Answers from Fred

In answer to my previous quaere to Fred about how to tie off my line, he gave this thoughtful response:

When the other end of the line is drawn through the loop and pulled tight, hold the tension by pinching the intersection of loop and line, and secure it with a single half-hitch made with a bight of the loose line. Do not draw the line all the way through the half-hitch--leave the bight and a tail so that it is easy to undo.

Simple enough.

Then I followed up with the question as to how to best secure two lines together. His response was the sheet bend, of course.

I did some research into the sheet bend, and it seems an eminently simple knot to tie, something I should be able to master with six to eight weeks of diligent practice.

Here is an illustration of a secure, correct sheet bend: What could be simpler?

Of course, here is an illustration of an insecure sheet bend, something liable to blow apart at any moment, causing wreck and ruin:DISASTER!

What, you are asking yourself, is the difference?

I wish I could tell you. Clearly the tail end of the rope is pointing up, rather than down. Beyond that, however? I'm not sure.
Which is bad, as my very life could depend on it.

Quaere for Fred

Freddd,

I have a question about lashing.
I have found that a good way to make something nice and tight is to put a loop at the end of a line, and then run the line around whatever it is you are trying to secure, running the end of the rope back through the loop. By pulling back against itself, you can make it quite tight.
However, how best to secure that loose end so that all of the tension you've leveraged is not lost?

I've gone so far as to add a second loop, to double the tensioning power:But that does not solve the dilemma of how to tie it off in the end without, as I say, losing whatever tension I have managed in the first place.

Surely there is some perfect knot for this purpose?

What's Next?

There's been some rumbling and grumbling from the masses about my lack of new posts in this log.

In my defense (me? Defensive? Never!), there has been little or nothing to report. Both boys had baseball this past weekend - Charlie at 1:00 on Saturday and Henry at 12:30 on Sunday - so the middle of both days was completely taken up with baseball. Check that: Charlie's game was rained out, but that same rain prevented me from pulling the Duck out to continue working. Sunday was beautiful for Henry's game, but showers came in in the afternoon, scuttling my half-hearted attempt to continue progress.

It's a beautiful day out today, but rain is due to roll in tomorrow, and the weekend looks iffy at best. When I can next get out, here's the plan:

I had had some problem with the last layer of epoxy I had used to line the inside seams never drying. I'm going to have to get in there and get out as much of that as I can, sand things smooth and try to re-coat the whole interior with a good coat.

Then I'm going to "deck" the first 30 inches or so on each end of the boat: I'll put in one cross-brace (using the leftover oak from the rubrails) and then cover it with a piece of either the scrap 1/4" maple ply or maybe the oak beadboard I got and never used for the faux clinker. It's just getting in the way, a big 4x8 sheet.

I also need to figure out how I'm going to manage the sail rig.
As I may have mentioned, Fred got me the beautiful book , which I have been poring over.

It's an interesting prospect, adding a sail to a vessel not originally designed to use one. This book has entire sections, very scientifically explaining how to calculate the center of effort of various differently-shaped sails, but then passages expounding on how there is no final set way to do things, you have to just kind of get a feel for it.

Most of the book (in fact, most everything I can find about adding sail to canoe) is lateen- or lugsail-oriented. (A refresher on different sail types, if you're interested in following along at home, is here.)

While I defintely see the merits of a fore-and-aft sail (briefly, a triangular sail, like you typically see on small sailboats, which can take a sideways-bearing wind and use it to push you forward), I am more and more drawn to a square sail (simply, a big square (or rectangular) bed sheet which is hung from a "curtain rod" positioned across the ship, to catch the wind blowing from behind; picture a Viking ship.)

Actually, that is the best way to envision the difference between the two basic sail plans: sailboat versus Viking ship.
Fore-and-aft rig.
(Note: this is a "Sunflower" sailboat, the type of boat I first learned to sail, 30 years ago at Washington Park in Denver.)

