Month: May 2019

Terrific three-day weekend for Memorial Day, which was also my birthday, and wow did I get a lot done.

Having deemed the chines flat enough for the bottom, it was time to actually cut the second plywood sheet that will be the bottom. Here I finally got a chance to use the new 4-1/2″ circular saw that I’d bought, along with a plywood cutting blade. I’d made such a hash of the first sheet of plywood with the 7-1/4″ saw with a standard blade, but I didn’t want to make such long cuts with the jigsaw. So new saw it was to be.

But the plywood cutting blade was terrible! It cut awfully slowly, and it burned the wood as it went. I switched back to the 24-tooth blade that came with the saw and that worked much better. I had worried that I’d get a lot of tearing out with the regular blade, is why I bought the plywood blade, but the regular blade was fine.

And it was a lot easier to saw to the layout lines with the 4-1/2″ saw versus the 7-1/4″, although that may also have had to do with working on the ground, with the plywood sheet on some 2×4s instead of on saw horses like with the first sheet that I’d cut way back when.

Or maybe having worked most weekends on the boat for the last 6 months has made me improve somewhat, so that I’m a bit better at sawing. But, whatever the cause, I was very happy with all the cuts.

Next step was to make room on the garage floor for gluing the bow points onto the remains of the second sheet to for the hull bottom. That involved moving the boat out of the garage and into the driveway. I grabbed the little furniture dolly that I keep my surface planer on, what with the planer being so very heavy. The dolly turned out to be a not-too-shabby way to maneuver the boat one-handed.

And with the boat in the driveway, I was able to set up the bottom for gluing on the garage floor. I didn’t use any staples this time with the butt blocks, remembering how terribly the staples have been in other pieces. I just used weights. Lots of weight.

I also took some time to straighten the frame in the middle of the boat that the bottom is going to get glued and screwed to in addition to the chines. I hadn’t really appreciated before how much the frame had bowed due to the compression force of the sides between the stem and the transom. I figured that I could bend the bottom over the bowed frame enough to attach the bottom, but I also figured that the 2-1/2″ wide keel that I’m going to glue and screw to the bottom would very much not bend enough to fit evenly.

I used a sister piece, the very same one that I had used as the bottom sister piece when I was originally installing the frame, to establish a straight line athwart the beam. Then I used a number of tools to make the existing frame even with the new straight piece. First up was the compact circular saw, plunge cut into the middle of the frame and using the parallel guide to remove some, but not all, of the stock in the middle. Then I used the jigsaw to remove stock closer to the ends. Then I screwed the new piece across and used the RotoZip as a trim router with a flush-cut top-bearing bit. And, finally, I used the rasp at the very ends.

It all worked well. I had been dreading how to fix the bowed frame, but it turned out to be easier than I thought. I did have one slip of the router, though, making a fine bit of gouging in the port chine. Oh well.

I moved the boat back in the garage above the glued up bottom on the floor. Everything should be ready next weekend to actually attach the bottom to the rest of the hull assembly. Then it’ll be a real boat. Not seaworthy yet, certainly. But an actual honest to goodness boat.

After two weeks away, because of inconveniently rainy weekends, I was able to get back to work, to level the chines.

The general angle of the hull flare is around 16° or so, but I cut the chines, as per the plans, at 18°. Thus I needed to cut down the chine angle to as flat as reasonably possible so that I’ll be able to attach the bottom.

I had worried over the way that the hull sides and the chines and the transom all met, at both the port and starboard corners. I vacillated between (1) knocking down the sides to meet the transom and (2) gluing a shim on the bottom of the transom to meet the chines and sides.

I finally opted for knocking down the chines and sides. With the Shinto rasp that I bought, it turned out to be easier than I imagined.

I just started at the starboard side of the transom and worked my way around the boat. I had the rasp for rough work and then a sanding block with 100 grit for a finer gluing surface, using a straight stick across the boat as a reference for the final angle. It took a few hours, more or less, off and on, but it was satisfying work, producing a lot of shavings and sawdust along the way.

Since I had to clean off all the sawdust, I took the opportunity to clean and straighten the garage workshop. That was quite satisfying, too.

And, lastly, I weighed down the bottom plywood sheet on the hull assembly, since it was bowing and bending a bit from being propped up in the garage in the humidity.

Next steps are to finish laying out the cuts on the bottom plywood panel, then cutting it, and gluing the bow points back on in the right configuration.

Re-proofing the Week 26 entry, I realize that I had port and starboard completely reversed!

I think maybe I got so used to the port side being on the left side of the garage and the starboard side on the right that I then started to think of the port and starboard sides of the garage instead of left and right.

But the boat is upside down now! It’s hard to tell, since it doesn’t have a bottom on it yet, but now the boat’s port side is on the starboard side of the garage, as it were. I didn’t have to re-label the chines when I decided to reverse them.

I’m not sure if I’m going to edit the confused entries or not. I’m certainly not going to re-re-label the chines, or un-label them, or whatever. My blunders will be covered by the bottom when that gets glued on.

Nobody ever needs to know.