So off to the lumber yard to buy another plank of poplar. Rip and plane to size, scarf and glue to length and do it over. 

Here's my planing machine doing the final sizing to 20mm square. Big pile of stringer material on the floor. Just in case I need to do it yet again!  

 

New results are much better. Everything's straight and true, ends fit nicely into the transom and stem. Time to move forward again! Yay!

OK...time to update.

Wow. Time flies. Can't believe my last post was in March. You probably think I've abandoned the build or lost interest. Far from it. I've been working on my Nav as diligently as time will allow. However, it's Wisconsin in the summer, which is waaay too short as it is, and so truth be told there's been less time in the shop these past few months. One of the things I've been doing is this:

'Andiamo" - my tandem wherry. 6am on Lake Nagawicka, WI.

Different view. 

You may recall I this was my first build two winters ago from a CLC kit. It's my second season rowing on the lake. Kim, my rowing buddy and I have been getting as many hours as work allows. It's about a 5.5 mile row around the perimeter. Good for a solid hour's sweat. These pictures were taken on a particularly still morning. As we say, the lake was "butter"...smooth and creamy rowing!

The other thing that's been taking me away is the usual family duties of work and the endless shuttling of children to their various summer activities: lacrosse practices, tournaments, games, dance practices, recitals, competitions. I'm sure you all know the drill.

A quick update here, and then I'll do some individual posts with lots of pictures.

I got the first three rows of stringers attached to the boat, and didn't like my workmanship. Frankly, it was pretty dang shoddy. I got depressed and moped around for a few weeks dreading what I knew I HAD to do. I finally decided to UN-install them. and try again. By the way, not a fun process. I cut them off and cleaned out the dried epoxy and re-installed new ones. Which, as anybody knows is a multiple step process. First I had to create the stringers, and plane them down to size, then scarf and glue them up to the right length, and then refit and re-glue. This time paying closer attention to fit and finish.

Meanwhile, there is other work to be done. I made and installed the mast steps and finally got around to making the rudder blade and fit it into the cheeks which I had made months before.

Then I set about planing the stem and stringers to accept the planks.

And finally, I've begun planking the boat. I was really dreading this part...mostly because I wasn't perfectly clear on how to go about it. Joel Bergen has been tremendously helpful in setting me straight and showing me a very understandable method that any idjit can follow...myself included. I don't have his permission, otherwise, I'd post the nice powerpoint slide show he sent me with step-by-step instructions. But if you want to know, I think he has these posted on his blog.

The planking of the bow forefoot has been a small nightmare. I've snapped 2 pieces of pricey okume trying to get everything to fit just right. I think as both Joel and Barrett Faneuf, and even JW himself have stated. It IS possible to get plywood to perform compound bends in multiple planes. You just have to be very very patient and very very careful. My third attempt appears to be going much better.

I'm feeling a little pressure to get the planking finished. As it turns out, we may be moving! There's some possibility that I will have to be out of the house by October 1. If that happens, I will want to make sure the boat is in a state of being able to be removed from the building jig. I can't bear to think about trying to move the whole thing as it sits right now.

So I'm back to motivated, and I think by the end of this coming winter, I'm hoping to have a boat that I can launch when the ice finally clears off the lakes around here.

OHHHHH YEAH....did I mention that I'm contemplating the purchase of K. Aage Nielsen's 36' centerboard yawl, MAGIC? Yeah...cool boat. Launched in 1961. Historically significant. Built by Paul Luke in Maine. And now lying in Chicago. Maybe next spring she'll be lying in Milwaukee. Maybe my Nav could be Magic's tender???

Life is full!!

Nielsen's yawl, MAGIC

More progress and a few details

I feel like I made some great progress this weekend. Between kid's events and work it's been hard to get solid blocks of time to dedicate to the project. A little trim here, a little tuck there, but not any real time. Well, this weekend, there was nothing on the schedule. No games, no dances, no places to be. The weather started off chilly and ended up in the 50's on Sunday. I opened the garage doors, let the sun and fresh air in, and got down to work. Several things got accomplished:

I got the seat fronts measured, cut and installed. I made the rudder cheek assembly.

Cut the holes for inspection ports, and laminate a reinforcing ring to the inside face

Picture of the finished inspection port with reinforcing doubler ring.

Seat fronts installed and setting up. Trickiest part here is getting the angle right on the aft side so that the ransom angles back correctly.

Made the seat faces slightly oversized so I can plane them down once the seat stringer is in place. In this picture, the bulkhead frames are clamped on for dry fit/visual check.

Making the rudder cheeks. I had a nice piece of white oak, so I sized the plank, planed it to thickness and made the first cheek. I used this as a pattern for the 2nd cheek, and then used the sizing of that and dimensions from the plans to do the spacer blocks.