Square rig
Clearly, much more majestic
While fore-and-aft, as I said, has many, many things going for it (among other things, you can sail at times and in directions other than when the wind is directly behind you, and blowing in the direction you want to sail), it also has some inconveniences (the sail, being blown on from the side, will tend to want to flip your boat over, unless you have a large keel down in the water to prevent such things. Note: my boat does not have a large keel down in the water to prevent such things.)

But, mostly, I want a square sail because nobody else has a square sail.

Its very . . . it-ness, its being will make it, and therefore me, unique.

I'm excited about this now. I have to say (as I have in the last two posts), the launch was so dissatisfactory and anticlimactic that I had lost all of my mojo for The Boat Project, and this had me quite discouraged.

But all of this musing on the sail plan has my juices flowing again. There is some clean-up work that I'm not looking forward to, but I'm excited about moving forward with the sail rig. Hopefully Sunday will be sunny.

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.

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.

Joining with Fiberglass

Well, it's done.

I did elect to go outside for construction, and I just got a very gratifying validation from Fred:

I'll try to make this quick so as to not be left behind: building outside is always better than building inside, even if conditions might suggest otherwise. And, after all, you're building a boat, not a chess set.

Good point. Right now, the rain will hold off until around 9:00 tonight. Says Fred,

If the weather turns before the cure is complete, you can still carefully move the pieces to a sheltered location to allow the chemical process to finish at its own pace.

That may be more challenging than you'd suppose, although I'm sure Fred's thought about it. I have two 8' x 28" pieces of plywood, end to end, with what feels like scotch tape holding them together. I think picking them up before it's rock-solid and the joint will bend, and it will be ruined.

In any event, here's what I had at 8:00 AM:From left, two rubrails, two 8'x28" bottom pieces, laid end to end, and two sets of 8'x10" sideboards, paired up and laid end to end.

And, here's the same view at 10:00 AM:The same pieces (minus the rubrails, which were moved into the garage [rear]), after being joined with fiberglass and covered with protective plastic.

I wish I had pictures of the process for you, but fiberglassing is a messy job, and I didn't want to get my phone all epoxy-y. The glass itself is very easy to work with: it's in a big roll, like fabric, and cuts easily with scissors. There were no jagged edges on which to cut myself - it was very straightforward. The epoxy comes in two jugs, a big one (the epoxy) and a smaller one (the hardener), which are mixed on a 2-to-1 ratio. I measured by pouring into a cheap plastic measuring cup I got a the hardware store and then carefully pouring back and forth between the measuring cup and a mixing bucket. (This is the recommended way of mixing according to the epoxy instructions.) I also stirred with a wooden paint stirrer.

I had pre-cut the fiberglass to the size I want (a piece large enough to cover about 8" on either side of the joint, wrapping around the entire boards and overlapping a bit). I painted on the epoxy, laid on the fiberglass and pressed and painted until the glass was saturated with epoxy, smoothing out to the edges and working my way around. I then painted another layer of epoxy over the top, smoothed, and set. I covered the epoxied fiberglass with waxed paper, wrapped in the plastic sheeting, and weighted down.

Did I do a neat, tidy job?
I'll be honest. No. I did not. It was messy and amateurish.
Wanna know why? Because I'm a messy amateur.

But the point is that I used plenty of epoxy and had plenty of overlap on each board. I believe what is going to make this joint hard is the epoxy itself: according to what I've read, epoxy is much stronger than almost anything you can join with it: if you glue two pieces of any strong material together with the correct type of epoxy and let it completely set to 100% cure, if you then stress the joint, the original material will fail before the epoxy joint does. So I think the fiberglass fabric is essentially just a way of holding the epoxy together until it gets hard enough.

In any event, my plan is to let these joints completely cure, then set up the sawhorses and sand down the messiness of the joints to some reasonable smoothness, and then use the final layers of fiberglass (when the boat structure is completed) to make it smooth and pretty.

My main concern at this point is that the epoxy will want to stick to the waxed paper/plastic sheeting as much as it wants to stick to the wood, and when I unwrap the big burrito it will all come apart. But I'll jump off that bridge when I get to it.

