The first planks are underway!

Installing the first plank, called the garboard plank, on the boat was extremely challenging yet I'm happy to report that it came out very well in the long run.  Once again, I'll use pictures to illustrate the process that I used on this plank:

This manky lookin' strip is called a "spiling batten".  Spiling is the process of making a template for each plank and this is how it is done.  The strip is roughly sawn to fit so that it lands between the marks for the upper and lower edges of the plank to be.  Being my first time spiling I found this pretty tough, the overall shape of the batten in order to lie flat was kind of like a Mario mustache.

At each mould a straight line is drawn along the fore or aft side of the mould.  Then I measured up from the lower edge 2" and made a mark.  I also measured down form the upper edge 2" and made a mark.  Later when the spiling batten is laid flat on the plywood I can simply extend these marks back outwards to get the correct width at each station.

I shaped the front end of the spiling batten to fit into the rabbet.  It took a few tries but now I can just trace it onto the plywood.



The batten is clamped in place while it is marked out.  See the big bunch of clamps near the centre?  The 8' strips of plywood were to short so I glued two together with a gusset across them.



The spiling batten is now laid down on the marine plywood and tacked with nails.  At each station I measure out 2" from my marks.  Notice that the batten is longer that the plywood, each plank will be made of two pieces attatched with a scarfe joint.  As I would find out, this is one of the most challenging parts!

Nails are tacked into the marks at each station.  I used one of the lining battens bent around the points to trace both edges of the plank as a fair curve.  I also marked out a 5" long scarfe joint on each piece.

After rough cutting each piece with a circular saw, I set about with the scarfes.  I used a combination of a hand plane and portable belt sander to make a 5" long taper on the ends down to a feather edge

With much fussing over proper fit and alignment I glued the scarfe joints together with epoxy and hoped for the best.  At this point the planks are still a little over size so some trimming can be done.

The completed scarfes: looks better than I could hope for!  Once the excess is sanded away these will be invisible.

With the scarfes done, I turned my attention to sanding down to the final shape.  My strategy was to clamp both planks together to speed things up and make both sides of the boat identical.  The best way I found was to hold the belt sander perpendicular to the edges and swing it along till I was down to the pencil line. 



Finally, I can start test fitting the plank.



The garboard is tricky because it twists nearly a full 90 degrees from the centre to the ends.  Let me tell you, this hard plywood does not want to bend that far without serious persuasion. 

Here's a look at the fit at the front of the boat.  Again, serious twisting required.

The whole plank fits really well!

GLUE UP:

Unfortunately, I have no pictures of the glue-up process.  It's a pretty stressfull job for many reasons:  the plank has a tendancy to slip around on the wet epoxy, it's very messy and drippy, the correct alignment is critical, and I found that on a hot sunny day the epoxy will start to harden pretty quick so I had to work very quickly.  Add to that the fact that my hands would get pretty gooped up with epoxy so I didn't feel like pulling out the camera.  Here's the process I used:

• I mixed epoxy and spread a thin layer onto all gluing surfaces.  This un-thickened epoxy will grab the wood really well.
• With the remaining epoxy I added a filler for a thicker mix that will fill and gaps and applied it to one side of the glue joint.
• Then I pushed the plank into place and clamped it up using F clamps spaced about 6" apart.
• Finally I left the clamps on overnight for full strength curing before releasing them.  This means I can only do 1 plank per day as I only have that many clamps.

Here's a shot of both garboard planks installed:

4 long days of twisting, pulling, sweating, and grunting.  Totally worth it! 

Lining off the planks

Lining off the hull is the process of marking out where the edges of the planks will end up on each mould.  There's a few ways to get the job done, but as I found out a little experience and practice goes a long way.  I actually ended up trying four different variations before finally being satisfied.  It was heavy on my mind that the line off marks would dictate the overall look of the boat, I wanted to get it right before commiting to cutting my expensive marine plywood  ($150/sheet, Yikes!). 

In the end I followed the intructions found in The Boatbuilders Apprentice.

