Progress (or a lack thereof)

For those of you who are beginning to think that this is a never-ending boat project, I would like to say for the record that, all told, this boat will ultimately take about five days to build, and that's only working on it two or three hours on each of those days.

Day one:
assemble the ribs
scarf the rub rails
join the plywood
leave to dry

Day two:
cut the sideboards, assemble to stempost and sternpost, attach ribs
leave to dry

Day three:
Cut and attach bottom
leave to dry

Day four:
Fiberglass outside
leave to dry

Day five:
Fiberglass inside
leave to dry

Unfortunately for me, I don't have a large workshop or garage in which to work, so I am at the mercy of the weather. This weekend (during which I should be able to finish Day 1 and Day 2) it will be raining, and so I won't really get to do anything apart from re-join the rubrails.

But then I'll leave them to set and dry for a week, and next Saturday I am going to cut the sideboards and, hopefully, join them and the bottom.

If the weather cooperates, I will have something vaguely boat-shaped to show you by next Sunday.

In the meantime, I have some other boat-related things that I may address here.
Oh, and here's the finished Samurai costume:

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:

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.

Progress today

What a day, and the day's only halfway done.
Started out working hard on the Samurai costume. This is for a project at school, in which all of the sixth graders are to dress up like someone from medieval times. They can pick one of several cultures: Western Europe, Asia, India, etc.
It's going to be black, with red highlights, but this is a pretty good half-day's work, I think:

After getting that done, we needed a break from the samurai, so I went to Menards to get some boat-building supplies.
Of course, I left the directions at home. But why would I need them? I just needed two sheets of 4x8 plywood, and then some rub rails. What's hard about that?

Well, for one thing, THIS:
That was the 4x8 plywood selection at Menards. From 1/4" to 3/4", and out of materials from knotty pine to red oak, cherry, maple, birch, baltic birch, plus construction-grade pine and luan.

I went through agonies, debating if I wanted to get red oak (all the best ships are made of heart of oak, right?) . . . all down the list. I was determined to get 1/2 inch, because 3/4" seemed like it would be a little too heavy.

Then I got the brilliant idea of actually checking out the pirogue plans online (you can see the exact plans I'm working from here.)

It very clearly says 1/4" plywood. Yikes. That's really, really thin.
But it answered my question. So I looked at the various options, and the baltic birch was the nicest, smoothest, least knotholed, and flattest selection. (I've heard of problems butt-jointing because the luan is warped and it's hard to get the edges to align.)

I got my two sheets, I got some nice red oak for the rub rails (it comes in 10' and 12' lengths, so I fear I'm going to have to do a scarf joint after all. Two, actually, One for each side. Grrrr.)

I managed to get everything to fit inside the car, but it wasn't easy. The plywood was basically the width of the interior, and the depth, too. So it was basically where my head needed to be. No worries. I opened the window, and leaned out the window to drive home.

Fortunately, I didn't pass any cops.

The build starts tomorrow.