I think I'm going to "seal" the edges of the plastic burrito with gaff tape (is there anything gaff tape can't do?) before leaving today. (We head out to Charlie's baseball game around 5:00, and we're going out for my birthday pizza afterwards, and it will likely be raining by then time we get home. I'm going to just leave the epoxy burrito untouched until tomorrow afternoon. (It's going to be done raining around 6:00 AM, and then it should be sunny the rest of the day.))

(Fred also responded to my defying his sail plan advice, but I'll save that for a later post. I would just like to reaffirm that I would never even have ordered the kit and imagined I could possibly build a boat were it not for my assumption of Fred's advice and support. So the fact that I may not follow it to the letter should not be construed as meaning that his recommendations are not correct, and better than my decisions. It's more an indication of my stubbornness and unwarranted idealism.)

Note: upon proof-reading these posts, I've noticed I really like parentheses. Sorry about that.

Me = Recalcitrant

I haven't gotten much done on the boat lately.
I was very excited about the potential sailing rigs after my last post, but significantly less so today.
I got a very thoughtful e-mail from Fred about the various potentialities of sailing rigs, which I will quote in part:

One of the more compelling aspects of any sailing rig is its structural and organizational flexibility. A limited set of basic components can afford the ability to adapt to all the compounding variables of load and trim and wind and water. For your boat, without the benefit of a time-tested specific sail plan, any design will be inherently speculative and prototypical; it would not suit to impose a rigid system.

Eminently logical, no doubt. And it matches this article I found about setting up a sailing canoe rig in many important points.

I will post the proposed plan from Fred here, if only to have it in the log. Once again, if you are not up to speed with your Chapman Piloting and Seamanship, you may want to skip down a bit.

So if I could presume to suggest the outline of a plan........

It appears in the official, idealized catalog photo of your canoe that there are occasional clearances between the ribs and the bottom. It was not clear in your photo of your dry fit mock-up if this wold be the case with your boat. If not, some sort of similar feature would be exceedingly useful--it could be as simple as an evenly spaced(6-8" apart) series of 3/8" holes through the ribs.

Beyond that, you would need a few spars of different lengths for the parts. It could all be of similar stock, say 2"x 2" or thereabouts, squarish rather than rectangular. And you would need a fair amount of 1/4" line, decent double-braided-type marine stuff, good for knot-tying.

The mast foot: This would be a length of wood long enough to comfortably span two of the ribs, nominally along the centerline of the bottom. It would have a few holes drilled through--evenly spaced every 3-4", a foot or so to either side of the centerpoint, big enough(thus slightly oversized) to accommodate a 1/2" bolt. The mast foot would be set across two of the ribs--on the centerline, offset, or diagonal--and lashed down. The lashing and the holes would allow positioning adjustability fore and aft, as well as side to side, if desired, for the location of the mast.

The mast: A spar of maybe 10'--these specifics are where your sea trials will become telling. If it starts long and proves awkward, you can always cut it shorter. This spar would have at each end a hole the same size as the hole in the mast foot, with the exact placement allowing an end to bolt to the mast foot without the mast itself touching the bottom of the boat. (The other hole will serve as a point for tying on the sheave for raising the yard.) The bolt could be a nice stainless steel or brass hex head, washered on both sides, and hand-tightened with a wingnut. This will secure the mast to the foot, and still allow it to pivot, perhaps useful for stepping and striking and trimming. I would envision stepping the mast by resting it across the bow and aligning the bolt holes, and then swinging the mast up(or, in reverse, striking it down to the deck, as it were) into its desired trim.

The gunwale brace: A spar as long as the beam width of the canoe, plus several inches. This would be set across the gunwales, positioned as needed--square to the centerline or not--and lashed down. The mast, swung up, would then lash to it. The extra outboard length might eventually come in handy for stays and fairleads, or even a daggerboard point. At this point, too, you might find that a backstay will answer--a simple line from that hole at the top of the mast to somewhere stern-ish, rib 'C' maybe, or another gunwale brace(it would just be another uncarpentered stick after all) forward of the steersman.

