Maiden Voyage

Christening. (Note water balloons filled with champagne.)

Captain

Captain and crew

Launch Day

It's here. Launch Day.
I spent this morning doing a little last-minute work, and then loaded it up onto the car.




I'm not nervous about the boat in the water. I'm sure it's watertight. And, if not, we're only going to be in a couple of feet of water.

No, I'm concerned about the attachment to the car. I went through four different attempts, using 50 feet of high-load nylon rope. I'm tied off to the steel undercarriage of the car. And my rope plan loops back against itself, so that strain make it tighter. It's pulling down in three contrary directions, which should keep it from going too far in any one direction.

Um, right?

Yeah, my only real worry is getting the boat to the water.
But, you know, gotta start somewhere, right?

Finished Boat

For once in this entire project, a step of the building process went exactly the way I pictured it in my head.

I mixed up the epoxy, added the sawdust, mixed well, and applied. One smooth coat over the entire exterior. Made exactly enough. There's really not much more to say.
(You can click on any picture on this blog to see a larger version.)





The Boat

Friday Cleanup, Pt. 1

I got out there about 7:00 this morning, hand-sanding the boat. If I'm going to get it in the water while the girls are here, I have to have another coat on the outside this afternoon. I hand-sanded until 9:00, and then power-sanded after that.

I got the rough edges and screw-ups sanded down. Then I lined the inside seams, where the bottom (or "deck") attaches to the sides (or "sides") with strips of fiberglass/epoxy, to further strengthen the boat.

Then I flipped the whole thing back over and sanded the crap out of it. It's pretty much set for the final outside coat this afternoon.

And by "final" I mean "nowhere near final".

A second coat of epoxy will make it waterproof and water-ready. But I will -- in the near future -- need to add some fiberglassing reinforcements around the edges and I'll need to clean up the stringers, too.

And, of course, adding the deck, sail rig, transom, rudder . . .

But all that remains to get her in the water is one coat of epoxy on the bottom. I suppose I should get a bottle of champagne and settle on a name.

Fiberglassing Sucks

Sorry. Not a very polite title there, huh?

After 39 years, I've come to know myself. I'm good at some things. Like Excel. And . . . um . . . well, I'm really good at Excel.

What I'm not good at? Detail-oriented projects that require patience and quality physical craftsmanship.

Guess what fiberglassing is? It's a detail-oriented project that requires patience and quality craftsmanship.

It started so promising. I decided to do the "tricky" parts first: the pointy ends. I cut enough cloth to cover the first two feet of boat, and then trimmed it down and cut "darts" (if that's the word I want) to overlap the cloth over the bendy parts. I mixed up a litte epoxy, added a little sawdust for coloring, spread it over the hull, laid out the cloth, applied more epoxy, and squeegeed it down.

And, in truth, the first pointy end went pretty smoothly.

So I did the other pointy end. Pretty much the same process, pretty much the same result. Flat application, pretty smooth and clean.

Then I tried to do a bigger piece for the main body of the boat. Larger cut of fiberglass, more epoxy. This is where it started going badly. I should have used much smaller pieces to cover the boat carfully. The "stringers" on the bottom and sides created air pockets under the glass, and when I worked hard to get one out, it would appear somewhere else. The epoxy started hardening, and so I had to work more quickly. Much less perfection than the ends.

But, in the end, the entire hull was covered in glass and epoxy. It is messy in parts, but that just means sanding down and doing patches here and there. It's not the end of the world. Just like glassing the original pieces (in my failed butt joints): you have to start somewhere and then build off of that. The building process is, as Fred told me at the start of this, mostly just a matter of fixing screw-ups. And, to quote him further:

And when you are ready for that final phase, remember that fibreglass and epoxy resin, augmented with assorted thickeners and enhancers, can adequately address any and all perceived deficiencies, aesthetic and otherwise.

My biggest concern now is that I'm getting low on epoxy/hardener. I should have enough to re-coat the whole bottom and do the inside. But I'll need to get more before I can make changes and additions (like cutting the end of the boat and adding a transom.)

But first things first. I want to finish the boat (and by "finish" I mean "make watertight") tomorrow so that it can hit the water on Sunday.