Simple geometry drawn on the plank

Rudder cheek, starboard side. Pivot point epoxy filled to be drilled out to size later. Stainless screws countersunk and covered over with thickened epoxy.

Front view of the cheek assembly. I'm quite proud of how this turned out.  The cuts and holes are quite precise and clean, and the whole thing feels solid and like something that will last.

I used a 3/16" rounding plane to knock the edges off the corners of the piece. It's one of my favorite tools. It cuts true and smooth, and leaves the piece with a wonderful hand-feel. If you click the image and look closely at the edges, you'll see what I mean.

Here are a few pictures from some of the little details that I've been working on evenings after I get home from work. Little stuff for sure, but stuff that's fun and will add to the overall nice finish of the boat once it's done.

This is the temporary king plank. I say temporary because I'm not sure I want it made from pine, which is what this plank is. Maybe it should be oak? 

I like this detail on the centerboard case. I shaped a piece of white oak to the proper dimensions, and then on the underside, I made 3/4 cuts through the plank every inch or so. The idea was to make the board flexible below so that it could bend to the curve of the sides of the case. It was then secured with epoxy and screws. Eventually, I'll make a covering board from laminated teak. 

This is the floor brace for Bulkhead 5. I used my Bosch jigsaw to cut the profile of the base moulding, and my 3/16 roundover plane to soften the top edges of the brace. 

Precision fitting the port seat face to where it meets the transom.  Nice fit. Right angle. 

Making the inspection ports on Bulkhead 3. These will be sealed with rubber gasket/o-rings and then mounted with  thumb screws. I don't anticipate having to take these off every day...


Now that the seat faces are in place, I'll begin gluing up each of the bulkheads in preparation for putting the stringers on. I'm quite nervous about this. As they say, this is where the rubber meets the road. I'll get to see just how far off my measurements were and how bad my cuts were! Hopefully, there won't be too much in the way of re-fitting.  

How's she lookin'?

Well, today I needed some encouragement. When you spend all this time making things that don't look much like a boat, you need some visual affirmation that you're actually getting someplace. So as my centerboard trunk was setting up, I dry fitted the transom and the first few bulkheads. This layout gives you some sense of what the boat will ultimately look like.

View from the port stern quarter

View from the bow. Once again, crooked cameraman. BUT...it's encouraging to be able to let your eye draw in the various stringers and planks to see that your measurements are not horribly off the mark, and that everything seems to be lining up right about where it should be.

Another view. You can almost see the sweep of the sheer and the counter turn of the plank at the forefoot. Almost.  ;)

Putting the centerboard trunk together

For some reason I've been really dreading this part of the build. I guess I'm afraid that if I don't get it perfectly right, then the whole project will end up badly.

Centerboard trunk sides. Inside glassed. Outside not.

Layers of epoxy to fill in the 'glass weave. Wood grain looks so pretty. Shame nobody will ever see it again!

Anyway...I cut the side pieces and 'glassed the inside faces of the trunk and milled some stout pieces of white oak for the end and top logs.

As usual, lots of clamps are needed to hold this all together. I'm favoring the blue Irwin clamps, which have a cool feature that allows you to flip the head around to create a spreader instead of a clamp. In this picture you can see that I'm pushing against the seat stringer so that the structure sits perfectly astride the keelson.

View from the stern. I know it doesn't look vertical. But it is. Checked. Checked again. Checked a third time. It's straight up and down. Just a bad cameraman I guess!

 I cut all the cheek pieces and bored oversize holes through them for the centerboard pin. These holes were then epoxied to make a nice hard-wearing bushing. I attached the seat stringers.

Here you can see the oversize hole drilled for what will ultimately be 1/2" stainless pivot pin. 

Before installing, I inserted the still-in-progress centerboard to make sure it all fit together and moved freely. So far so good.

Going on faith that nothing was going to change dramatically I then dropped the entire unit into the centerboard slot on the bottom plank, epoxied it all into place, and then glued the cheek pieces on.

Using Diettrich's method, I created both an epoxy fillet AND decorative moulding pieces to both lend strength and style to the trunk. Once the boat gets flipped over, I'll work on the bottom side of this structure. I will reinforce the entire union with stainless screws and fiberglass tape.

What's different from the picture above? The maple moulding at the base of the cheeks and on top of the cheek. Not the best picture, but I'll take more when the clamps come off. I planed the backside of the moldings to create about a 3/8" triangular hollow. I laid a "peanut butter" fillet down and then clamped/screwed the moldings on top of it. I think this will prove to be an attractive and strong joint.