The yard: A stick of the same stuff, 8'to 10'? with a simple bridle tied to a line passed through the mast sheave. Hoist. Tie off to the gunwale brace.

The sail: I'm serious here--a shower curtain. I think the size(tub-style) and material(lightweight, moderately impermeable) would be about right, it would be inexpensive, it would expendable, and it would be reinforced and grommetted along its top edge and ready to be tied onto the yard. You would only need to add grommet points to the corners that would become the clews. If it were too big, length or width, you could simply cut off what you didn't like; too small, tie on another one, overlapping to suit. The sheets, secured at the clews, would pass outboard under the gunwale brace to the stern.

The article I referenced above about setting up a canoe for sailing stresses many of the same points:

The placement of you and your sail rig in the canoe is part science and part of the art of sailing well. In order to sail safely and under control, it is essential to obey the physical laws of balance. . . The mast step should be placed in relation to the location of the leeboard thwart and vice-versa for a balanced rig. It is recommended that you start by using secure clamps to attach the leeboard thwart to the gunwales so that you can make adjustments.

I would like to state for the record that I do not like these answers.

Fred puts it best:

I don't know if this is a definitive design, but I hope that its essence is relative simplicity and flexibility. Ideally it might provide the capacity to allow you to complete your boat without building yourself into a corner, so to speak. If you were, for example, to forgo your sailing ambitions, you would only be left with four unused sticks and some rope(and a shower curtain), rather than an integral structural modification.

I want to build in my mast step. I want it to be part of the boat. It is less important to me that it works properly than that it looks good. I have already mentally designed the mast step, and some parts of the rig itself. Will they "work" according to some arbitrary "laws of physics"? Answer: I don't care.

Is this smart of me?
No.
Do I care about that, either?
No. It's my boat. That's the best part of building a boat. It doesn't have to make sense to any of you.

I do, very much like this last bit from Fred:

Some questions:
Does any of this make sense?
Can you sew?
Do you have a small grommet kit?
Do you have a passing familiarity with certain knots--bowline, clove hitch, sheet bend, trucker's hitch, maybe a sheepshank, and various lashing methods? It is always good to remember that rope work, so fundamental to any mariner, can be aesthetically pleasing and deeply satisfying, as well as profoundly useful and effective.

In answer:
- Yes, it makes sense. (Even though I don't like it.)
- I can sew. Kind of. Not really.
- No, but I would like to have a small grommet kit.
- No, I no know knots. Although I truly want to. In all sincerity. That is something that I do want to come from this whole boat thing. I want to have nice ropes with intricate knots. I don't know any, but I will learn some.

Sailing Rigs

Actually, come to think of it, I do have something else boat-related on my mind.

NOTE: This is going to be a fairly lingo-heavy post about the specifics of various types of sailing rigs, so those of you of a less nautical bent might want to go ahead and look the other way on this one. I will try to add pictures to help to clarify.

As you may recall, I have been thinking much about making this at least a part-time sailing vessel. My original thought was to add a lateen sail, based upon an old black-and-white photo I had found, but Fred advised otherwise:

You might consider that your boat, and I say this with all respect, will probably never be much more than a before-the-wind sailer. Without entering into a detailed conversation about the dynamics of foils and pressure differentials, your boat seems suited for a simple square rig--mast and yard, sheeted from the clews--trimmed and steered with your paddle at the stern. The structure of the boat would support, in my opinion, an adequate mast--stepped at the bottom deck, with a simple brace from the gunwales, and perhaps a backstay.

I found this to be not only a very sensible idea, but it also appealed to me because of the prominence of the square rig in maritime history.

A quick example of the various sail rigs:This illustration is from the book Hand, Reef and Steer; A Practical Handbook on Sailing which I picked up at the library today, simply because of the title.

