Reflections on 2008

Well, it's been nearly a year since starting this project, and an interesting year it has certainly been...on the plus side, I've learned a fair amount about boat-building and had an absolute blast doing it! Of course, external events have given 2008 more than its share of disappointments...but they just make the boat's name (borrowed from a Patrick O'Brien novel) seem all the more appropriate--the Nutmeg of Consolation.

Stitching

Once the frames were all in place, the next step was to attach each panel in succession using copper wire and temporary nails through the panels into the edge of the frames and transom. [I didn't realize the nails were supposed to be temporary until after I'd already counter-sunk them into the frames--whoops!] Sounds easy but it was pretty tedious getting the panels aligned correctly. I got 2 or 3 in place but they weren't fitting very well at the bow, 'til I realized the fore girder was actually bent significantly toward the right...I had to re-stitch several panels after using rubber straps attached to the garage wall to bend the spine back to being straight (again using my trusty kite string to check the alignment). After that, the rest went on much easier :) Near the bow, especially, it helped to use small lengths of dowel rod to help the panel edges meet evenly. Finally, all the panels are stitched on and it looks like a boat for the first time! There were a few spots with some significant gaps between the panels, but I figured the next few steps would take care of that, so I was pretty pleased overall...

Framing

Once all the plywood panels were cut out, it was finally time to actually start building something! The first thing to put together is the centerboard case, composed of two ply panels, and internal & external case "logs" and a case top, all made of mahogany. The fore and aft ply girders are reinforced with strips of fir, then attached to the c'board case. Then the whole frame is turned upside-down and the bottom ply panel is attached. I made heavy use of stretched kite string during all of the above to keep things lined up and straight. At this point, the "spine" of the boat is complete!
[I don't have many pics of the next few steps b/c my camera bit the dust (and it took a while to decide on a new one)]. The frames and transom are then attached orthogonally to the spine.

Getting Started

There's a surprising amount of planning involved before the actual work can begin. First off, the garage had to be cleaned out (no small task), tools inventoried, a set of saw-horses built...

Tools:
Here's a list of tools I've found extremely useful so far:
--ratchet screwdriver
--Japanese pull saw
--wood chisels and rasps
--large and small T-square
--level
--hand planers
--clamps, at least a dozen
--strong work light
--cordless drill
--random orbital sander
I realized I'd need a portable planer as well, so after some research I went with the RIGID 13" thickness planer from Home Depot. You can buy an accessory stand to fit, but given my limited work space, I wanted something more portable--so I built a small table for it with swivel wheels so it could be moved out of the way easily. So far, it's performed superbly.

Materials:
The plans give a rough list of materials, so step 0 was to find out the nearest lumber supplier for the type of wood needed. I ended up getting the 6 and 9 mm marine-grade plywood and Mas Epoxy from Chesapeake Light Craft in Annapolis. The hardwood choice was a little more difficult--weight, rot-resistance, ability to bond with epoxy, cost, workability, availability all have to be weighed. Any choice is a compromise, and in the end I decided to use African Mahogany (also known as Utile). I also needed Douglas Fir, and I was able to get both from Vienna Hardwoods, about 8 miles away, though the fir had to be ordered.
In the UK, there is a company called Jordan Boats that will create a kit of custom plywood panels based on a given set of design drawings, saving many tedious hours of lofting, jigsawing, and planing...but unfortunately, at the time, they only delivered to the UK and Europe, and I was not able to find a similar service here in the States...so, the panels had to be cut out by hand.

Getting Started...Finally
The first step is to draw out the panel shapes onto the plywood using a table of offsets along parallel station lines drawn at fixed intervals along the 8' length. Once the points on the station lines are marked, they are joined in a smooth curve using a flexible guide held in place with weights (I used a long strip of balsa wood, scarfed together from two pieces). [The process is akin to curve fitting using splines, for any engineers reading this]. There were 6 side panels, a bottom panel, 4 frames, fore and aft girders, and the centerboard case to be cut out, so alot of time spent on all fours marking out the lines. Once all the outlines were drawn, they are cut out roughly with a jigsaw, then planed down to the line using a hand planer. For any panels having a mate, the two are clamped together and planed down to the line drawn on just the one panel.
The side panels are longer than 8', so they have to be scarfed together from two pieces. This involves making the panel pieces 50 cm longer than the design length, planing the extra length into a wedge-shape, and then overlapping the planed parts to create a smooth joint. (A "butt joint" can also be used, but not being smooth, it looked like it might cause difficulties when fitting the bottom panel to the centerboard case). In order to line up the two panels to be scarfed, I drew "center lines" along the length of each panel, measured from the plywood sheet edge before starting to cut anything out. Before gluing the scarf joint, the two panels could then be accurately lined up using their center lines and a length of kite string stretched tightly along the line.

Building a model

When the plans arrived promptly in the mail, I was pretty excited to get started but also just a tad intimidated...it took staring at them intensely for a while just to get a rough idea what the main pieces were and how they fit together. I had heard that building a scale model, although it takes away time from the actual build, can more than pay for itself later with increased efficiency and just knowing where the potential difficulties are...so I decided to build a 1:10 scale model and went straight to Michael's to get a hot glue gun, balsa strips, and some model airplane "plywood". Besides, it was January, the dead of Winter, and I wasn't all that anxious to get out into the unheated garage! I have to say that having built the model, it really was a huge help when it actually came time to start putting the real boat together.

Picking a design

I had no idea there were so many different amateur boat-building materials, blogs, websites...so I was surprised at how difficult it was to decide which boat to attempt. Did I want a flattie, a V-bottom, or a round-bottom? How long? Plywood stitch&tape, lapstrake, strip-built?
The one criteria that probably had the biggest impact was the size of my garage, which limited the choice to less that 15 ft. An acquaintance at work had built the Stevenson Weekender (http://www.stevproj.com/PocketYachts.html), which is a really sweet-looking boat, but it seemed a little too long for my workspace. And I was leaning more towards V-bottom designs. Finally, after much internal debate, it came down to the Glen-L 15 (http://www.glen-l.com/designs/sailboat/gl15.html) and the Selway-Fisher Stornoway series (http://www.selway-fisher.com/GPDinghyover13.htm#RN). I decided to go with the latter, even though it looked like a tougher build, and it's not easy to articulate exactly why I liked it better...I guess once the design is narrowed down to a broad category (in my case, I wanted an open cockpit and the most sea-worthy boat I could get with a length under 15') in the end it comes down to which shape you find most pleasing.