We had such a busy weekend, all I had time for was another coat of red on the outside of the boat.
The can wasn’t so full, so I felt like I was better able to stir and mix this time. Coverage seemed pretty good. I’d like to leave it at 2 top coats over the 3 coats of primer. I’m worried that all this paint is going to make the boat heavier than I want, make it too heavy to wrestle on top of the car when I need.
Maybe final red coat
I need to figure out a way to weigh the boat. Either with a couple of bathroom scales, but our scales nowadays are digital, with either the need to tap to get it to start & set to zero or with like an auto shutoff after 5 seconds or so. Or some sort of hunting/fishing scale from Amazon, but do I really want to spend $30 for this? Either I can get it up on the car or I can’t.
There’s also a nifty way to use one scale and calculate by weighing the boat on a trailer in two different positions and plug in the weights and distance moved into a simple formula, but, yeah, it needs a trailer. Sigh.
Dawn thinks I’m nuts, but I’m making my own set of oars. Specifically, I’m building what I call Michalak Oars. (Jim Michalak acknowledges that he based his design on Pete Culler’s oars, so Gavin Atkin calls them Culler-Michalak oars.)
One factor is cost, where I’m splurging on 1 × 8 pine at $22 per board but even the cheapest oars on Amazon or at like Cabela’s are twice that, but furthermore my oars are hopefully going to be better than those more expensive oars. As Atkin says:
The Culler-Michalak method produces a pair of oars at a fraction of the price you will be charged for a single badly balanced and clunky ready-made oar bought from a yacht chandler. So these real paragons among oars are cheap as well as right for the purpose.
Atkin, G. (2008). Ultrasimple boatbuilding: 17 plywood boats anyone can build. Camden, Me.: International Marine/McGraw-Hill.
So I’m definitely going with the great Jim Michalak on the matter.
Making use of 7-1/2″ width versus 5-1/2″
I am making one small change, though, in that I’m using 1 × 8 lumber instead of 1 × 6. I never could make the 1 × 6 size work for the parts in SketchUp. Atkin and Michalak both say it works, but I’m using 1 × 8 anyway, despite it being like $5 more per board. I’m spending $10 in insurance, I guess.
Beautiful pine boards ready for making oars
The President’s Day holiday weekend was great, having the three days, where I bought the boards and got them home on Saturday, got all the parts marked on the boards on Sunday, and cut out all the parts on Monday.
Middle part of oar #1, handle and square upper loom
My local Home Depot only had 4 eight-foot 1 × 8 boards from which to choose my 2, so I got the straightest 2 of the bunch as best I could. I had to wait almost a half hour to even get into the aisle where the boards were stacked, as it was blocked off for … whatever. Maybe carting in more stock or something. I was over buying some rope while I was waiting, which itself took the longest time to get somebody to cut it with the hot knife for me. Sigh.
Middle part of oar #1, lower loom and blade
But anyway I got the pine home and marked it up. It was quite a fun project, as it was in the relatively roomy (and warm) basement instead of the cramped (and nowadays cold) garage. Dawn was off seeing the Maryland gymnastics team meet Rutgers, so I even had Pandora blasting some tunes. (I don’t usually listen to music while working, at least not while I’m using any tool of any kind. But I figure I can hardly get that injured if I’m distracted while wielding a pencil.)
Both oars marked and ready for cutting out
I measured and re-measured and checked my measurements over and over, patiently erasing plenty of errant lines as I plotted out the parts. The worst was when I drew the lower part of the loom an extra 1/8 inch, where I have no idea how I got that wrong, since it’s a plain 30″ length (although a taper from 2″ down to 1-1/4″). But pencil mistakes are not nearly as upsetting as saw mistakes.
Marking oar #2 went way, way faster than the #1
Cutting out all the parts was rather much more challenging. First was that I used a jig saw, where Michalak uses, and recommends, a band saw. He laments that not everyone has a band saw, but he uses one anyway. But, yeah, I don’t have a band saw. Even if I did, though, I guess I’d only have like a 9″ or 10″ bench top band saw, which I’m not sure about maneuvering an eight-foot board around on one of those.
First board clamped and cutting begins
He also says that some folks use a table saw instead, which I do have one of those. But I don’t really see how that would work. Maybe by separating the parts first with a jig saw and then using the table saw to cut out the parts proper? But that’s a lot of long angled cuts, which I can only imagine needs some sort of taper jig on the table saw, since you couldn’t use an angled miter gauge. No thanks.
Oar #1 parts all cut out
So the jig saw wasn’t great, but it was what I could use. The biggest problem was holding the work on my work bench while cutting. That involved a lot of clamping on the edge of the bench, making all or maybe even just part of a cut, and then un-clamping and moving and re-clamping the piece.