You may notice that for the "square rig" illustration (top), it depicts a Viking boat, complete with dragon figurehead. About it, the author (Richard Henderson) says:

The square rig is undoubtedly the oldest rig, having in all probability been used on the first sailboat. It reached its highest degree of development in the days of the clippership. This rig is most efficient when the wind is abaft the beam, or when a squarerigger has the wind behind her. The top of a squaresail is secured to a yard, which is a horizontal pole running athwartships that may be swung for and aft to a limited extent by lines called braces. Except for an occasional squaresail or a deep-sea boat expected to sail before the trade winds, or on a training ship, one seldom sees this kind of sail today. Squareriggers have been outmoded by the fore and aft rigged boat, which can sail much closer to the wind. Before they began to fade from existence, squareriggers reached a high degree of rig variation and complexity, but since they are almost a thing of the past, we will deal only with rig variations in the fore and aft class.

So . . . no help to me.

So, I did some more research, and found that there is very little information about single-mast, single-sail square rigs. I did find the Open Canoe Sailing Group, which has a small section on the rigging of a canoe for sailing, and since my pirogue will have much the same sailing properties as a canoe, I can use that as a reference.

But if I am going to add a sail to this boat, it will need a mast. And if it has a mast, it will need a mast step (a place to hold the mast) during construction, and if it's going to have a mast step during construction, I'll need to decide where to place it before construction.

And I don't know where to start. I was thinking of stepping the mast in the front third of the boat, but from the little I've been able to find on square rigs, the mainmast (or only mast) would be in the dead center of the boat. (A couple of the canoes on the OCSG have mid-hull masts.) What would happen if the mast moves forward? I'll be seated in in the stern of the boat, so that could offset the weight in front, and might keep the sail from pressing down the prow of the boat.

I also don't know how to actually rig the sail. I have found a simple line drawings of square sails, but no details about how the yard is affixed to the mast, or exactly how the braces are rigged . . .

I don't know that Fred will already know The Answer on this one, unless he has square-rigged a pirogue and loaded it with two boys. But I need to start somewhere, and all of my research has gotten me nowhere.

And his knowledge of the sailing properties of all of the various sail rigs, fluid mechanics, my pirogue, my building skills and the overall aesthetic of this project gives me complete confidence that he will come through.

Sunday Musings

We must start, of course, with Fred's latest, if only for the elegance of his writing:

If I lived near you, I, too, like your friend Dennis, would want to come over and drink beer and laugh at you--relying on the beer to choke down fat gobbets of envy and the laughter to mask my wistful self-denigrating sobs.

And, of course, after a few beers, I would begin to gush about your gumption and your wherewithal, about you and your boat coming together right before my unbelieving eyes, before staggering home to drunkenly, desperately cobble together some sort of soul-redeeming raft of boards and and twigs and string.


Because, by the looks of your last log posting, you are well on your way to having a boat. If it looks like a boat, it very well might be a boat. Most probably, at the very least, something that will float.

Today I smoothed out my long 6" scarf cuts in the rubrails with sandpaper, applied a liberal layer of glue, and once again weighted them down with a heavy cookbook. I will not look at them again until next weekend. Well, probably Friday. I am going to give them every last chance to succeed.

The big progress today (besides gluing the rails) was a complete cleaning of my basement workbench, which was in such a state of disrepair as to make me embarrassed to even speak to Fred. So, I feel better about that.

I don't think there's anything to be done on the boat before assembly next weekend. So this week, I will lay out the first couple of trips I hope to take in my boat. (I had asked Fred if it was premature to discuss potential trips before the craft is constructed, if that would be considered tempting fate. But he reassured me:

Certainly it is not too early to plan a voyage. Doesn't every boat begin with a particular piece of water in mind?

So, look for that in the next few posts.)

Math 1, Tom 0

I got this from Fred:

For the rub rail scarfs, maximize the gluing surface.

All along, I had been thinking that I wanted the scarf joints to go across the rails, rather than up and down. It seemed logical to me that by scarfing them across the vertical axis, the stresses put on by the horizontal tension of trying to bend them around a curving boat would not work to pull the joints apart. Despite all of the scarf joints I had seen on the pictures, I thought I knew better.

Maximize the gluing surface.

