Boat Therapy

How exciting! Gluing the hull together!

It was hard. It was, for a while, a complete disaster. I learned a lot along the way.

It was another weekend with weather, rain this time instead of last week’s snow, so I first set up to do the big glue up in the garage. I moved the “workbench”, the still-unused plywood sheet for the boat bottom set up on saw horses, to the middle of the garage so that I could access both sides of the hull.

Then the first step was to glue the frame to both hull sides. That was when the distaster started.

First problem was that I spread glue on the frame leg itself. When I went to join the hull side to the frame leg, I could no longer see where the pre-drilled screw holes were in the frame side. They were covered with glue. I smeared a lot of the glue on the hull side trying to find those holes and screw the parts together. That wasn’t too hard to fix, though. Just wiped up the excess glue. Okay, so, starboard side done. Check.

The real problem came when I went over to do the same thing to the port side. Again smearing the glue on the frame leg, what with having trouble finding the screw holes in the leg, I screwed to port side hull into the wrong holes on the frame leg. I only noticed this when I was done with all three screws.

Damn. Disaster.

But I very deliberately tried not to panic. I took a deep breath, told myself that all I could do was take it apart and re-seat it properly. I had some working time before the glue set, much less cured. So I un-screwed the port side, whereupon the frame and the starboard hull parts promptly went tumbling off the other side of the workbench.

More disaster.

Luckily the parts didn’t shatter or anything, but I decided to move to a more stable working area, on the ground in the driveway. That way I wouldn’t have to worry about anything falling very far anymore. And the best thing about this decision was that I turned the boat upside down here as well, so that the hull sides were leaning in toward the frame //—-\\ rather than away \\—-//. I could see the bottom of the frame lining up on both sides better, and the sides weren’t falling away from the frame every time I moved.

So, finally, the sides were attached to the hull frame. I moved this partial assembly back up off the ground, still upside down though so that the stem and transom could lean in against the assembly instead of falling away.

Lifting the assembly, I managed to cut my palm on a splinter, getting blood on the port side bow, so now my blood is literally in this boat.

And I finally learned to smear the glue on the inside of the hull side, so that I could see where the screws coming through the hull needed to go. Definitely the biggest lesson I’ve learned in my very brief boat building career.

I was able to bend the bow together by myself with rope to glue the stem to each side, but I had to enlist Dawn the hold the transom to finish that.

So, finally, the hull was glued together. Disaster mostly averted. Whew.

I carried the assembly back into the garage myself, thinking Dawn had left to walk the dogs.

Turns out Dawn hadn’t left to walk the dogs, so I quickly cleaned up and stretched some string to check stem and frame and transom alignment, then finished up. And then went to walk the dogs.

The work is really progressing. Next up is milling 12′ lengths of 1×2 for gunwales and inwales.

I meant to reassemble the hull this weekend, this time with glue, to build the hull for real. I did not build the hull this weekend. It snowed instead. A lot of snow. Damn. I finished the frame and stem, though. That’s something.

Working in the basement workshop, I removed the temporary braces from the top of the frame and cut the tops of the frame sides down to 14″, rounding over the top edges so’s they’ll look nice in the boat.

Cutting the curves with the handheld jigsaw, the curves weren’t especially even or attractive, so I decided to sand them a bit. I got them a little more even, a little more attractive, so much so that I thought I’d sand the sides some, thinking that I wouldn’t be able to sand them as easily once they were attached to the sides and bottom of the boat.

I kinda got carried away with sanding, but, hey, the frame looks pretty terrific now. If I do say so myself. I sanded away much of the writing on the parts, the labels showing what parts they were. I don’t mind all the writing on the boat. It adds to the rough homemade feeling about everything, but all that writing’s going to be painted over anyway.

One purely functional thing about the sanding that I did was knocking down the sharp edges of the parts. I think a bit of rounding looks better, but it’ll also prevent splitting (I think) and/or me or anybody else cutting themselves on any sharp edges (I think).

I also cut out the notches in the frame for the chine logs. Which I did not do the same on both sides, dammit. Measure once, cut twice, as usual. I was supposed to measure up 3/4″ from the bottom corner of the frame to accommodate the 9/16″ side of the chine, then measure out 1″ at a 90° angle perpendicular to the side of the frame, to accommodate the 5/8″ top of the chine.