• I divided the vertical distance from the keel to the top of the stem by the number of planks (7)
• I did the same calculation on the station mold closest to the centre
• I divided the flat portions of the transom as equally as possible
• Then I ran a long pine batten through these marks and clamped them lightly



Two plank lines clamped in place

• The battens have a tendancy to naturally curve in a pleasing way.  By sighting from either end I could bump them one way or the other and nail them down at each mould when they looked fair.

Here's the mistake I made the first couple times: Notice the sharp inner corner on that closest mould?  The 2nd plank had to land on that transition.  That meant making the first 2 planks narrower and making the rest wider.



All 7 planks lined off.  This gives a pretty good idea of what the boat will look like when planked.  I think they look pretty fair so I marked each mould at the edge of these battens.

One final view of the lining battens.





Assembling the backbone

In this post I'll talk about assembling the stem and stern to the keel and fastening the whole ensemble over the station moulds.  I have scaled the boat from the original length of 10' 6" to a more useful 12', now I get to see if all my calculations are correct.

The sternpost notches over the back of the keel and is epoxied/screwed

The stem gets the same treatment.  The keel is a little wide still leaving some room for fine tuning

Starting to look vaguely boat-like.

After assembling the backbone I flipped it over and centered it on the moulds.  The amount of overhang fore and aft are calculated based off the plans.  The overhanging 2X6 on the frame allowed me to design a brace for both stem and stern.  In this way I was able to correctly align them and make everything rock solid.

The keel is flexed over the moulds and screwed down.  This curve to the bottom of the boat is called "rocker" and makes it easier to row.

The angled 2X6 holds the transom centred in the right position.

A 2x4 crosspiece with some shims provides a spot to screw down the top of the stem.

The stem should be level when correctly centered.  I must have done something right!

The last step before moving on to planking was to carve a rabbet into the stem where the planks will terminate.  I had been dreading this step since the beginning but in the end it was actually very easy.  Here's how I did it:

The lofting provides an inner and outer line, called the rabbet and bearding line.  I tapped nails through the lines into a template behind the sheet.

Next I clamped the template to the stem and tapped nails through the same holes to provide marks on the stem itself.

Flexing a wood batten over the nails I traced both lines onto the stem...

...and I just started chiseling.  The scrap piece I have is 3/8" thick to simulate the planks, an easy way to test the fit.

The stem rabbet blends into the keel and becomes a part of the rolling bevel.

The stem rabbet is completely finished.  Chances are pretty good that some fined tuning will be needed but this is a great start!

Wheww... long post.  I'll be getting into the planking in the next few posts.

Building the backbone: The Stern

The stern of the boat looks a little something like this:


The "stern" or backend of the boat.  You can see how the sternpost attatches to the keel and transom

Obviously I'm jumping ahead a little bit here but I thought it would help to show the final arrangement.  I'll break it down for you.

Let's start with the sternpost:

Like the stem, the sternpost is structural so the grain must follow the angled shape.  To accomplish this I cut and joined two separate pieces before final shaping.



1 3/4" Mahogany cut roughly to shape.  The joint is designed to keep is from slipping while gluing.



Test fitting the pieces, you can see how the grain follows the shape.

Epoxy applied to both pieces.

Finally, Bronze screws provide the clamping force.

Next I tackled the Transom:

I made a template for the transom based on the plans.  Once again I was given sizes for the inboard and outboard sides of the transom because all of the edges will be bevelled like the keel.  The transom is a 1" thick slab made by gluing together several boards edge to edge and cutting to shape.

I made a paper template first.  The plans give measurements out from the centre line at various heights.

Gluing up 4/4 Mahogany boards with epoxy.

The final transom planed, shaped, and sanded.  She's a beaut!

But wait there's more, the trail-water:

The trail-water sits behind the sternpost at the base of the transom.  For a little piece this one was pretty tricky, every surface is angled and the edges have a rolling bevel.

One persnikity piece, the angles must match the transom and keel flawlessly.

