Boat Therapy

I had raided my 12′ piece of 5/8″ × 1-1/2″ chine piece for the starboard inwale, so I wasn’t sure what I was going to use for chines. I had two options: (1) a different 5/8″ × 1-1/2″ stick at 12′ long that was less than stellar, having some serious splits or wanes along the edge, but that I could split for the chines, or (2) two pieces of 12′ long maybe 1/2″ × 1-1/2″ left over from the 2×4 that I cut for the keel that could be a chine apiece.

I decided to cut both options at the 18˚ angle and see which looked better. For the first piece, I split it in the middle at 18˚, while the other two pieces I shaved off an edge at 18˚ on each of them. I decided I liked the larger chines that resulted from the two pieces instead of the single split piece. So I took those out to the garage to start cutting them to length.

First thing out in the garage, though, was to turn the boat upside down. I tried a couple different hand holds and angles to try to do it myself, but in the end I enlisted Dawn and we turned it over as a team. The boat is definitely getting too big and heavy to maneuver by myself. I’m going to need to build a cart to move it around at some point.

Fitting and cutting the chine pieces themselves was a bit of a dance, since, like the inwales, they won’t fit inside the boat until they’re cut to the right length, but, then again, you don’t really know what the right length is until they’re cut. So you have to cut and shove one end in place at a time.

And each end has to be cut at compound angles, given that none of the angles between the sides and the stem and the transom is square. I used a bevel gauge to measure and transfer each angle from the boat to the piece, after first clearly labeling each piece and which side was which. It was so easy to get turned around.

Luckily it was a fairly nice afternoon, so I was able to cut at a station I set up in the driveway. It would have been really tight to cut next to the boat in the garage. I did get turned about a couple times anyway, though, between what was up and down on the chine piece, and I cut the wrong angle. Maybe a few times even. But this was all figuring out the angles of the cuts, rather than the final length.

I might have had time to glue and screw the chines in place, but for the room for the chines under the notches in the frame not being big enough. I had cut the notches, a little over-sized even, but for the original chines sized from cutting a single 5/8″ × 1-1/2″ in half. My two pieces that I used are each bigger than the originally planned halves. So I either have to make the frame notches bigger or shave off some from the chines where they go under the frame.

The frame is attached to the sides and those notches are already painted, so I’m opting for shaving some spots on the chines. Maybe next week I can get that done and then get the chines attached. It’d be nice to finally get a bottom on this boat.

Having cut and fitted the port inwale last week, and now having poached the 5/8″ × 1-1/2″ × 12′ chine blank to be the starboard inwale, I was almost ready to glue and screw the inwales in place.

First, though, I had to cut the starboard piece to fit. I measured the finished port piece, which I decided I’d made just a smidge too short, to be 126-1/4″, so I first shortened the unfinished starboard stick to 132″. Then I tried to fit it underneath the starboard spacer blocks, as well as the breast hook and quarter knee on that side. But it was still too long for that. So I needed to cut another inch or two. I re-measured the port piece, since I hadn’t written down that 126-1/4″ measurement. And that’s when the tape measure broke. It wouldn’t retract.

So that’s when I stupidly took apart a tape measure. And you know what? There’s a sharp spring inside there. I cut myself on it.

Twice.

I finally got all the wounds dressed and got back to the actual boat building.

I’d been fretting about how to get the glue onto all the inwale spacers without making a big mess. The surfaces to be glued together are all vertical surfaces, and wood glue is drippy. I wished I’d bought a few small brushes. And I worried about the glue open time, since I had to brush the glue onto 15 spacer blocks on each side.

It finally dawned on me that it’d be a whole lot easier to use the construction adhesive. It’s thick and sticky, so it doesn’t drip off the vertical surface, and it has an open time about twice as long as the wood glue. I really should have thought of all this a long time before.

Starting on the port wale, I applied a bead of adhesive to each spacer block, then spread the bead to cover with a craft stick, then fit the wale into position and clamped it in the center. I then drilled and screwed in the middle & at the ends, then I removed the clamp. Now I simply needed to drill and screw the other points into the spacer blocks.