I did indeed measure out 90° on the starboard side but absent-mindedly measured out 1″ on the port side merely parallel to the frame bottom instead of perpendicular to the side. I don’t think that leaves enough room for the chine at that point.

I painted the notches with 3 coats of the white paint that we used for the bathroom wainscoting that we put up recently. It’s not especially durable exterior acrylic paint or anything, like I’m going to use on the rest of the boat when time comes to paint it, but I haven’t bought that durable exterior acrylic paint yet, so I used what I had. It won’t be especially possible to paint those notches once they’re in place, is why I painted them now, is why I painted them with whatever paint I have now. And the particular areas on the parts painted now shouldn’t have to deal with much water, inside the boat as they’ll be. But they needed a little paint.

But now I’m thinking of re-cutting that port notch, despite the paint. All this snow on the ground, I don’t think I’m building the hull until it all melts. I guess I have time to repaint one notch.

I cut two limber holes in the frame bottom as well. I don’t think they’ll be much needed, but I don’t guess they hurt either. And it was fun setting up the drill press and the drill press vise to do the cuts with a 3/4″ Forstner bit.

And I cut the excess off the stem. That turned out to be trickier than I imagined, as these things do. But I think the cuts look fine and will work.

Next weekend I want to build the hull. It’s a holiday weekend, so there’s an extra day. But we’re hosting Mother Dillon as well. So we’ll see. I had hoped to have the hull built in time for her visit, but I guess she can help build it while she’s here.

Update: I fixed the port side chine notch.

I have literally spent hours calculating dimensions and angles on the transom, and now, finally, I have built the damn thing.

First step was driving to Home Depot to buy a 2’×4′ board of 3/4″ BC exterior plywood. This turned out to be my first purchase of boat building material since October. Heck, it was my first purchase of boat building anything since I bought a 2-pack of 5/64″ drill bits for $5 back in November. At all of $17.84 plus tax, this board brings my total outlay for the boat to $225.20 so far, which ain’t too shabby.

Next step was layout, which I did in the basement workshop. Okay, so, honestly, I did it on Dawn’s rowing machine mat, so technically I did it in the basement gym. Going back and forth between the basement gym and the garage and the workbench in the basement workshop, I tracked a lot of sawdust on Dawn’s fancy ginormous workout mat. She was pissed.

But anyway, I got the transom laid out on the board, then I clamped the board to the workbench and used the jig saw to cut it out. The trickiest part was figuring out how to angle the saw just so, depending on the cut. The bottom of the transom has to angle 28° from aft to fore, the sides at 13° aft to fore, and the top at 23° fore to aft. But I cleverly made a simple jig, lopping off a 6″ piece of 2×4 and using the miter saw to cut three slots in it at the respective angles. Then I could just use the jig to align the jig saw blade for whichever cut.

Honestly, making the transom took far less time than all the calculating and worrying that I put into planning it, which I’d like to think was because of all the calculating and worrying and planning. Once again, the things that I think are going to be hard turn out to be easier, whereas so many of the other things turn out to be harder than I imagine. There’s a rule for life there somewhere, probably.

Next step was to pull the boat assembly back out of the garage and replace the temporary transom assembly (TTA) with the actual honest to God transom. Which, per that life rule, turned out to be way harder than I thought it would be.

My first attempt was with the wood screws just like I had done with the frame, using the angled bottom piece that I had cut off as the bottom sister stick. And a length of rope for the usual trucker’s hitch windlass. It didn’t work very well.

I was eventually able to get the transom on, but I wasn’t entirely thrilled with the results. The port side was okay, although the side stood a little proud out the aft end, but within reasonable limits. The starboard side, though, wasn’t symmetrical at all with the port side on the up and down axis. I had to re-seat that side. I tried a different method using clamps just on the bottom edge of the sides.

That worked a bit better. The transom was in place!

So then I took it all apart, of course.

This build has all been a dry fit, to get everything ready for gluing. I have a little bit of fussing to do with the stem and frame, cutting them to final shape a bit smaller than they’ve been so far to help with the dry build. Next step after that is gluing, which I’m really, really determined to do before Mother Dillon visits us in mid-January. Let’s hope the weather cooperates next weekend.

Last week on Boat Therapy:

Next up is drilling matching holes for the screws to hold the stem and transoms (temporary assembly and final part) and frame. Then turning these flat parts sideways to attach to those parts and each other and finally start looking like an actual boat.

http://www.bohls.org/boat/2018/12/28/week-8-symmetricizing-the-sides/

You know what? That’s exactly what I did. Woo hoo!

