So things aren’t going as fast as we hoped, but they’re going.

As an aside, I’ve been thinking of buying a boat to play with while we work on this. Originally I was thinking of getting a Mosquito or a Paper Tiger, as I love sailing beach cats, but I keep falling in love with Dragons. Probably entirly unsuitable for someone of my (extremly limited) skills and needs, being keeled class racing boats, but I just adore their lines and history. Plus, although they aren’t cheap (I could pick up a second-hand Alpha Omega for less) , you can, or so I imagine, use them for daysailing, even taking the family out for an afternoon - although, it should again be admited, they are by no means a pleasure boat. In the end I probably won’t buy anything, and maybe I’ll get around to fixing my old cat, but it would be nice to have a Dragon.

And thus I now have three nieces. A neat little collection.

I’m not sure about the missing images, but as far as I can tell the problem seems to be a lack of tolerance - if there is a problem in a script or CSS spec, it simply won’t display.

I may yet be forced to “upgrade” to 1.5.

Update: Firefox managed to work first try with Win2000, so I suspect it may be something to do with the WinXP Pro config. Although it is interesting to see how many people are complaining in the forums. This is probably something to be expected with any new release of any software, especially on a support forum, though.

We’re going to need nine (I think) pairs of planks all up. Each plank needs to be assembled (by attaching multiple sheets of plywood end-to-end), cut to shape, and glued to the boat. The first plank is being attached directly to the keelson, while subsequent planks need to be attached almost entirely to the plank which preceded it. This design has no “ribs” to hold the boat’s shape.

As far as we can figure, the aim is balance. There is some flexibility in the shape (although not much) but each pair of planks should match perfectly. So the first task was to cut out a pattern in MDF which we would use to determine the shape of the planks.

As you can see, our model is back.

The next step was to join three lengths of the plywood. An old kitchen table and Simon’s trestle table came in handy. Given the length of these planks, we can’t work in the shed any more - we simply don’t have room. So all work is now outside. This may not seem bad, and indeed it is pleasant, but it means we had better be done with this stage before the rains return.

We’re not 100% happy with the joins (the scarfing), but we are convinced that they are extremely strong. They just don’t look quite as neat as we had hoped. Most people who make these boats for the first time seem to get better at this as the job progresses, so we’re counting on this to improve the appearance of the later (and far more visible) planks. If not, we can give up on the “bright” finish we’re aiming for, and paint the hull instead (again, a common plan amongst first-timers like us). We’re also exploring techniques to improve the next scarfs, and have some good ideas. Nevertheless, at this stage we’re still on track for a bright finish.

Once the plywood was ready, we laid the pattern over it, marked out the shape, and cut it out. (Combine three more sheets of plywood and repeat). Finally, we clamped the two finished planks together and planed them until they matched perfectly. As mentioned, having them match is extremely important.

So that’s where we’re up to. We tried laying the planks across the mould, and were extremely happy with the result. Next time we get to attach them to the boat proper.

Anyway, the shed isn’t big enough for both the boat and the plywood sheets, so we decided to work out in the sun. With an additional pair of hands (our brother being down from Melbourne for the weekend), we laid out the timber on some tables and made a quick-and-dirty jig to guide the angle of the cut. Our model was back, and thus she both assisted with setting things up:

and with the positioning of the timber.

(Note: when not in use, all power tools are disconnected from any power source. I’m not quite ready to trust our model with the belt sander). As you can see, she’s getting bigger – she seems to be developing considerably faster than the boat is.

Once things were set up, we started by taking off the edges from the timber with the sander. This was the last time we’ll get to play with it, so we figured that we would try to make good use of the thing. We don’t think that it will be of any use from here anyway, especially given some warnings on mixing power sanders and epoxy.

Once the edges were cleaned up, and the basic shape was there, we got to work with the wood plane.

Even with the beer and three people it was a long(ish) process, but then we weren’t brave enough to try something more radical, and just cut it with a circular saw. I’m not entirely convinced that doing so would be wise. Anyway, it didn’t take anywhere near as long as we had feared, and the whole process proved to be much more manageable (even for people like us) than we had predicted. I suspect that it will be some innocent, tiny little job that will end up biting us, rather these big and seemingly scary ones.

Our guides, we quickly realised, were the layers in the ply - if they were straight, we were doing it right.

Naturally, that picture was of one of the better sections, but overall we were very, very happy with the results. The small amount of feathering was disappointing, but we suspect it won’t be relevant - plus, by scarfing the full sheets, we should have some choice in regard to where to make the final joints, allowing us to pick only the best work. Once we finished one end, we found that the other went a lot quicker - practice is always a good thing.

We won’t be gluing the timber together until we need it, so that was it for the day. Next time we will be laying the first planks on the hull. This should be exciting, and hopefully everything will go well. This day, however, proved to be the most enjoyable so far (in spite of the sunburn), and that is when compared to all of the other, highly enjoyable, days that preceded it. Whether or not the boat comes out as well as we hope, it will certainly prove to have been a very cool project.

Our biggest problem at this end was in cutting the apron so that it fitted well with the keelson. In the end we don’t think that our angle was perfect (my fault, not Simon’s), but it shouldn’t mean anything. One of the problems we are finding is knowing how much room we have for error – we tend to work on the assumption that we have absolutely none, thus setting rather high expectations and a bit of worry when we fail. In this case, the absolute worst that can happen is that the bow is a tad sharper than we had planned. Fortunately, as you will see, day 12 showed us that any fears were entirely ungrounded.