Here I had a little trouble, and made note to do it a little differently on the starboard side. Because of the way the wale bends and stretches as it’s being screwed down, I should have worked my way from the middle to the outsides. I shouldn’t have screwed down the ends so early.

I was able to clamp and force the gaps closed, for the most part. But, again, I made sure to work from the inside out down both sides on the starboard wale. Also, I had planned to use the same jig that I’d used on the spacer blocks, to drill in the top left and lower right corners, so as to avoid screws interfering with each other. But I was worried enough about the open time of the glue, so I ended up just eyeballing this side. I think it’ll be fine. I sure didn’t feel like I drilled into any existing screws.

I did run out of 1″ screws, though. I’d bought 48 of them for the 30 spacer blocks. I guess I thought that I’d use only one screw for many of the blocks, but I used two screws for most blocks. I switched to 1-1/4″ screws after I ran out of the 1″. No big deal.

And the wales don’t fit on the spacer blocks, or into the breast hook and quarter knees, nearly as smoothly as I planned. But, once again, I’m reminded that I’ve never built a boat before. This is a learning experience. Embrace the roughness.

The plan this weekend was to glue & screw the inwales in place. I got to work finally on late Saturday afternoon. I was able to cut and fit the port side okay, but the starboard piece broke in two places as I was bending it to fit.

Ugh.

I kind of gave up on the boat for the weekend. We went hiking in Greenbelt Park with the dogs on Sunday. It was great fun.

So then my plan was to cut and glue scarf joints in the starboard inwale, in the basement workshop during the week. My first attempt was comically bad. Neither joint was long enough, given how I overlapped the pieces 5″, figuring 5/8″-thick material and a 1:8 angle gives a 5″ joint. But cutting diagonally across the pieces overlapped by 5″ only gave me a 2-1/2″ joint. The glued joint toward the bow end wasn’t too, too terrible, but the one toward the stern was quite possibly the worst scarf joint ever (WSJE).

So I cut out the WSJE and tried again, making sure to measure a full 5″ on each piece. Then I tried all sorts of ways to align the plain (not nibbed) scarf joint and devise a clamping method. I tried sister pieces and pencil marks and blue painter’s tape, but I never did find a satisfying solution.

So I just finally gave up on the broken piece. I cannibalized the piece destined for chines instead.

The weekend held the promise of warm temperatures, Sunday high in the sixties even, so I looked forward to gluing. And, oh, did I glue.

I did the starboard gunwale first. I screwed it on with 2 of the middle screws, then clamped it at both ends, to draw a line underneath to guide me where to put the PL Premium polyurethane construction adhesive on the hull up near the sheer line. I unclamped and unscrewed the gunwale and put a generous bead all along the hull, spreading it with a tongue depressor craft stick.

Then I started screwing the gunwale back on, first the middle screw, then a clamp, then working out toward the ends. Pretty quickly I noticed that I had screw holes through the hull that didn’t match up with any screw holes in the gunwale. I had mis-aligned the gunwale. Oh, no!

It was a sticky mess to remove. Like the similar disaster when I was gluing the frame to the hull, though, I gave myself a little pep talk and slowly & deliberately fixed the problem instead of panicking.

Once it was screwed and glued the whole way I used more craft sticks, cut in half, to scrape up glue squeeze out above and below the gunwale. And I noticed that there was a bit of a gap at some points along the gunwale, so I drilled a few more places to put in the 1/2″ screws, cinching them tighter to close the gaps.

I got a little lazy on the port side, opting to just draw a line at about the right level below the sheer line for the glue, using the screw points for all the spacer blocks as a guide. That worked okay. I ran out of the first tube of adhesive about 2/3 of the way along the hull, but I had brought another tube out to the garage in case that happened. So I just popped the new one in the caulk gun.

Something about the curve along the port side and the fact that I’m right handed somehow made the port side much harder. The gunwale popped out of a couple screws as I worked my way toward the bow. I cursed a bit but didn’t panic, just kept going and worked the problem. At least I had double- and triple-checked the alignment starting out, so I didn’t have to take the whole wale off and start over like the starboard side.