First step of the week was finishing the temporary transom assembly (TTA) by affixing the vertical brace to the top and bottom sticks. Like most things, that turned out to be trickier than I imagined. I thought I could just stick it anywhere, as long as the measure from the top of the top stick to the bottom of the bottom stick was exactly 11-5/8″. No reason, I thought, that the brace had to be centered or perpendicular or anything. Upon actually putting the assembly together, though, I quickly saw that the angled ends of the top and bottom sticks had to align, as the eventual solid transom obviously will. They’d be seriously out of alignment if I just slapped the brace on willy-nilly.

So then the easiest way to align the angled ends of the top and bottom sticks was to attach the brace exactly in the middle and exactly perpendicular to the sticks. Et voila.

Then, when I took the assembly out to the garage, I started thinking how I was going to attach the assembly evenly to the un-symmetricized aft ends of the boat side assemblies. (They’d been left unsymmetrical because neither was especially straight enough to serve as a guide for the router to make the other straight and symmetrical to it.) But then, looking down at this dilemma with the transom assembly in my hand, I realized that either of the long sticks on this assembly was certainly straight enough to serve. I clamped it underneath and it worked perfectly.

And now the stern is perfectly straight.

Next step was finishing the temporary parts of the frame assembly. Back in the basement workshop, I screwed the two sisters to the frame sides. Then I clamped the bottom sister to the bottom of the frame, opting for clamping instead of screwing, which would’ve involved drilling through the 1-1/2″ stick and using like a 2″ screw or such. The wood screws as clamps were instant, and they turned into a handy stand for the whole assembly.

I had allowed a full 48″ for the top of the temporary frame assembly (TFA), which disappointingly turned out to be too short to go all the way at the top. So I screwed it as high as I could get it, which turned out to be just fine. Whew.

Back in the garage, while the sides were still clamped together for symmetricizing, I used the stem as a gauge for drilling the pilot holes in the bow, and, likewise, I used the TTA to drill the pilot holes at the stern. I had long ago marked the lines in the sides for the frame, so I drilled those too.

Now I had the stem, the frame, and the (temporary) transom ready. I had pilot holes in the sides. Time to go 3D.

I had realized that I wouldn’t be able to easily access both sides of the boat on the plywood “workbench” in the garage (it’s actually the second sheet of plywood for the boat, what’s going to end up being the bottom of the boat, resting on sawhorses), so I moved the car and set up shop in the driveway, on my old Stanley folding workbench along with a folding card table and, it turned out, a roller stand and multi-position ladder. Oh, and a couple of 2×4s. And ropes for windlasses using trucker’s hitches.

Either David Beede or Gavin Atkin had described this step, trying to attach the ends of two wobbling plywood sheets together, as wrestling an octopus. I had asked Dawn to help me with this step, but then I couldn’t wait and did it myself. It went really well, surprisingly, considering how many things have turned out to be harder than I imagine. This one was easier.

A few minutes later, it looked like a boat. Amazing.

Dawn helped me move it back into the garage, and off we went to Joe & Devon’s New Year’s Day Open House. Next up is buying a 24×48 piece of 3/4″ plywood and using about half of that to make the transom. Then taking apart the whole boat and re-assembling it with glue. Like wrestling a sticky octopus.

I missed a weekend, what with Christmas shopping (what little we did of that IRL instead of online) and church and train gardening with Joe, and then I missed the next weekend with Christmas itself, until I was able to dedicate some hours on the day after Christmas to work on the boat.

And that work was making the two sides symmetrical.

I was thinking that I could maybe get away with the two sides being very much not the same as long as the stem and frame and transom were all in proper alignment, but I wasn’t sure. So I proceeded to, as I call it, symmetricize the sides.

I was dreading the scraping or sanding or using a surform or however I was going to make the sides the same, until I had the brainstorm of using a flush-trim router bit. Then it wasn’t such a dreadful thing to … dread, I guess.

It turned out to be harder to rout than I imagined it would be, but it was still way easier than filing the sides to shape. I only had bottom-bearing router bits, though, when I was imagining a top-bearing bit. It was hard to see what was going on with the bottom bearing instead of a top, but maybe the base plate would’ve hidden the cutting even with a top bearing. In any case, I did end up chunking an extra groove or two in places where I didn’t want them, but for the most part the sides are really, really close to being identical. Which is awesome.