Ready to cut oar #2
There was a lot of strategery involved. But it all got cut out.
Oar parts all cut
Next steps are supposed to be gluing the 3-piece sandwiches together and then shaping the oars with plane and rasp and file. I’ve got some alternative ideas to help speed that along. Maybe. We’ll see.
So, it’s kinda like an anniversary, the 52nd week’s blog post.
Happy Anniversary, Boat Therapy!
The actual chronological anniversary of boat building went thoroughly unobserved in the middle of October, whether for the first blog post on Monday 10/15/18 or when I actually purchased the wood at Home Depot on Saturday 10/13/18. I think maybe I was suffering a bit of embarrassment at the time at not having finished building within a year. Heck, I’d originally envisioned that I’d be launching some time in the spring of 2019. So that time came and went, and then a whole year had passed. And I felt kinda bad.
But I’m past those feelings, I hope. I like to say now that the boat takes as long to build as the boat takes to build. It’ll be ready when it’s ready. But I also want to step back and reflect ever so slightly on the time and effort and dollars that it’s taken so far. It’s been much harder than I imagined, and it’s taken much more time than I imagined, and it’s been much more expensive than I imagined.
But, despite all that, or maybe even because of all that, it’s been a far more rewarding experience than I could ever have imagined. I’m grateful for all the things that have gone right and for all of the things that have gone wrong. I’m grateful for my wife Dawn for putting up with me and encouraging me and even for telling me when it’s time to stop for the day and get back to real life.
And I’m also really grateful for the designer of my little boat, David Beede, for the design itself, of course, but also for all of his diagrams and build notes and pictures and encouragement. And for when he said that vision is “the most important ingredient in creating anything.”
If you have a vision you’re set. … Imagine how you’ll feel when you launch your new boat you made with your own hands. Imagine the way you intend to use your boat. Dream a little.
I’ve never been that great at vision. (I even sometimes think that I wouldn’t have started this project if I’d known that it would take this long. So I’m glad I couldn’t foresee that.) But I keep imagining how it’ll feel when I launch my own boat that I made with my own two hands.
(No, not really. I was going to title this Wheels & Red Paint but then had a brief moment of whimsy.) This weekend I installed both wheels proper and started painting the outside with the final red topcoat.
I was eager to take the wheels for a test drive, so I installed the starboard wheel and lowered the upside down stern off the saw horses it’s been resting on for painting. The wheels held up the hull just fine. So, ready to roll.
Both wheels installed
Nervously, gingerly, I pulled the boat out of the garage and into the driveway. The assemblies held. The assemblies did not collapse in a heap. Whew.
First test drive into the driveway
I did cheat a little, however. I cinched a nut around each pin bolt, holding them in the slots tightly, so that they would be much, much less likely to pop out going over a bump or something. I may do this as a general rule whilst rolling the boat around upside down. But I don’t think I can do this when the boat is right side up for launching, or at least not when it goes into the water. I’m worried enough about leaning over from the dock to reverse the wheel assemblies for sailing without having to un-tighten nuts that might be under water.
Formal portrait. Time to roll back into garage and remove.
(Will they be under water at that point? I guess the transom shouldn’t be in the water if the boat isn’t loaded with people yet. Maybe it could work. We’ll see.)
I took a few pics and marveled at my skills, then I wheeled the boat back in the garage and removed the assemblies. It was time to paint it red.
Wheel assemblies removed and stored
The can of red was really hard to mix, though. I stirred and stirred for a few minutes, counting a couple hundred turns clockwise then a couple hundred counterclockwise, but I still didn’t feel like it was enough. I think I might buy one of them fancy propeller attachments for a power drill that mixes paint.
Red paint deceptively glossy
It’ll be easier next coat, though, since the can isn’t as full now. I couldn’t be as vigorous, say, with the stir stick with the can completely full. Not sure if a propeller will solve that problem.
Wheels and red paint
So I slapped on the first coat. It looks a lot shinier in the pictures here than it does in real life. And it doesn’t cover the gray as completely in real life either. It definitely needs another coat. Whether it’ll need a third coat, well, we’ll see about when the time comes, of course.
Well, to be fair, it has wheel. Just one wheel. The other wheel isn’t actually attached but rather is still sitting unwrapped on the upside down hull. But the wheel strut assemblies are complete and installed (temporarily) on the transom.
It took much longer than I expected, making these assemblies. Again, to be fair, everything seems to take longer than I expect. But working with the aluminum has been much, much slower, I think mainly because of the filing of rough edges from cutting and drilling.