This second picture is of the transom being attached. The transom is the back, or “stern” of the boat. We had a few options with this, and were very happy with the result. Normally the transom seems to be a single sheet of plywood or several timber planks glued together. To strengthen it the recommendations were to make a frame to attach to the plywood, thickening it slightly. We really wanted to increase the strength, so we went further – gluing two full sheets of plywood together. It’s a tad heavier than normal, but not enough to make any difference, and a lot stronger. Next, from what we gather, the standard approach to attaching the transom to the keelson is to either butt the transom against it (creating a comparatively weak, bit attractive, joint) or to cut a slot in the transom, which creates a stronger joint but looks less attractive. Because we were using two sheets of ply we decided to split the difference – we cut a slot out of one sheet, but left the other whole. We then cut the keelson at the right angle (getting it perfect as well – Simon was doing the cutting) and then glued it and attempted to hold it in place.

That’s where everything went bad. Because the angle was so good, the keelson was mostly held in place by pressure from the transom. We had planned to finish the job by using a Spanish windlass to apply downwards pressure. But the rope we used was awful, and kept breaking. There was no way we could see of clamping it fast enough, and attempts to brace it failed. So in the end we had to swallow our pride and use a single screw to hold it in place. This is in no way a bad thing, but we’d hoped to try and avoid using them as much as possible, so this felt a lot like surrendering. Still, once it is removed, the hole filled, and the planks put down, no-one will ever know, and the joint will be as strong as we were hoping.

Other than some attempts at shaping the keelson that was it for the day. The hard work was mostly on day 12.

On day 12 we had to start shaping (or, I believe, “fairing") the keelson. Taking Paul’s advice, I’d gone looking at hand planes the week before. Unfortunately, the ones I could afford I didn’t trust, and the ones I did trust I couldn’t afford. One thing this project is teaching us is the importance of good tools. Our original jigsaws, for example, both died, and the replacement one (which cost more than both combined) is so good that it is an absolute delight to use. So rather than buy something cheap and nasty I’m going to hold out for a couple more weeks until I can find something really nice. Instead, Simon spent some time sharpening his plane (it’s a cheap one, but we already had it and figured it was worth the shot), and we got to work with that. The eventual procedure was to take off a chunk of the wood with the belt sander (a tool we borrowed from a cabinet maker), and then to get to work with the plane. Simon took the bow and I took the transom. However, I soon discovered that not only was Paul right that a hand plane was needed, but he was also right that they are great to use. So I ended up spending a couple of hours shaping my section almost entirely with the hand plane, simply because I loved using it so much. I’m so looking forward to buying a new one. The result, as you can see, was well worth the effort. (The screw is still visible, but will be removed and the hole filled next time).

One recommendation from the book we’re using was that we should cut guides into the keelson so that we know how much to take off. This too worked really well (when finished they were entirely gone).

Finally, Simon’s work on the bow was at least as good as mine on the stern. We may still shape it a tad more next week, but we’re very happy with how it is going.

Thus we’re ready to start worrying about planking! This is very exciting – we probably won’t be able to lay a plank for a couple of weeks (we still need to scarf the timber and make the pattern), but when we do it will probably be time for a small celebration.

We both really loved the work on day 12 – it was hard, but we felt that we had achieved a lot, and made some real progress. I can finally start to understand why people would choose to spend their lives building boats.

“Having a moon is just inherently cool - and it is something that most self-respecting planets have, so it is good to see that this one does too.”

Additional information is available from http://www.gps.caltech.edu/~mbrown/planetlila/moon/index.html.

At any rate, Day 9 had nothing to do with me. We went out in the morning to have a look at a boat for sale (a nice steel 38 footer), and thus I wasn’t able to do anything that weekend. Fortunately Simon was. The main aim was to get the two parts of the transom glued. Simon did a superb job. As you can see, he used all of the clamps and a couple of buckets of water to hold it togeather. The results were perfect.

Thus Day 10 had us playing with the now complete inner stem and transom. The inner stem had also worked out well. While the laminations were anything but tidy, yet they responded well to some trimming with the circular saw. We’re quite happy with the result.

We looked into joining the inner stem and the transom to the keelson, but decided that this had best wait a week or two. Mostly because we now need to shape the keelson - it needs to be cut back to the correct angle. We started by marking (with a saw) the angle to cut it to.

That was the only thing that went well, though. Taking it back to that angle was somewhat problematic. We tried a hand plane, but it barely took of any wood at all (probably because it was blunt). The electric plane fared better, but we still figured we were looking at several years work. We tried the spoke shave, and that gave the best results - months instead of years (it may be that buying the cheapest available wasn’t wise). Eventually we decided on three options. Option 1: use a belt sander. Option 2: use a jigsaw to take off the bulk of the wood, and a plane or sander to finish it off. And Option 3: buy a decent plane and learn how to use it. As Option 3 involves no tech per se (or at least doesn’t fit with my power tool fetish), and as Option 2 seems prone to serious errors, we’re going to give the first option a shot. When it fails we shall re-evaluate our choices.

Still, we always expected these situations. Given our complete lack of knowledge we figured that we’d blunder our way through them. Just so long as we keep our errors from being too expensive, we can probably live with this. And in the meantime, part of the point of blogging this was to be honest about what we encounter, in case someone in a similar position wants to give boat building a go. So I feel the need to report the foolish problems.