Like the starboard side, there were some gaps which I closed with more screws. I even ran out of 1/2″ screws and used a few 3/4″. For the record, I had bought a bag of 100 1/2″ screws. Used ’em all.

There were even a couple gaps on the port side that had spacer blocks opposite them, so I couldn’t use screws to close them. I left the screw clamps on the wale in those spots.

I had time to install the quarter knees and the breast hook, since Mayssa kindly took my place to go with Dawn on the afternoon dog walk. I first started using the plain old wood glue instead of the construction adhesive, but the fit of the starboard quarter knee along the transom wasn’t as tight as I would have wished. So I wiped off the Titebond and spread on the PL Premium.

I wasn’t thrilled with the fit of either of the quarter knees, though, especially the port side. I knew that side had a rather substantial gap and needed some trimming. I rigged up my belt sander to my workbench in the basement to substitute for a bench sander.

That worked pretty well, but it still wasn’t nearly perfect. It’s good enough, though, for this, the good enough boat, not the perfect boat.

The breast hook is pretty sweet, though. Fits real nice.

I wasn’t sure if I’d get any time for the boat this weekend, since we were going to the ballet, but turned out I had time both days. But, alas, this weekend’s work was all about gluing things, and it was too cold to glue on Sunday.

The time I had on Saturday was enough time, though, to glue on all the inwale spacers, all 60 of ’em.

First decision to make was what kind of glue to use. I’ve used PL Premium polyurethane construction adhesive thus far for everything, but for these I opted for Titebond III wood glue instead instead. I’ve got a general idea that I’ll use the polyurethane for anything that might conceivably be under water, or even below the waterline, but wood glue for things above.

I’ll eventually be using epoxy as well, but only to glass the chines and the seams at the bow, stern, and where the plywood is butt blocked together.

So it was all slow, deliberate work: unscrew the spacer, apply glue, and re-screw the little guy back where it was, then wait for and wipe up any glue squeeze out.. Repeat 60 times.

The only other thing I did was replace the one spacer above the starboard butt block, which butt block is not quite 1-1/2″ below the sheer line where the spacers go. That block needed a little trimming to fit, and the first attempt I made looked terrible. Even though the block is going to eventually be hidden by the inwale, I’ll always know it’s there and wanted it a little better. So I rasped and filed and sanded a new block instead of sawing like I did with the old one.

And now all the spacers are glued, so I can glue the gunwales next. I’ll go back to the PL Premium for those. Then inwales (wood glue) and then it’s time for the chines.

Next week.

Great progress! I spent hours on Saturday and even more hours on Sunday. I was hoping to actually glue some parts, but I didn’t quite have enough time for that.

I clamped the breast hook and quarter knees in place, allowing me to attach, with screws for now, the cleats that will finally hold the breast hook and quarter knees. It’s something of a dance, deciding what gets attached to what, since some parts are on the inside and some the outside.

I can’t screw the gunwale to the hull at the bow and stern if there’s a breast hook or quarter knee in place in the way, but, similarly, I can’t screw the breast hook at the bow or a quarter knee at the stern if the gunwale is in place. So the sequence is to screw a cleat to the hull on the inside, then screw the gunwale to the outside, then screw the breast hook or quarter knee to its cleat on the inside.

So, finally, with the cleats in place, I have the actual length of sheer line to which to attach inwale spacers. This is where the tape measure comes in.

I first tried clamping the tape measure to the inside of the boat, since that’s where the spacers go. But I couldn’t get the tape to lie flat all along the sheer line, since the curve on the inside is concave. It worked much, much better putting the tape on the outside, along the convex curve, where the tape stretched taut and flat.

Then it was a simple matter of making marks 8″ apart, for the 4″ blocks to be 4″ apart. The next issue, though, was transferring the marks on the outside of the hull to the inside. I could’ve just eyeballed it, probably, but, as usual, I worked out an overly exacting method.

I used two extra scrap spacer blocks, clamped together with some thinner scraps, to make a gauge to transfer the marks from outside to inside.

Once the points were marked on the inside, I could then screw the spacer blocks to the hull. Again, this is a little bit of a dance, since I’m screwing the blocks to the hull but then I’ll be screwing the inwales to the blocks. I don’t want screws going into or through each other from both sides.

