The Keel is Laid

I did it.

Today, Sunday, April 18, 2010, I started the assembly of the boat.

But first, I did some more work on the samurai armor. (These are not great pictures, it's much more grand in person. But it was a couple of cardboard boxes, a couple of rolls of gaff tape, and a few packs of shoelaces yesterday morning, so it's pretty good progress:
Then, we went to Charlie's scrimmage, where he went 0-2 with a walk and a run scored, and pitched lights-out.
Then I came home and mowed and fertilized the lawn. And then ran out to exchange my 10' red oak for a 12'.

But then, then, I was ready to actually, really, for reals, actually start on the boat.

I cut 45 degree angles in the middle of the 12' oak rail and at the ends of the two 10-foot rails. I bit the bullet, and using Titebond III wood glue, scarf-joined them together. I'm doing this in the basement, and so I stuck the butt ends of the 10' pieces against the wall. laid the 6' extensions over the joint, and then put weights at the other end, to keep them from sliding apart. I applied the glue, set them carefully, and then laid over a piece of waxed paper and placed a heavy cookbook on top to press it together, but not too tightly. (I've read reports of clamping wood splices too tightly, squeezing all of the glue out, and making a bad seal.)The scarf joint is the diagonal line on the left. The opposite diagonal, on the right (between light and dark) is the shadow of the waxed paper protecting the cover of the book.
I still have a hard time believing glue is really going to hold this thing together. How can gluing two pieces of wood be stronger than screwing them together?!
But I have to take Fred's word for it.

Then I glued all of the ribs together. These could not have been easier. They are lap joints (perhaps rabbeted, I'm still not sure what that means), and were number-coded so as to be idiot-proof. I'm using handy pressure clamps to hold these together. (I almost got very strong spring clamps, but I'm paranoid of 'glue starving' my joints by clamping too tightly, so I got these clamps, which I squeeze to the tightness I want, and they lock. Like vice-grips.)If you look a this picture, and compare it to the picture of the finished boat at the top-right corner of this blog, you can see what I've done. The three ribs are clearly defined in my picture, and you can see exactly where they fit in the final boat. The long pieces of wood, called the "rub rails" are at the top of the sides of the boat above (the light colored reinforcements along the outside of the boat.) These actually provide the structural support and form of the final boat. This is the only dimensional lumber in this project.
I'm not sure when I'll be able to continue, but it's good to have gotten a start.

My fiberglassing equipment should arrive tomorrow. It's forecast to be cool and rainy this weekend, so I might be out of luck moving on to the next phase. We'll see.