Some pics from yesterday:

Above you see the first go at fiberglassing. I mixed four different batches of epoxy, each with a slightly different proportion of sawdust, hence the variegated color. I kind of like the different hues. After I get it sanded down and apply the covering coat, this should be somewhat evened out. (You can see the edges of fiberglass (white cloth) hanging down below the rubrails, towards the ground.) Yes, the pointy end in the foreground was glassed, too. It just had the least amount of sawdust mixed in to the epoxy so is a lighter color.)

As I was finishing up, a major thunderstorm rolled in, but I couldn't cover the boat, as the plastic would stick to the EXTREMELY TACKY epoxy. So I had to build a tent:
One thing I didn't mention is how great it is to build a boat barefoot. Until my last day of construction (when I sanded it down last weekend), I had done all of the construction shod. But last weekend, I worked on the boat barefoot, and it was really great. So I continued barefoot yesterday.

Not so great, as I ended up epoxying grass and dirt and seedpods to my bare feet.
I had to soak my feet in acetone to clean this off. Whoops.

So Close

From Fred:

I like the transom idea better than the clinker applique. But, if I can presume to mumble some comments through the echo chamber of an almost empty beer bottle, I might ramble a bit about the inherent elegance of simple, graceful, unadorned utility. Most every element of any boat is, at its core, integral. Paint, for instance, is, first and foremost, a protective coating; color is a mere bonus. A figurehead, necessarily, wards off the mysterious evils of the sea. With a measured allowance for artful folly notwithstanding, this boat is being built for the water, and it seems to be close to its first meeting. So later, perhaps, when you find yourself missing stays as you tack up into strong breeze, you might consider the possibility of a wholesale alteration of your boat's lines and trim, and add a transom and rudder. Until then, it strikes me as a needlessly cruel step when you have come so far.

If, on the other hand, the process of making the boat has gained ascendancy over using the boat, then chop it up. It is your boat.

That being said, if I were you, so close to having a floating hull, I would be positively frothing to put it and myself in the water.

That's an interesting point. I have been thinking about that a lot lately, as the Project has been getting ever nearer being a Boat.

I think a lot of this has been about the process of building the boat. All of my thoughts and energies have been directed to that: completing the basic hull, and all of the ancillary add-ons that are to come. I've given very little thought to being on the water, enjoying its Boat-ness.

But upcoming is a beautiful weekend. My sister-in-law and her girls are coming up, and it would be great to be able to take them out in the boat - to have something completed to show off. Then I can start the adding-on.

To that end, I panicked at the thought of lopping off the end before it's glassed together: what if, by cutting the endpost stem, the sidewalls were able to force themselves apart and split the boat? Then I would have nothing.

So, I'm staying home today for a big awards presentation at Charlie's school: he's getting something big - so big the school won't even tell us what it is. After that, I'm fiberglassing. By Friday I will have a seaworthy craft. This weekend - Sunday - she will be launched.

Question for Fred

Sometime over the last week or so, my attitude about boat building has changed.
Whereas when I started I was unsure of myself, and felt the necessity to check every step with a multitude of sources: the Uncle John building plans, the online question/answer forum, books, and, of course, the unfailing Fred, sometime recently I have developed a confidence in myself. It was probably around the time the Project began to feel like a Boat; once it became a unified whole.

Part of it is that I realized that this is not like a complex recipe for Le Soufflé Chaud à la Truffe Mélanosporum, Grand Marnier. Nor is it like one of my intricate excel computations

=(MAX((('O data'!C$23+'O data'!E$23)-3),0))+(MAX((('O data'!G$23+'O data'!I$23)-3),0))+(MAX((('O data'!K$23+'O data'!M$23+'O data'!O$23)-3),0))+(MAX((('O data'!Q$23+'O data'!S$23)-3),0))+(MAX((('O data'!U$23+'O data'!W$23)-5),0))+MAX(('O data'!Y$23-3),0)+(MAX((('O data'!AA$23+'O data'!AC$23)-3),0))+MAX(('O data'!AE$23-1),0)+MAX(('O data'!AH$23-1),0)+MAX(('O data'!AJ$23-1),0)+MAX(('O data'!AL$23-3),0)+'O data'!AO$23+MAX(('O data'!AR$23-13),0)+MAX(('O data'!AS$23-12),0)+MAX(('O data'!AT$23-8),0)+MAX(('O data'!AU$23-7),0)+MAX(('O data'!AV$23-6),0)+'O data'!AX$23+'O data'!AZ$23+'O data'!BA$23+'O data'!BC$23+'O data'!BD$23+'O data'!BF$23

An actual equation from my budgeting spreadsheet. This one calculates the number of extra musicians required for a production. I have dozens, maybe hundreds of equations like this. This is what I do.
in which every last character must be exactly so or the whole thing will fail.