So I made a little jig or template from an extra spacer block, such that the screws will be in different corners of the block depending on which side they come from. I clamped that onto the outside and drilled pilot holes for each block.

Then I clamped each spacer block in place and drilled through the pilot holes with the #6 screw countersink set for a 1/2″ screw.

And, finally, I screwed each block on with the 2 screws.

That took a while, going around both sides of the boat, 15 spacer blocks per side and 2 screws per spacer block. That’s 60 screws, if you’re counting.

And then I was able to screw the gunwales onto each side.

I was amazed at how solid the assembly is, with the sturdy gunwales attached. Next steps is to unscrew all the parts screwed on today so that they can be glued and re-screwed. Then inwales glued and screwed to the spacer blocks. Then time to turn the boat over and install the chines.

Stay tuned.

(Oh, and I forgot to mention, Dawn stopped by to take a picture of me working on my boat, to send to Papa Joe.)

Another week working mostly in the basement workshop, this time making the spacers for the inwales. I’ve planned for 15 spacers on each side, each spacer the same 5/8″ thick and 1-1/2″ wide as the gunwales and inwales but also each spacer block only 4″ long. So, that’s 30 little 4″ blocks to make.

I don’t actually need this type of inwale. It’s a lot more work, as opposed to just slapping the inwale onto the hull, but I’m imagining them to be useful in a few ways as well as just looking nice. As Chesapeake Light Craft puts it, “So spacered inwales are an affectation to some extent, but they are genuinely practical in two ways: they create handy lashing points the whole length of the boat, and if you want to tip the boat up on the beach to drain the water out, the gaps (or scuppers) created by the spacers allow all of the water to run out.” I also think maybe I heard somewhere that the truss-like construction adds strength to the sheer line. I may just have imagined that last part, though.

I put a lot of (extra, unnecessary) thought into how many and what size these spacers should be. At some point I determined that it would be easier to position the spacers halfway between the ends of the boat and halfway between each other. So that’s either 1 spacer at the 1/2 way point, or 3 spacers at 1/4, 2/4, and 3/4. Or 7 spacers at 1/8 intervals. Or, finally, I decided on spacers at 16ths, so 15 spacers.

But then I started worrying how to evenly measure the halfway points. I have jute string, but, when using it to line up the bow and transom when gluing the hull, I noticed that it stretches. That wasn’t a problem when using it for a straight line, but it would be a problem when trying to determine half of itself. I then went looking at buying some sturdy mason line, but that was more expensive and even then I wasn’t sure how much it stretched. So instead I found and opted for a sewing-tape-like tape measure, something that I can clip to the sheer line to mark block points.

And by taking up 18 inches of the 142 or so inches of sheer line with the breast hook and quarter knee(s), I’m left with 124 inches to fill with 15 spacer blocks and 16 gaps, making a tidy plan of 4″ spacers at 4″ apart.

So again I needed to cut 30 blocks. I had planed extra stock when making the wales themselves, so on Saturday I started at it with the miter saw. The all-purpose blade was a bit rough on the tender stock, causing a lot of tear out, so I cut as many blocks as I could with the stock to be able to pick out the less damaged pieces. Turned out to be 54 blocks.

Then on Sunday I picked out and sanded the best 36, determining which side was the show side and marking a center line on the front and back. I also took a few and made them into installation templates, drilling holes so as to be able to transfer the same dimensions to the hull sides to drill pilot holes to install the real blocks.

But, before I can install the spacer blocks to be able to install the gunwales so then to be able to install the inwales, I had to fair the sheer lines of the hull. I had cut the hull shapes pretty roughly with the circular saw way back in week 2 or 3, and the lines from bow to stern were not especially even, despite having taken a whack at them with the router back in week 5 or 6. This time, though, I used a top-bearing flush trimming bit with the actual gunwale pieces as the reference lines, and I used Dad’s old Rotozip instead of the giant Porter Cable 690 router. The Rotozip handily came with both 1/8″ and 1/4″ collets, and the top-bearing bit that I bought has a 1/4″ shank. So the Rotozip makes a nice little trim router.