I did some maths (with the help of Charlie and a calculator), and found that a six-inch scarf on the 3/4" axis will create 4.5 square inches of surface area (6 x 0.75 = 4.5). Whereas a six-inch scarf on the 1.5" axis will create double that. Sure, laugh at me now, but that was a real shocker when I did 6x1.5 and came up with nine.

So I cave to the superior math.
I have seen the light.

Fred went on to say

Ideally when you attach them to the rest of the structure, the joints will be placed in a gentler part of the gunwale curve, closer to the bow or stern, rather than at the apogee of the arc amidships. With the length of material you are using, you might even consider giving each rail two scarfs, adding a small extension at each end of an unmolested 10' or 12' piece, setting the joints in a relatively unstressed part of the plan curve.

If your plans include a provision for a full-scale layout of the boat's shape, you could determine the best spot for the scarfs. Draw out the curve of the gunwale in chalk on the ground, then find the straightest sections.

I'm afraid that's not going to happen. I am not going to double my scarf joint labor. I will have a 9'6" piece scarfed to a 6' piece. That will put the scarf joint not exactly at the center of the curve. It won't be too far off, but it won't be at the center. And, just to be safe, when I make the butt joint in the plywood for the bottom and sides, I will add a layer of fiberglass around the rub rail scarf joints, as well.

The bad news: it's going to rain all weekend. I won't get to work on the boat outside. Rats.

The plus side, the Samurai is coming along well:

A Call Back to Reality from Fred

I think the concerns about pre-tensioning your panels before final assembly, while not entirely irrelevant, might be a bit academic for a project of this nature. I think your focus should be the basic construction of the vessel--unclouded by the complicated considerations of idiosyncratic resin properties, the differing strength and flex patterns of various weaves and weights of fibreglass cloth, and the inherent variables of composite materials engineering applied to compound curves and fluid dynamics--eased, perhaps occasionally, with a lowball of Connemara Irish Single Malt.

To be blunt: build the wooden boat, then glass it. Enjoy the handmade process--the feel and shape of the wood as it becomes the essence of your boat--before you move on to the synthetic wrapper. 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.

Setback, part II

Well, both rub rail joints failed.
Perhaps predictable, but nonetheless slightly disheartening. Of course, some words of encouragement from Fred:

Don't worry. It need not be fatal. And if you are too ill-at-ease, you can always repeat that step with new material.

"It need not be fatal." Implication: it probably will be.

That's exactly what I'm going to do: start again with new cuts. 6" on either side of the joint. Then I'm going to set them and leave them for several days.

Just when I'm getting discouraged, Fred comes through with a beautifully-written paragraph on the mitre cut:

Once, long ago, when I was working for Pierre Cayard, the longtime head of the SF Opera Scene Shop (originally called the Cayard-Kotcher studios), the father of Paul Cayard, the renowned blue water sailor, and a fine sailor and craftsman himself, he gently criticized me for repeatedly walking over to the chop saw to cut 45deg mitres. "Why," he said in his thick French accent, "do you not use the reflection cut?" He demonstrated: with the hand saw poised to cut, align the blade so that the board and its reflection on the steel form a 90deg angle. Voila. I began to suggest that the time it took to walk the few steps to the chop saw were mitigated by the infinitely repeatable accuracy and cleanliness of the machine cuts; I stopped. I embraced, at least for that day, the reflection cut.

It will all be okay. I've lost about 6" in total linear length so far. So my 16' rails are down to 15'6". I will lose another 6" in this new scarf joint, but that will be okay - that will leave me with 15' rails for a 14'6" pirogue.

All good.

On the plus side: all of the fiberglassing materials arrived today. I have a long roll of glass, and the various epoxies and other ancillary supplies. (I haven't yet opened the box. A glass of Connemara Irish single malt got in the way.)

The plans look so easy. But I have no real clue how I'm going to complete the next step: cutting 10" sideboards from the 4x8 sheets. I have some sawhorses . . . I clamp down the plywood and measure out my sides . . . But I'm cutting with a handsaw. I predict more frustration in my future. (So much so that I have added a sub-section to this Log: "Setbacks".)