No. Carpentry (or, at least, boat building) is more . . . forgiving. There are multiple ways to achieve a goal, and as long as you follow the general tenets of physics and geometry, you can kinda make it up as you go along.

At least, I hope this is the case. Or I won't have a boat for very long.
That being said, I sometimes still need some advice.

I have decided to cut one of the ends off of the boat to make a (small) transom. (For you lubbers out there, this means cutting off one of the pointy ends and sticking on a flat piece across the back - so it will be pointy at the front and square at the back.) I'm only going to cut off 6" or so - the transom will only be about 4" square, I think. I'm going to do this so that I can add a proper rudder, using a pintle and gudgeon system.

This is a glorified door hinge: the boat has a gudgeon attached:
The rudder has a pintle attached:
The pintle pin inserts into the gudgeon hole and voila: you have a working rudder.

Of course, there is another option. They now make specially designed gudgeon sets for canoes/kayaks (pointy-ended boats, not flat-transomed boats.)

These are simply attached to the pointy end of the boat and connected with a pin:
I suppose these would suffice, but it's not as elegant (in my eye) as a traditional pintle/gudgeon on a transom.

My underlying question, I suppose, is this: Given the light duty this rudder is going to endure, would it be conceivable to have only one pintle (long pin) and one gudgeon? They come in sets of two, so presumably two are required. But I'm thinking maybe just get the long pin and a more solid gudgeon:
I think this would be useful for quick removal of the rudder in the shallows and when docking.

Anyway, I guess this is me just thinking aloud. There's a certain nervous giddiness at the thought of sawing off the end of a boat that I've just built.

Big Day

It has been a very Boaty weekend. I won't lie to you (Thomas never lies!): I am tired.

After I (very generously, I thought) posted this morning about the boat triumph yesterday, I got the following message from the one person who had nagged me for the update (in case you haven't guessed, it's my mother, Mary).

I think if we did less partying would have had a more factual building report. Too limited in words. But it certainly is big. No pics of cutting bottom or attaching same. You get an f on report card

There's a wonderful book called "Ball Four", written by former Yankee pitcher Jim Bouton. It was the first tell-all sports autobiography, written at a time when even reporters traveling with the team would not print all of the (true) stories about the ballplayers' carousing, boozing, and carrying on. It was a club, and a very secretive one at that. Then Bouton wrote this book--exposing some really seedy underbelly of professional baseball--and was reviled by the baseball community. I don't think he ever worked in the MLB again. (He went on to invent Big League Chew (bubble gum packaged to look like chewing tobacco, in an effort to keep kids off of tobacco) and last I heard he had founded and was running the Vintage Base Ball Federation, an old-timey baseball league, playing by the rules of 1880. But I digress.)

In the book, he tells a story about Mickey Mantle, who asked the Yankee manager (maybe Leo Durocher?) if he could have the next day off. Durocher said sure, and Mickey hit the tiles that night. Stayed out all night drinking and partying, and finally made it back to his room around dawn. He spent most of the game huddled on the bench, trying to sleep, but as luck would have it, in the late innings, the Yankees were down by a run or two with men on base, and the manager needed Mantle to pinch hit. He staggered up into the bright sun, grabbed a bat, stumbled to the batters box, and hit the first pitch for a home run. He trotted the bases, and collapsed back on the bench, right next to Bouton. According to the story, Mantle leaned forward and peered at the screaming fans with bloodshot eyes and said, "They have no idea how hard that was."

That is how I feel about this morning's post.

I will try to make amends now.

Yesterday's job was pretty straightforward, as I had predicted the day before: I traced the boat outline on the plywood "bottom" (leaving a little around the edge just in case) and then cut it out with my circular saw. I flipped the boat frame upside-down, drilled holes through the bottom into the ribs, and then applied woodglue to the bottom of all of the ribs and the sides. I laid the bottom back on, screwed it down, and piled with rocks. (Uncle John calls this the 'glue and stack' method of boat-building.)

Then I mixed the fillet (epoxy + sawdust), and lined all of the seams with it.