Which is what I did on Monday, the President’s Day holiday, use the trim router to make the sheer lines wonderfully straight. Boy, did that make me happy, seeing those straight lines when I was finally done. That had been worrying me for quite a while.

I started to fit the breast hook into place so as to attach the cleat for it, even drilling the pilot holes for the screws for the cleat. But then came quittin’ time, alas, so that’s for next week, attaching the cleats for the breast hook and quarter knees, then installing the inwale spacers.

These shouldn’t have taken 2 weeks to do. But I guess they did.

I put off cutting out the quarter knees until I could get to Home Depot and buy some proper jigsaw blades. That wasn’t until Sunday, so I only got a few hours to work. I spent it all making and fitting the quarter knees and cleats, as well as doing a final fitting for the breast hook. But that was only after fitting a piece of 1/4″ ply to the bottom of the jig saw as a sort of pad on the sole plate, since the metal one was marking the ply as I was cutting.

After cutting the parts in the basement workshop, I did some test fittings in the boat in the garage. The starboard quarter knee fits quite sweetly, while the port side knee has about 3/16″ inch of play up the hull side leg. I’m debating whether to just screw the hull closer to the quarter knee or somehow plane or sand the quarter knee itself into place. I don’t have a proper sanding machine, one where I can move the work piece around on a larger machine. I’ve got a belt sander, which might work, if I can figure out how to stabilize it upside down. Or I might just spring twenty or thirty bucks for a disc plate to attach to the table saw.

I also took care of the issue where the breast hook fits into the corner of the bow but the front of the breast hook sits up a little proud of the sheer line. I used my dozuki to cut a bit out of the underside of the tip, and now it fits pretty nicely.

Next week is fairing sheer lines and starting to install wales.

Making a few key parts in the basement workshop, using just hand-held tools instead of the big machines for last week’s milling operations. These key parts, the breast hook and the two quarter knees, will determine the final size of the inwales, so I need to make them before installing the inwales.

I had always planned to make these parts from the same 24″x48″ piece of 3/4″ plywood as the transom, but I ultimately cut out the transom rather larger than my original plans, so I had to get more creative in order to get the parts I wanted.

So I used my go-to graphics program, PowerPoint, to map out the best way to use the remaining material.

First thing I did was cut the skeg area out, putting that aside for another day. Then I cut the breast hook blank and cleat area. I took that out to the boat in the garage and traced the angle where it’s supposed to fit directly on the board. I like it when I don’t have to measure.

I used the Stanley sliding t-bevel to measure the hull flare on both sides, again not really measuring as such, more just tracing the angle from the bevel onto the back of the board. I’m not thrilled, and not sure why, the angle on the port side is different from the angle on the starboard side. It’s only a tiny difference, though, so I’m guessing it won’t affect the rowing or sailing qualities of the boat. I hope.

Back in the shop, I drew the final shape on the blank and cut it out with the jigsaw. I really need to get proper blades for the jigsaw, since I waffled between using the all-purpose 6 tpi blade that tears out the ply something awful and the metal cutting blade that takes a million years to cut the ply. I eventually went with the metal blade.

After I finished cutting the breast hook, I traced around the bottom of it onto the ply for a cleat to hold back end of the breast hook. (The top angle will be on the stem.) Again I had to cut the sides and legs to the different port and starboard flare angles. But they came out looking rather nice, I think.

I took the completed breast hook back out to the boat to test the fit, and, for the most part, it’s pretty good. The top angle sits on top of the stem a little high, though. The top tip of the breast hook is a little proud of the sheer line, and I’m not sure what to do about that. Maybe sand it down, but I’m worried about going through the top ply. Maybe chisel down the top of the stem, but it’s in an awfully tight corner. I’m afraid I might dig too much into the hull itself there, although that part of the hull won’t be under the waterline and will be covered by the gunwales. We’ll see.

Laying out the quarter knees was its own folly. I had trouble translating the nice curves that I drew so easily in SketchUp to curves drawn with a pencil & compass in the real world. In SketchUp, all you have to do is use the arc tool, define a start and end point, then drag the curve out to whatever distance, perpendicular to the line between the start and end points, that you want. I went with 3/4″ distance. Looked okay.