But I am going to have a boat. This summer. Before September, I will be on the DuPage river in a boat of my own making.

Mark. My. Words.

Feedback from Fred

Not much new to report on the boat since yesterday. A lot of baseball, but not much boat.
And more on the docket for today: Charlie's Phillies have a scrimmage at 12:00, which will have us out from 11-2 or so.

The Samurai costume is coming along extremely well (I think), but a shortage of black gaff is going to stall construction today.

I was very anxious about my baltic birch 1/4" plywood purchase, but Fred is reassuring:

On plywood: 1/4" is just right. Remember, it will be forming the skin stretched over the framework of the ribs. You did well to buy the baltic birch plywood. You can usually gauge the quality and strength of plywood by examining the number of layers, or plys, in any given sheet. 1/4" birch will usually have at least five plys, and a good deal of structural integrity, whereas luan, used most often in interior door skins and movie-set flats, will offer two surface veneers sandwitched over some sort of dried-out crouton paste.

A quick run out to the garage, and I see that my baltic birch is, indeed, 5-ply:
Hard to see, perhaps, but there are 5 layers there. Also cold toes (lower left)
Fred would have gone another way for the rails:

The red oak should be fine. I might have picked maple, if given the choice, but that's a personal bias--I tend to favor it over other hardwoods like hickory or oak for its cleanliness and clarity of grain.

This red oak is really very pretty, so I'm okay with my choice, but I did just realize I didn't get enough; I need two rails, each at least 6" longer than the length of the boat. I'm building it to be 14'6" long, so I need two 15' rails. But I got three 10' sections of oak, meaning I can have two 15' sections exactly -- but that does not count the 4" I am going to lose in the scarf joint. Bummer. So I'll take back one of the 10' sections (I got three), and exchange it for a 12-footer, and we'll be good.

My goal is to glue the ribs and try to get a start on the scarfing of the rub rails today/tonight. We'll see.

(Fred is also reassuring about my impending dread of fiberglassing, which--by all accounts--is tricky.)

Fiberglass is fabric + liquid. It is a process well-suited to conforming to the shape of three-dimensional objects.

Yes, in the hands of a skilled craftsman. I have grave doubts.

Is Today the Day?

There's a chance I'll get some ACTUAL work done on the ACTUAL boat today, but it's not likely.
I have a lot on the agenda today (two baseball practices and a big samurai warrior suit of armor to construct, in addition to the usual tasks at hand.)

But either today or tomorrow I'll have the nominal Keel-Laying Ceremony. (Significance: As the laying down of the keel is the initial step in construction of a ship, in British and American shipbuilding traditions the construction is dated from this event. Only the ship's launching considered more significant in its creation.) In modern times, as giant ships are built from pre-fabricated sections, and not around a fundamental keel piece, the "keel ceremony" is marked by the cutting of the first piece of steel. In this instance, it will be the assembly of the ribs.
The Keel
When I ordered the fiberglass, the guys at Raka (the fiberglass company) suggested I try glassing the sheets of luan plywood before construction. Their rationale: fiberglassing is tricky at best, and glassing a large, flat rectangle is necessarily easier than glassing a three-dimensional boat-shaped object. I asked around among some other pirogue-builders (there's a wood-boat-building forum here), and the best response I got confirmed my suspicions:

I surprised they recommended doing this. Really surprised actually. You be adding unneeded stress to the fiberglass weave and would be doubling up on fiberglass and epoxy needed.
[and]
I do however believe that the general thought about "pre-glassing" was that it was not that good an idea.
The reasons you stated were of prime concern. ie.: Difficulty in bending the pannels, and cracking of the "stiffend " wood.
All in all, not a recommended procedure.

So, I'm glad I asked.

I also got a follow-up from Fred. He asked:

In suggesting the rabbetted half-lap, I assumed you have access to a router, which would make it a very simple thing to accomplish, well within your abilities. Do you have a router? Have you thought about getting a router?

It's a good question, and one that's been much on my mind in recent weeks.

