Monday, June 1, 2009

Boat building kharma

After having encountered a few minor problems in my boat construction I was pleased to find out that there is some balance in the boat building universe. I finished the inner hull fiberglassing and was starting the numerous cleats needed for attaching the cockpit decking and footwell. The cleats are suppose to be 1  by 3/4 inch which means I was going to have to mill  a lot of 1 by 2's to size. By coincidence the scrap I had saved from milling the mast was exactly 1 by 3/4 and even had a rounded edge on one side so I didn't need to get the router out. I saved a few hours and partly recouped some of the time spent fixing the bad epoxy coat on the side panels.

Looking aft

Looking forward

The photos show most of the cleats glued in place and reinforce the you cannot have too many clamps adage. Official boat building tip #2 is always predrill a pilot hole for screws going into small dimensioned timber like the cleats or they WILL split. The last photo shows the lower breasthook  glued in place and the thin strips (1 inch by only 3/8) to attach the anchor well deck to.

Only a few more cleats to glue and screw in place on the transom and it will be time to cut the teak flooring. I have asked the experts at Chesapeake Light Craft if I can install the teak flooring as a standard tongue and groove installation as opposed to ripping off the tongues and grooves and installing as planks with an 1/8" gap between as instructed in the Pocketship manual. I would instead leave an expansion gap where the flooring touches the sides of the hull. This would mean I wouldn't need to use screws through the prefinished surface on the teak flooring.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

She really is starting to shape up, Dave. I've been lurking here since you began, but it's about time I said thanks for documenting this process.

It's a daunting task that I'm not sure I'd have the patience to complete. Thanks for letting me live vicariously!

-Craig

Dave C. said...

It's not really that daunting because you are usually doing a series of small tasks that cumulatively start to shape into something quite exciting to work on. Okay, it was a little daunting at the beginning when I was cutting and cutting and cutting out all the plywood parts and just had a pile of plywood pieces to stare at :-)

Dave

Steve said...

Looks really good. I bought the manual, and some of the woodworking techniques will stretch my novice skills to the limit. But I am looking forward to the process. I wish someone would come up with a small Bermuda Sloop style boat. I cant think of a more beautiful ship.