Then I went to the block party, talked to Mr Hall (the one person there I knew), who mixed me several Dark and Stormys (rum, lime juice, and ginger beer -- a very nautical drink). After that, I don't remember much.

So, this morning, after the Jeeves pick-me-up, I went out to trim the excess around the bottom.

As is my way, I did this by hand: using the manual hand (that's redundant) saw. This was very exhausting work, cutting at a tough angle, and underneath the sharp-edged rub rail. I barked the back of my hand into this edge frequently and hard enough that it was spewing blood at every cut. You can see some on the side of the boat in this picture of the saw:
After getting as much as I could cut, I sanded down the rest with the sanding attachment on my drill. This was tiring and very saw-dusty work. Photo by Henry
But at the end of that sanding, I truly did feel like I had made a BOAT.

I then began the priddying process. I sanded out much of the mess from the inside filleting job yesterday.

I also sanded the sharp corner/edges off of the ribs and rub rails (should probably have done that before trying to saw the edge of the bottom) so they're more user-friendly.

Sanding doesn't sound like hard work, but the oak of the rub rails especially was exhausting, time consuming work. And it was well over 90 degrees today, and much of the day I was in the sun. It was brutal out there.

I also sanded down the edges of the stringers on the side of the boat. They are made of three-layer plywood, and when you sand down, you go through one layer of wood, and then the (dark) wood glue, and then another layer of wood, and then the glue, and then the third layer of wood. A neat side-effect of this is that the dark glue lines make a neat pattern on the side stringers. I think this looks very cool:
At this point, it was an inch deep in sawdust, especially the corners and edges and joints. So I decided to hose the whole thing off to clean it up in preparation for fiberglassing. (Somewhat ironic, as I had been so paranoid about the wood getting wet for the last month.)
It was while I was letting it dry that I read the afore-mentioned e-mail from Mary, giving me an F. I decided to call her, and in the course of conversation, she (rightly) pointed out that it would be a very bad idea to fiberglass the boat after rinsing it. Now, I hadn't SOAKED it. I just gave it a quick jet with water to get the sawdust out. And, as I said, it was a VERY hot day here today.

But still and all, it wouldn't do to mess up the fiberglassing after having come this far. Plus, it was about 2:30, and I still had to mow the lawn and do some other things around the house (like lay on the couch and watch the Blackhawks game. Go Hawks!) So I called it a day.

I also scrubbed my special, 3am idea from last week. As I've decided not to proceed, I'll tell you what it was: I found some very thin (1/8 inch) oak wall paneling (a 4'x8' sheet). Like bead-board, with 2-inch "planks" (divided by, you know, those little indentations in bead board.) I had planned to cut apart all of these individual 2-inch boards and attach them, overlapping, on the sidewalls, to make a faux "clinker boat".
While I still think it's a clever idea, it would add some unnecessary weight to the boat, and given that I still have to design and add a sail rig, I don't think I should be adding unnecessary weight.

In addition, I really LOVE the look of the wood with the fillet epoxy on it. The baltic birch is a very, very white wood. Even staining it, I didn't think it would take on a very interesting color. But after seeing it dried on the inside of the boat, I'm excited. I'll do a little test on the bottom of the boat, but my plan now is to just add a small amount of the sawdust to the coat of epoxy, giving it that nice rich brown color. I think it will be very nice.

I Dill It

This is going to be a fairly photo-heavy post, as there was a neighborhood block party last night, and I am in dire need of one of Jeeves's pick-me-ups. Fortunately for me, I know the recipe:Raw egg yolk, Worstershire sauce, tobasco sauce, tomato juice, ground pepper.
One gulp.
I feel much better now.

But there was, in fact, some minor clamoring for information on the progress of the boat, so I feel I owe it to my public to give them what they want.

Yesterday:
Boat, awaiting bottom
Bottom, awaiting boat
Bottom attached, using wood glue, screws and rocks
Houston, we have a Boat
The only thing remaining was to add "fillets" around the inside of the bottom, connecting the sides to the bottom piece. To do this, you mix up epoxy, and mix in a good amount of sawdust (provided for this purpose) and press it into the connection groove (like caulk).

This was harder than it sounds, and I don't know how successful the result was. It's certainly messy.
But it's holding together.
I have a Boat.

Today, I do a little clean-up, and priddying, and then, I dunno, maybe fiberglass the bottom?

It's All in My Head

I have so many thoughts and plans for Das Boot. They're in my head 24/7.