Next up is drilling matching holes for the screws to hold the stem and transoms (temporary assembly and final part) and frame. Then turning these flat parts sideways to attach to those parts and each other and finally start looking like an actual boat.

I only had a short hour or so that I stole from Sunday afternoon to work on the boat. But any time is good time.

I bought a thermometer to keep in the garage, to let me know if it’s warm enough to glue. It was 32° outside but 40° in the garage, and 40° is the lowest temp where PL Premium says you can use it. I brought a space heater up from the basement and plugged it in inside the garage, but even after working in there for a half hour or so the thermometer didn’t go up appreciably. It bumped up to 41° for a minute but then went right back down to 40°. Maybe I can pre-heat the garage for a couple hours next time I have to glue anything.

Mostly today I worked on the sides in the garage. I took out the staples from the butt blocks, which was a pain. If I thought trying to staple the pieces together was difficult, then, whew, pulling the staples out was super difficult. They all pretty much broke, each one every time, when I was pulling them out with the pliers. Ugh. I think I’m done with staples.

 

I still have to use butt blocks to join the bow points on the bottom sheet of plywood. I’m either going to use short brads or just go with weights.

I then was able to lay one side assembly on top of the other to see if they were close enough to symmetrical to use as is. They were not. They are not.

They’re not bad, mind. They’re pretty close, but the sloppy cutting of the parts is catching up with me. I marked with a Sharpie the couple places where one assembly needs trimming. I’ll get to that next week maybe.

The major thing that I did, though, was move back inside the warm basement and cut the compound angles on the sticks I’m using as a temporary transom for the initial hull assembling. This is all part of my overthinking of the transom. I’ve literally spent hours mulling over and drawing and designing the transom, worrying over the angles. This temporary assembly is going to serve as a sort of story stick, to be able to measure final angles for the final transom piece before cutting into the relatively expensive 3/4″ plywood.

The angles on these sticks was complicated enough, despite simplifying the up/down angle of 13.3° to match the aft-to-fore flare of the sides of 13°. I figure the 0.3° won’t make an appreciable difference on these temporary pieces.

The key move, though, was marking the angles on the pieces such that the laser on the compound miter saw match the marks, so that I knew I was cutting the right directions. The miter angle was easier, since the saw pivots both right and left for miters. The saw only pivots to the left for bevels, however. I had to turn the pieces around and cut what I considered backwards for the port sides of the sticks.

The blade on the miter saw is only 24 teeth, so there was a fair amount of tear-out on the sticks as well, but that shouldn’t be a problem either, as these are, again, temporary pieces. The main thing is that they’re cut and they’re right, 39-3/4″ at the top of the top stick, 29-1/4″ on the bottom of the bottom stick, angling toward each other at 13° and flaring aft to fore at 13°.

I didn’t have time to attach them together 11-5/8″ apart, though. Was time to go wash up and get ready for dinner.

Finally, after two weeks off, I got back to the Great Work.

Whew. I’ve missed it.

My original plan was to glue up the side panels earlier in the build, but I put it off a bit to better use a single tube of glue. I figured a tube would dry out between gluing the sides and gluing the frame. So I waited until the frame was ready, to do both together.

I traced the side lines of the butt blocks onto the side pieces, as well as marking a line where the side edges met on the butt blocks. Then I cut off room at the top of the butt blocks for the inwales and room at the bottom for the chines.

And, of course, in my usual measure once & cut twice way, I cut off too much at the bottom of the starboard butt block. I meant to mark & cut 7/8″ off to make room for the 5/8″ or so chine, but I measured and cut 1-7/8″ off. Dang. So the starboard butt block became 2 blocks, 1 almost regular size and 1 tiny mini one. Oh well.

And again I had trouble stapling the jute to use as clamps. I ended up stealing some of Dawn’s weights to use as weight clamps. I used some leftover lawn & leaf bags under the sides to protect the plywood sheet underneath from glue. But that seemed like overkill for the weights on top, so I used kitchen parchment paper under the weights. We’ll see after the glue cures whether anything sticks to the plastic bags or the parchment paper.

The frame is screwed together, so I imagined I wouldn’t need clamps on it. Wrong. The way the screws are spaced, going through the plywood gussets first, it left the ends a smidgen apart such that I opted for clamps as well.