In the real world, I don’t know how to do that with a pencil and compass. I need the radius of the circle from which the arc comes. I ended up just eyeballing it, choosing a radius with the compass and plotting the point equidistant from the start and end points on the curve. (The end point being the midpoint of the parallelogram that would be made if there were not curves.)

Eyeballing it turned out to look okay, since the whole point of these curves is just to look nice and fancy. There’s not really any structural engineering purpose to them.

Then I drew a port quarter knee on one piece and a starboard quarter knee on another piece. Ready to cut, right?

Um, no. I guess not. I made the hull side of the port quarter knee, the one I drew first and labeled with Sharpie, 5-1/2″ long instead of 6″. I had to erase and redraw it.

I didn’t have time to cut them, but at least they’re plotted.

And I’m about ready to fair the sheer lines to a final shape, deciding to use a flush cutting router bit from the outside this time, so I won’t have any trouble with the hull butt blocks, using the gunwales themselves as straightedges. I ordered a top-bearing bit, and, just for fun, clamped the starboard gunwale on to see what it would look like.

Looks good! That’s next week.

Was finally time to make all the 1×2s for wales and chines. Not the most exciting of days, but necessary.

My plan initially called for choosing one 12′ 2×4 for wales and then a second 12′ 2×4 for the keel and chines. I had mapped out each cut for each part, and, in a perfect world, I could have made do with the 2 lengths (plus a random length of 2×4, maybe 4′, for the inwale spacers, since I need 30 at 4″ each, which is a total of 120″).

But my stock was far from perfect. There were some serious checks and chips at the ends of the lengths. But, handily, I had bought three 2×4s, initially thinking that I could cut a single 2×4 into only three 1×2s, but I am actually able to cut a 2×4 into four 1×2s. So, generally, I needed five 12′-lengths of 1×2, which I could pick out the best 5 from the twelve 12′-lengths of 1×2 I cut from the three 12′ 2×4s.

Except that the keel is a 12′ 1×3 instead of a 1×2, so that required a sideways cut of one of the 2×4s, losing out on three 1×2s from that 2×4. So best 5 out of 9. But I did end up with two 12′-lengths of like 1/2″ × 1-1/2″ stock, which I think maybe I’ll use for bottom runners on either side of the keel. Maybe.

The weather was pleasant (a high of 48˚ on Saturday 1/27/19), so I probably could have cut the 2×4s in the driveway. I had moved the table saw back down to the basement, though, and I really didn’t feel like dragging it back upstairs and outside. It’s portable, on wheels and all, but it weighs 100 lbs. and I ain’t a young man anymore. It’s hard getting it up and down steps.

And, besides, the planer is in the basement workshop, and that also weighs 100 lbs. and is very much not portable. It’s hard enough just moving it onto a workbench.

So with the stock in the basement, it was time to start cutting. And there’s where my first problem arose, which was the length of the lumber. I needed 12′ on the one side to feed the stock into the saw, and I needed another 12′ on the other side to complete the cut. I hadn’t appreciated before that I would need 24′ of room just to work. Luckily, the basement is 30′ long, so I had just enough room to work.

Barely, since it meant that the washing machine served as an infeed table. But, hey, whatever works.

After I cut all the stock, I planed it on both sides down to 5/8″ thickness, roughly. It was rather easier feeding stock through the planer than the saw, since the planer has its own feeder rollers, plus the planer sits on the miter saw stand that I have, which miter saw stand has extension arms. The arms are made for up to 9′ stock, alas, not 12′, so I still had to use the washing machine as an infeed table as well as the outfeed roller stand. But, again, somewhat easier.

So, then, in the end, I had 12′ 1×2s for gunwales, inwales, and chines, as well as various lengths of 1×2 to chop into 4″ lengths for inwale spacers. And I had my 12′ 1×3 for the keel, although it’s nowhere near straight enough, I think. It’s got a mighty serious crook to it, serious enough that I might spring for another $7 for another 12′ 2×4.

I still have to cut the chine piece lengthwise at 18˚ for the two chines, as well as cut the inwale spacers. But, generally, the greater part of milling is behind me.