I was just thinking about why, and I realized that it's because this is probably the only boat I will ever own, and almost certainly the only one I will ever build myself. (In my delusions of grandeur as I've been assembling this, and looking at Wooden Boat Magazine, I've thought to myself, "I can do this. I'm learning so much with this project. I could make a clinker-built skiff. Why not?" And then I look at Uncle John's Bayou Skiff plans, and realize I couldn't even begin to think about a more complex boat.)

The result is that I'm mentally cramming every last idea I could have for a boat into this one (mostly unsuitable) craft. It's a flat-bottomed, calm-water, short-distance skiff. I think the best use for a pirogue is a stationary duck blind in the bayous of Louisiana. It's not meant for much more than that.

But in my spare time (note: this is all the time), I'm daydreaming about how I could add all kinds of maritime accoutrements to her. (Could I add portholes? How hard would it be to carve a figurehead? Is there room for a gun deck? Can the prow be fitted with an ice-breaker? Surely I can fit two masts, but is three pushing it? *)

The bottom line (as Fred keeps reminding me) is this: It is my boat.
I should do what I want, add what I want. I should make it my boat.

The plan, I think, is this: this weekend I will get the bottom on. That is job number one. I need to finish the boat as designed by Uncle John. Make it seaworthy.

I will attach the bottom (probably Saturday morning). Possibly late Saturday afternoon I will seal the inside seams joining the sides to the bottom with an epoxy/sawdust fillet, which will hold it together and make it a Boat.
Easy, right?
Then Sunday, I'll do my first bit of priddying the boat; that is, adding something non-structural, just for visual 'prettiness'. (This is the result of my 3AM thought the other night, which I have figured out how to try to achieve. I got some supplies last night, but realized I didn't get everything, and so will have to go back to Menards yet again. I like going to the hardware store. I like getting things for the boat. But I'm getting tired of driving halfway across town to get some wood glue and a dozen screws, which is what I have to do on Saturday. Hrumph.

But such is the life of a boat-builder.)

After that, I'm not sure. The following week/weekend I can fiberglass the outside/bottom. I think I really should take it out for sea trials before I establish the correct placement for the sail rig.

First things first.

* I've made up most of these ideas for comic effect. But my actual ideas are not that much more far-fetched: I just am keeping them close to the vest at this point.

Edging Nearer

Sunday was a very productive day, boat-wise.
A brief summary:

After connecting the stempost and sternpost on Saturday and allowing to dry overnight, the next step was to attach the ribs and rubrails on Sunday.

What could be easier?Your "eye" will tell you when [the ribs] are in the correct position.
Oh, it will, will it?

My eye had a devil of a time determining when the ribs were in the correct position, and I doubt they did all that successful of a job. It's hard to tell from these pictures, but I fear the craft is not, strictly speaking, symmetrical or square. I don't know how this could have happened, as the sides are of the exact same length, but there it is. I e-mailed Fred about this result, and he replied with the encouraging

Symmetry of form, for the most part, is overrated.

In any event, here lies the craft, with ribs and rub rails attached:Foreground: Boat, Background: Neil
And from above (Henry's room):

There's very little left, construction-wise. To attach the bottom, I simply flip over what is currently on the sawhorses: boat, upside-down on the sawhorses, big sheet of plywood laying on top. Trace the outline of the boat (leaving about an inch of spare room all the way around the perimeter), cut it out. Lay over the upturned boat, glue (and screw) down. Add weight*. Leave to dry.

That will be the boat. It need only to have the bottom piece "faired" -- sanded down to make smooth edges-- and then fiberglassed, and then it will be finished.

I had some trouble sleeping last night, and got a cockamaimie idea for the boat at about 3:15am. I'm going to do a little research: it may be completely ridiculous and therefore not worth posting. But if it seems plausible, perhaps I'll post it. Or maybe I'll just do it and surprise you.

Looking like a good forecast for this weekend. I'm hoping to get the bottom attached on Saturday morning, and perhaps move to fiberglassing on Sunday?


* Again, construction with rocks.

We Are Approaching Boat Status

With the hectic baseball schedule yesterday, I was only able to cram in three quarters of an hour of boatmaking.
But I made each one of those 45 minutes count.

Conditions were against me: I knew I had less than an hour. I hadn't eaten all day. I was on the clock and under the gun and that's when I rush and screw things up.