Then I left it all to cure overnight. Or, heck, maybe it’ll all sit until next weekend.

Or maybe I’ll get time this week one night to screw the sister pieces to the frame or build the transom story assembly. But I’ve got a code compliance committee meeting on Wednesday and a preservation association meeting on Thursday. I’m guessing there won’t be a lot of time for boat building.

Well, the good news is that I was able to cut the stem from a single 1×2 on the table saw. The bad news is that I still didn’t like the result.

What I wasn’t appreciating last week was how I could set the table saw fence much closer to the blade than otherwise (or even looks wise), since the blade is tilted away from the fence when cutting a bevel. So I was able to get right into the middle of the 1×2.

The resulting 2 pieces weren’t quite symmetrical, though. I didn’t like them. So I went with the alternate method of cutting off the left side of a 24″ 2×4. And the resulting stem is pretty much perfect. Love it.

And I also cut the gussets, although I ended up going with the sliding chop saw instead of the table saw. I also tacked the two pieces together with staples over jute, the way that Beede uses for clamping the butt blocks. Cutting the gussets together this way made them exactly symmetrical.

Somehow I screwed up the layout, though. I still got the 106° angle, but they’re not isosceles triangles. One leg is the 6″ I was aiming for, but the other only ended up being like 5-1/4″. Oh, well. Measure once, cut twice. And it’s the angle that’s the important measurement, and it’s right.

I screwed together the frame, or at least the part of the frame that will end up as the frame of the boat. I have an idea to sister some pieces to the bottom and sides, temporarily, to help with alignment when attaching the plywood sides to the side frame members. And there’ll be a top stretcher to the frame, again temporarily.

And it was a three-day weekend and I only got an hour or so of work on Monday afternoon. (Met up with family, including seeing Dad’s gravestone at Arlington on Saturday, then had St. Andrew’s Day and the Bishop’s visit and the potluck on Sunday.) Maybe one night this coming week I can make & attach those frame parts, as well as make up the transom story assembly. We’re going on vacation first thing next Saturday morning, so I’m going to miss a weekend of working on the boat.

I’ll need some parts made from 1×2 lumber to help shape the plywood parts into boat parts. Working from fore to aft, there’ll be a stem and a frame, and at the stern there’ll be a transom made from 3/4″ ply. But, I’m a little wary of the size and angles of the transom, so I’m going to make a mock-up of the transom from 1×2’s, something of a story stick, a story frame made out of 3 story sticks.

First, though, I need the 1×2 stock. But you know what? A 2×4 is cheaper than a 1×2, and I can cut four 1×2’s out of a single 2×4.

So I’m definitely making 1×2’s out of a 2×4.

I set the table saw fence at 3/4″ and start ripping.

Then, after I’ve gotten four 1×2’s out of a single 2×4, I measure, mark, and crosscut all the 1×2 parts.

And now I’ve got parts.

And more parts.

All the parts!

I had hoped to make the stem and the frame today, but I ran into some serious trouble ripping the 20.5° angle in the 1×2 for the stem. I tried on a scrap piece, but I couldn’t get anywhere near the center of the scrap piece to be able to reverse the parts and combine for the stem. I’m not sure how I’m going to cut it.

I’ve got an extra 8′ 2×4, so maybe I can rip a 1×2 and cheat on it from either side to be able to make two 20.5° parts to make the stem. We’ll see next week.

See this page for notes regarding cutting the stem out of larger stock.

I measured and marked the plywood sheet for the sides on Saturday afternoon, and then cut the pieces on Sunday afternoon.

I screwed up marking the starboard aft side at first, forgetting to mirror image the already marked out port side, drawing the line parallel instead. This was after I had mistakenly marked the starting point at 4-5/8″ instead of 5-1/4″. Oh well.

I was a little perturbed by my inability to measure accurately across the 8-foot length with a single straight edge. The drywall square is only 4 feet (actually a bit less than that). So the 16-inch thirds didn’t quite meet exactly right in the middle. So just tried to approximate in the middle.

I did a thorough re-measure, and then a re-measure after that, before cutting.

Stopped to commemorate the occasion after the first cut.

I found a thin piece of wainscoting to use as a batten to mark the rocker curve.

And, now, I have some parts.

My cutting was very much not straight enough. The matching pieces are not exactly symmetrical. I’m trying to not let this bother me.