Drilling new mounting holes in angle stock
This weekend I did two main final things before being able to mount them to the transom. First was re-drilling new 1/4″ holes in the angle parts. I didn’t make them far enough apart originally. For some reason I thought they’d work best spaced at thirds, where really they should be closer to the ends. I moved each of them half again as close to the ends, this time thinking that this would be far enough but also because I think this spacing will look more symmetrical with the holes that are now going to go unused. I can’t imagine filling them with anything. Wood fill? That would look weird. And, besides, there’s not going to be like a hole in the wood inside them, just painted hull like the rest of the boat. They’re fine.
Cutting flat bar stock on chop saw
Second thing was that I finally cut the aluminum flat bar that will back up the angle parts from the inside of the transom. I think maybe the fact that the stock that I bought was 36″ long might have informed my decision to locate the 1/4″ attachment holes in the angles at 1/3 increments. I wouldn’t need as long of pieces of the flat backing if the holes were closer together. As it was, I think I just had enough stock, cutting 2 pieces at 9-1/2″ length for the long (11″) angle parts and the other 2 at 8-1/2″ for the short parts. (I should have cut them 2 x 10″ and 2 x 8″, but I got a little confused in my calculations. Oh, well. And actually, one of my short parts ended up like an eighth of an inch short, from what I lost from the kerfs from the saw blade from the three cuts. Oh, well, again.)
Cleaning rough edges on flat bar stock
I matched up each of the four pieces of flat bar with one of the pieces of angle and used the angle piece as a template to drill the 1/4″ mounting holes to match exactly. I even dropped a 1/4″ bolt through the lined up holes after the first drill through/in each, to drill the second hole as exact as possible. I felt pretty clever having thought of this method.
Drilling flat bar stock using angle as template
And it worked, too, for three of the four parts when I finally got out to the garage and mounted everything to the transom. Only with the long angle piece on the starboard side did I have to pound the hex bolts into place. Not sure where I went wrong when drilling the holes for that one.
Bolt as register pin for drilling second hole
Speaking of the holes, that was something of a process in and of itself. I had measured where the angle parts were going to line up on the transom, at least side to side for both, with also top to bottom for the long angles. I held those in place first and marked the center of the mounting holes with an awl. (Actually, the first one, that troublesome starboard side one, I traced the circle of the hole with a pencil. That maybe was why that one was the worst fit. I just eyeballed the center with the awl for the other 3 pieces.)
First pilot holes for long angles
I then drilled from outside through to inside with a 1/16″ twist bit, to mark the holes on the inside. Then from inside to outside, I drilled with a 1/4″ forstner bit just like an eighth inch or so in, just to prevent tearout on the inside. Then I finally drilled from the outside through to the inside with the 1/4″ forstner bit but this time with a little drill block to make the hole as perpendicular as I could.
Anti-tearout holes on inside of transom
(I could have, and maybe should have, used the drill block to drill the initial pilot holes, but the drill block only goes down to a 1/8″ bit size, not the 1/16″ that I was using. Only after drilling did I appreciate that I could have used a 1/8″ bit for the pilot holes. But, then again, the holes are all being covered by aluminum parts anyway, so any tearout wouldn’t be visible anyway. But, still, it was the principle of the thing, right?)
Final long angle holes
Once the holes were drilled for the long angles on either side, I mounted those two with 1/4″ hex bolts through to the inside through the flat stock and finally nuts cinched down, to be able to site where the holes for the short angles needed to go. For each side I popped a 5/16″ bolt through the center hole of the long angle then through the center hole of the aluminum tube and then finally through the center hole of the short angle. From there I was able to again mark with the awl the centers of the mounting holes and, like with the long angle, drill 1/16″ pilots though from outside, 1/4″ anti-tearout from inside, and finally 1/4″ through from outside.
Long angles mounted
I did a final assembly of each short angle and tube with the spring inside, making sure to thread the first bolt through the center of the short angle through the slot of the tube and not the center of the tube like I did last week, and then through the center of the tube through the other end of the spring. Then I was able to attach this assembly to the transom with the mounting holes in the short angle, threading the short angle center/tube slot bolt through the center of the long angle.
Marking holes for starboard short angle
And finally, finally, I attached one of the wheels. I was a bit terrified at this point, thinking the wheel wasn’t going to clear the hull bottom, but it did. Whew. And that was all I had time to do. It was time to walk the dogs.
My almost 2-wheeler
Next steps are removing the assemblies so that I can paint the insides of the holes with primer. And then I can paint the outside of the boat with its final color. It’s going to be red. And I have to do something with the aluminum parts as well, either paint them or at least remove the blue layout fluid stains. Not sure what I’m doing there. I think maybe some spray paint. But should I spray paint them metal colored or red to match the outside hull or yellow to contrast? I’m just not sure.
