Measurement Paradise

After a long hiatus, otherwise known as school, Dad and I managed a return to boat-building. While I was working, he worked on the frame and got a couple of the bulkheads in place. Over the last couple of days we arranged the rest of the bulkheads. Then we measured and adjusted. Then re-measured and re-adjusted. Then quit for a while. :) Voila - the aerial view. Once the bulkheads are placed on the building frame, we can stitch the hull pieces together and drape them over the top, gluing them in place. The line is to make sure the deep water line is the same on each bulkhead, and the bulkheads are centered. Here is Dad, peeking out from between the forward and aft bulkheads, and below, there is me. And yes, that is my calculator. I was rather pleased to have to do some trigonometry in the measuring process. :) But what a pain to get all these measurements right!

Waiting for Epoxy

With any luck, when we pull the 2x6 boards off, our 8-foot sheets of plywood will have been transformed into beautiful and seamless 18-foot sheets of plywood! The point of scarfing was to taper the ends just right, and now they're epoxied together, but they take a couple of days to dry. So Thursday or Friday we can check to see that we did it right. Oh boy.

Starting off Strong. Right?

First my back went out from too much leaning over plywood with a heavy power planer. So that was a week. Then I was in Tacoma, taking care of some school business. Dad's hand still wasn't up to much work during that time. Then we decided that the planer was a piece of junk (explaining why we'd had to spend hours leaning over the damn plywood to see any progress), and ordered a new planer. But after all those trials, the scarfing is done -- at least, the planing part of it. Voila, the pieces all scarfed and ready to be glued next week.

To explain a little more, we are making a 17' boat, and plywood only comes in 8' long sheets. So, you need to taper the ends of two sheets, lay them end-to-end, then glue them together to make a longer piece. That was the point of, oh, the last month. The next stage was 'lofting.' Well, that's what I call it, even though it isn't TRUE lofting. Basically, we drew bulkheads on large pieces of plywood very carefully and cut them out. That second part is known as 'cutting.' At least I think it is.

And finally, you can see the bulkheads leaning up against the wall. The bulkheads are those pieces that go side-to-side. They will help form the hull to the right shape, and will also support the floor boards. So I hope we got the measurements right!

Decisions, decisions...

What do you do when you have a big garage, a lot of plywood and it's summer break?

You build a boat! :)

Welcome to my boat-building blog. Dad and I decided to try our hands (all three of them - more on that later) at building a sailboat. We chose a Devlin-designed "Eider." The Eider is a 17-foot gaff-rigged sailboat with a little cabin. At least it will be. At the moment, it looks like plywood.  Really, really expensive plywood.

Dad had a little argument with the table saw and needs some time for his hand to heal.  He thought he was going to get out of building a boat.  Poor guy. The good news is, his hand should heal completely.  Until then, "all hands on deck" will get us three.

Step 1 is called "scarfing" (which sounds curiously like what it makes you want to do after you've been leaning over plywood with a planer for two hours). It means that you make these stair steps smoothly graded so you can glue the plywood together to make longer pieces!

 

More to come! I can't promise how fast it will go... but surely SOMETHING will happen!