It seemed easy, this next step:

And then:
Plans courtesy of Uncle John

Securing the first two stems (one to each end of one of the sideboards) was not hard: I was working flat on the "workbench" (the bottom plywood sheet on the sawhorses). Straightforward drill holes, glue, insert screws, tighten.

But at that moment it became a three-dimentional structure. Length, height, and depth. The clock was ticking: I was down to my last 15 minutes or so. I tried putting one of the sawhorses on top of the workbench to lay the sideboard over, but it did not give me the proper angle. After a couple of different thoughts, I struck on putting the whole works on the ground. I was able to stand up the connected sideboard between two buckets, and thereby the stem was in the correct attitude for joining. So far, so good. But attaching that last stem . . . those three little words: "Pull ends together".

Well, needless to say, easier said than done.

But I'm an advanced species. On many days I am smarter than inanimate wood. Yesterday, fortunately, was one of those days.

I pushed the boat (because it was beginning to be a boat) back up against the raised planter bed I had built a couple of years ago, and by pushing against it, I forced the sides to bow out to the appropriate width and so the end of the sideboard in my hand was at the correct angle to the stem. I braced it against my body, held it against the strain of the wood, and drilled.

The drill slipped, and went through my hand entirely. Blood splattered everywhere. It looked like a murder scene.

Just kidding. It went together very smoothly at that point. Three drill holes, some wood glue, and three screws later, I had this:

With Henry, for scale.
(1 Henry = approximately 4'3"/129 cm)
Today I will put in the ribs and attach the rub rails.
Depending on how that (and my other Sunday jobs, like mowing the lawn, et cetera) goes, I hope to also attach the bottom.

It's coming together.

Crazy Re-Do Guy

So, I have this nickname at work: Crazy Re-Do Guy.
I have a penchant for creating wildly intricate Excel (lately Access) databases to "simplify" my budgeting processes.
Not unlike the car in A New Leaf (one of the funniest movies ever), which needs to be taken in for a service every time it is driven, I tend to re-make my entire spreadsheet every time I have to do a budget. Rather than let it just let it produce the numbers as it has been designed to do, I re-design it.

Crazy Re-Do Guy.

I mention this because, on almost every single step of this project, I have done something, then had to re-do it. Or re-done it by choice.

So goes the sideboard stringers.

I mentioned it was raining this week, and I found that the stringers that I had simply screwed into the sideboards managed to warp and pull up from the underlying wood.

#$%#^&@*$.

So, today I . . (say it with me) RE-DID them.
Is it typical to use rocks in carpentry?

This time, I glued the entire length with Titebond III wood glue.
Why did I not glue them the first time?

Because I'm a freakin' moron, okay? Are you happy now?

I'm very pleased with the work today. Despite having done almost every step twice, I feel like I'm making progress.

Tomorrow is a rich, full day of baseball. But Sunday is set aside for boat-building.

This I declare: ON SUNDAY I WILL HAVE A BOAT-SHAPED HUNK OF PLYWOOD.
For reals.

What's in a Name?

What's in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet.

Romeo and Juliet (II, ii, 1-2)
The time is near.
I cannot call the boat by name until it is a boat. But I cannot not have a name once it is a boat. True, she will not be officially christened until launch, but what is now a collection of separate pieces of wood will soon--very soon--become an entity, a unified whole.

And, thusly, will need a name.

I have found, either through my own research or the contributions of the many several of you, several good possibilities. These range from the sturdy and matter-of-fact Frank to the fanciful Esprit d'corps. From the plain Boys' Boat (presumably no girls allowed) to Sloop Recalcitrant.

Small craft are frequently named for local songbirds or waterfowl, and perusing a list of the avifauna of the Fox River Valley, I particularly like Ruddy Duck, which combines something that floats with a silly adjective, making it sound kind of like an English pub.
Ruddy Duck, early favorite
Which led me to Wodehouse, and thinking of the various boats in that canon. Nothing too great there - unnamed tramp steamers and massive Atlantic crossing liners. The women of Wodehouse are a great possibility, from Aunt Agatha to the afore-mentioned Honoria.

Perhaps something historical? Doing a bit of research, I found that Lewis and Clark took three pirogues with them on their mighty voyage of exploration, but these are sadly unnamed. I could pull something from the classics, such as Naiad or close to home: my all-too-clever sister suggested Huck: a combination of Henry and Chuck (for Charlie) . . . that has a very Norman-Rockwell-y down-on-the-lazy-river feel to it. But I don't know if I want to be too cutesy with the name.