The trail-water is epoxied to the stern and secured with bronze screws.

The transom is also epoxied and screwed to the sternpost.  All of the screws were counterbored and plugged.

At this point all of the backbone components are finally complete and ready to assemble over the construction moulds.  Hopefully, all these pieces will begin to look like a boat pretty soon. 

If you too are starting to feel the boat building fever, here's a song that helps pump me up:

Matt Mays - Building a boat. 

You could say that it's the unofficial theme song of this project.  That's pretty much what it looks like when I'm working, a bunch of guys grinding and planing to music then some dude shows up to play a guitar solo.  Try listening while reading my post - live it, love it!

Building the backbone: The Keel

The keel on this boat is a plank of 1" thick plywood with a rolling bevel along the edges.  It's sort of an unusual arrangement that is specific to this kind of boat so I wont get too technical but here's the basics.

I had to laminate two layers of 12mm plywood to achieve the desired 1" thickness.  This also allowed me to increase the overal length beyond the original 8' length cut from the standard sized plywood sheets.

The plans provide offsets for the keel.  At each station it indicates the inboard and outboard width, I marked both on the keel at the correct intervals square to the centreline.

By hammering small nails into the inboard marks I was able to bend a wooden batten through the points and scribe the outline.

The keel is sawn and sanded down to it's inboard outline.  It kind of looked like a surfboard at this point, progress?

The outboard outline is marked using the same method as before.  The rolling bevel is created by imagining a straight line cut from outboard line to inboard.  This was a huge amount of material removal done with a hand plane, beltsander, and oh so many blisters. 

Testing the bevels.  A rolling bevel means that the angle smoothly changes as it sweeps around the edge.  There will be some fine tuning later as well.

Cutting the bevels on the keel was definetely the most physically challenging part of the build to date.  I learned that the plywood is pretty rough on blades and sharpening was required often through the process.   Ultimately, the plywood planking must fall on the bevel and glue tightly so expectations are high but overall I feel like my accuracy is pretty good. Time will tell...

Building the backbone: The Stem

Ok, this is going to be a multi-parter.  Let's start with an impromptu vocab lesson:

These are all parts of the boat mentioned in the next couple posts,

Backbone: Structural elements that make up the boat.

Stem: The curved solid wood member that forms the front of the boat.
Keel: The very bottom of the boat.
Transom: The flat backend of the boat.
Sternpost: The solid wood structural member that forms the back of the boat.

The Stem

I'll start by sharing how I made the stem.  Keep in mind that I tend to do things the hard way but in this case I think it was the best method.  The complicating factor is that the grain of the wood needs to follow the curve otherwise it will be weak.  I did an epoxy lamination of mahogany strips as you can see below:



A choice piece of 8/4 African Mahogany.  I had to do some "interesting" rough sawing to work around a knot and still have enough for the sternpost.



Four chunks that have been squared up and planed to ~ 1 7/8"

I ripped strips off at 1/8" thick.  It took 30ish strips to makeup the 3 1/2" overall width of the stem! 

A whole pile of strips.  Can I convince them that they want to be curved?



I built a form by shaping several layers of mdf to the inner curve of the stem and securing them to a plywood base.



The thin strips are pliable enough to bend around the form.  I will point out that this was physically a lot harder than I imagined, there may have been some grunting and complaining.  The white board on top is a template of the final shape.

After testing the fit I removed all the strips and applied epoxy to both surfaces

Here it is all glued up, it'll be left for a full weekend to harden up.

Upon releasing the clamps I was happy to be left with a curved chunk of wood.  Fortunately, my fear that it would explode in spectacular fashion never happend!  Apparently I can convince them to be curved :)

 You'll see the completed stem in further posts but the next steps basically consisted of tracing the template and sawing/sanding the final shape.

And finally...

I alluded to the fact that there are other less time and wood consuming ways to build a stem.  I won't really get into these but I did find this interesting:  In the days of yore builders would actually find trees that had a natural crook or root knee that would provide a board with the correct grain curve.  Cool!