But, no. I got into this project as a woodworker of limited ability and resources, and I am determined to leave it much the same. My tools consist of:
- various hand saws of different sizes and teeth layout
- a non-adjustable-speed electric drill. This is not a Makita-type screwdriver; it is a drill to which I can add a screwdriver bit. It goes forwards and backwards, but at one high speed only. I also have a circular sander attachment for it, onto which I can secure any grit of sandpaper. This will be my prime shaping tool.
- A tape measure, corner square, and pencils.

Those are the tools I have. And, for better or worse, those are the parameters by which this boat will be built.

Initial advice from Fred

My particular friend Fred is a highly talented carpenter who possesses a vast knowledge of the sea and sea-going vessels (and their constituent parts and attendant rigging and accoutrements), and has a thoughtful way of expressing himself. Despite being 2,101 miles away (via land, much longer via the sea -- more on that later), he will be my advisor for this project. (Without my presuming his advice I would never have had the confidence to so much as order the kit.) Graciously, he has consented to answer questions and otherwise provide invaluable advice.

A word about joining: I had asked Fred about the relative merits of a scarf (or scarph) joint v. a butt joint. Here are the differences:

To make a scarf joint, one planes the two edges in a diagonal manner, so that there is much overlap to secure together:

Whereas in a butt joint, the two squared ends of wood are "butted" together and secured with a joiner across the joint. In this case, a thin layer of fiberglass on each side:

I had asked Fred for advice, because Uncle John recommends a scarf joint, but it seems beyond my rudimentary abilities. I think a butt joint would be more within the scope of my talent.

Fred's response:

A butt joint is okay.

Scarf joints in sheet material are difficult to execute, and can often be aesthetically and structurally disappointing. The underlying rationale is sound, but, in this case, a thoughtful, careful, artful butt joint will be entirely serviceable. The advice you refer to in your blog is well worth heeding. If you feel compelled, for any sort of spiritual reasons, to infuse your boat with a bit of joinery, you could consider, for this phase, a simple rabbetted half-lap, augmented perhaps with butt joint elements. A scarf in dimensional lumber, on the other hand, employed to cleanly lengthen a member or create a suitable blank for a curve or slight bend, is the preferred option from both formal and functional standpoints.

I looked up a half-lap (rabbeted or otherwise), and I think he's pulling my leg:

That is well outside the limits of my abilities. So a butt joint it is.
I would also add that increasing the difficulty level of this project for any reasons (spiritual or otherwise) is quite improbable. The project itself is enough of a challenge.

Fred then responded to my question about using brass screws as fasteners.

Moving on. The common complaints about fasteners, especially in structures of this kind, has to do with the vagaries of expansion, contraction, and deterioration of the differing materials. Adhesives, properly applied, ultimately will provide a stronger, more durable connection--a more fully synthesized whole. And the resin bond, inherently variable at the fasteners, might provide an eventual weakness and source point of delamination.

I never intended using just fasteners and no adhesives. The images I have seen of other pirogues under construction frequently include about 10,000 clamps holding the various parts together as the epoxy sets. Several of the builders, as I had said, have expressed a purist's reluctance to use fasteners. I have no such pride. Fred concerns me, though, in saying that the bond could be compromised at the screws. Still and all, I am going to press ahead with the screw plan, relying on the covering layer of fiberglass to fix all.

(Incidentally, I have a somewhat ironic attachment to using brass screws. When a boy, my family visited relatives in California, and we stayed with my Uncle John. (Not, I should point out, the Uncle John of the General Store.) My Uncle John was refurbishing an old power boat he had somehow obtained, and I spent several days helping him repair a splitting gunwale by adding a row of brass nuts and bolts along the entire perimeter of the fiberglass shell. I found the neat row of brass quite striking. It looked . . . nautical to me.)

Fred went on to make a very insightful commentary about my sail plan. I will hold off on posting that at this point, as I think it far too premature to consider means of propulsion of what is, at this point, still a theoretical craft. But I found his recommendations entirely sensible and I'm doubly excited at the prospect of making this a sailing vessel.