Something Irish? A tribute to my heritage? Something from Opera? A name from my childhood? From lit'rature? Classic movies? I'd like to work the word "crusty" in, if at all possible. Crusty Duck?

Hm. Keep the suggestions coming.
It may come down to combining many of the best choices into a compound name, and calling her something shorter for every day use, like a champion dog. (The winner of the 2009 Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show was "Champion Clussexx Three D Grinchy Glee (aka: "Stump")".)Ch. Clussexx Three D Grinchy Glee (aka: "Stump")

Progress

So, I got the thought this morning to make the stringers attaching the sideboards and bottom a permanent part of the boat.
I'm not proud, I don't need to show that I can butt-join plywood without cheating.
I just want a serviceable boat

So I posed the question this morning if that would be a reasonable plan, and then went of to take care of some other errands.

I came back, early afternoon, ready to start work on the boat. I hadn't heard anything from Fred, and I didn't know how to proceed. I cut my stringers, picked out the best ones to use, and even got the drill out to make it permanent. I had everything ready to go, and I was on the verge of drilling, when I got this:

Sure. That's a fine idea. Once attached with softened edges, glassed and faired, they would be an admirable feature.

And so I did it:Bottom, with stringers

I thought the stringers on the bottom might actually serve as a kind of mild keel: not much, but something more than a completely flat bottom has got to help a bit, right?

And the sides:


Mockup

I almost wanted to attach it to the stems and put on the rubrails and proceed with construction, but I didn't know if that would just be crazy. It was getting to be late afternoon, and it was getting cold, and I didn't think it was prudent to start fiberglassing, so there it sits, unjoined.

I feel more confident that this will become a boat than I have in some time. I think a few more weekends and we should be there.

SO . . . I need a name. Soon.

Quaere

What if I make the 2" x 4' stringers part of the sides?
Actually epoxy them to the outside of the bows? They would add structural integrity, and could act as bumpers on the prow of the craft?

Unless there is compelling reason not to, this is my intention.

Starting Over

That's what it feels like. I am no further along than I was weeks ago.

About my fiberglass repeatedly breaking, from Fred:

You kind of do have to treat your over-large butt-jointed panels like antique glass eggs until they are assembled as a self-reinforcing whole. You might consider adding some trooping sticks to the panels to help with safe handling--long strips of scrap temporarily screwed across the joint.

If you used two or three long strips of your plywood, say 2" x 3', screwed on along the length of the panel, roughly centered on and perpendicular to the joint, you could conceivably leave them in place until the boat is finally put together. The screw holes can be filled later, when the beautification begins.

I will do this. But presumably these stringers will by necessity have to run over the fiberglass. Isn't there a risk of the resin affixing itself to the underside of the stringers, making them difficult to remove after the project has cured?

I will do this tomorrow. I will re-butt-join the sides. And the bottom. For the third time.

This project is starting to make me feel stabby.

Why Me?

It's a blustery day here today: currently 44 degrees, with a wind chill of 35. Our old maple tree in the back has shed thousands and thousands of seed pods, so the boys are out back raking. It feels like fall.

I got a good start this morning, had a warm breakfast and went out to cut the diagonal ends of the sideboards to attach to the stems: It was to look like a boat today.

But, guess what?

ONE OF THE @#%$ING SIDEBOARD JOINTS CRACKED.

WHY?
Isn't fiberglass supposed to be durable? Isn't this epoxy supposed to be stronger than the underlying material it's holding together? Why do I have to treat it like an antique glass egg?



Clearly, it's my fault. I've mixed it incorrectly. A blind man could see that.
But that doesn't lessen my frustration.

I can't glass them today: it's far too cold out for it to set properly. Tomorrow should get to the mid-60s, so perhaps I will fiberglass them -- AGAIN -- tomorrow. (I'm going to run out of fiberglass before I even get to the bottom of the damn boat.)

Leave to cure . . . then I guess I try to join them NEXT weekend.

This thing is never going to be done.

=====
PS: For your ghouls out there who asked for it, here's a picture of the shard of wood that went into my hand:

This went straight into my palm, so all that was sticking out was the square edge. I couldn't believe how long it was when I pulled it out. (I had to use pliers to pull it out.)