Transom and bulkhead-4

 Had a few extra days off during the holidays.

With some rearranging, the transom, bulkheads, and frames (8 pieces total) can be cut from just 4 pieces of plywood.  I chose to cut frames 1, 3, and bulkhead-4 in two pieces each and scarf them together later.

I laminated the two transom pieces together to form a 1" thick transom.  The 12mm plywood has a lot of flex to it, but two pieces laminated feels wonderfully stout.

Each of the transom, bulkheads, and frames will have the sides and the bottoms cut at an angle to match the curves of the hull sides and bottom.  The plans don't give these angles, so I determined approximates using a drafting program measuring the plans pictures.  Between the angle of the transom and the rocker of the bottom, I cut the bottom of the transom at an angle of 30 degrees.  The sides were cut 9 degrees.  The angles aren't critical, all the connections of the boat will get thoroughly embedded into epoxy and covered by fiberglass. 

The plans show the top of the transom to have a curve, but no other detail or measurements are given.  I envision the designer saying "Just giv' her a jaunty ol' curve, lad!"  I drafted an oval on my computer which nearly fit, and lofted the measurements to the piece.  I then hand drew one end and cut it. Then traced it's shape onto heavy paper, cut it out, and used the pattern to draw the other side.  I then used a 3/8" round-over bit in my router on the transom's top. 

  Bulkhead-4 contains the door from the cockpit to the cabin.  To conserve plywood, I cut it in two pieces and scarfed them together.  Not a angled, boat making, scarf, but just an old carpenter's construction scarf of adding another piece of plywood along side of it.

I haven't determined how tall the cabin will be, so I left bulkhead-4 extra tall (nearly 30% of the height you see in this picture is above what the plans call for.  A couple in Australia raised their cabin roof 2 inches.  Whether I'll raise mine 4, 6, or 10 inches... who knows.

The basement store room adjacent to my workshop.

 Both these pieces still need two layers of epoxy to seal them.  They won't be assembled into a hull until some time in May/June??

The transom and bulkhead-4 came from the first two pieces of plywood.  The other frames will come out of two more pieces of plywood.  I cut the full pieces into 2 pieces each and now have them in the basement workshop.  Gave them 24 hours to dry a little, then put them on the table with weights to flatten for during work week. 

 

A hangout

 In all my internet browsing on boat building, I came across a boat building organization here in Portland.  They host open houses twice a month and so this last weekend I went to see what they're about.

 They call themselves the "Rivers West Small Craft Center".  They have a work shop nestled amongst a bunch of other non-profits on a 7-acre ex-industrial site down on the river next to a big public boat ramp which is next to the scenic St. Johns Bridge.

A lot of the non-profits on this site are making use of those cargo containers.  Rivers West has two containers with a 25x40 ft concrete slab in between them with the whole works covered by a permanent tarp roof.

They do various events throughout the year and rent floor space to anyone wanting to build a boat there.  Currently there's a 15 foot sail boat and a 22 foot cabin cruiser under construction along with a couple of small projects.

 When I went there were about 15 members and a few open house guests.  More than half the members are retired, grey haired, and grey bearded old guys.  I had the funniest feeling... like... "I found my people!"

It might be a fun place to hang out in my retirement. I signed up online already ($75/year).

 

Bugging me

I've encountered a problem with the boat shed in the back yard.  Mosquitoes.  Lots of them.

I had originally folded the extra plastic at the bottom of the walls back up and on the inside.  I had even ran a cord along the bottom of this fold in an attempt to keep it snug against the ground.  What I hadn't counted on was condensation.  This fold has filled in spots with significant water.  I can't swear that's how the mosquitoes started, but I've always assumed they needed a puddle of water..

I've bought a bug zapper and have cut the folds off and even poke the little excess plastic to outside the tent.  So far I'm not sure it's making any difference.

It's annoying and psychologically uncomfortable in the tent with that many about the place.  I've even bought a racket-ball style bug zapper.  I spend the first 5 minutes walking around swinging it at everything I see.  It seems to at least temporarily help.

They're a weird bunch of mosquitoes, because so far I have yet to be bitten.  Between my racket and the bug zapper, I'm sure I've killed several hundred of the critters.

Do they need an actual water puddle or is very wet grass enough for them?

 

Making sawdust begins

I don't have a garage, so the boat will be assembled in a back yard tent-like shelter, but I do have a work shop in my basement. 

As it's probably too cold to do any epoxy work, I thought I would start the process by cutting the frames, bulkheads, and transom.  By splitting a few of the frames down the center and cutting them as separate pieces (scarfing them back together later), I can get all the frames out of 4 sheets of plywood.  

I carefully drew out each piece on the first two sheets of plywood, then rough cut around them with a jigsaw, making them small enough to carry the first four major pieces into my basement work shop.  That was all the time I had this weekend.  Next weekend I do the fine cutting and maybe epoxy the transom together.

layout in fine ink, rough cut in sharpie marker.

 

Raising the sheet on blocks for cutting.  

four pieces in the basement work shop.

 Although the stack of plywood in the shed looks flat, this Okoume marine grade plywood is highly flexible and it has sagged and warped a little because the supporting saw-horses and frame are only 3 feet by 12 feet in size.  After putting the 4 new pieces on my basement work bench, I added some weights to hopefully flatten them out again during this work week.

Shed Door

 Built the shed door from scrap plywood.  Covered the outside with plastic.  Hung it using some spring loaded hinges.  Added a catch on the outside to keep the wind from banging it in the night.

 

Plywood Arrives

 Here's the mostly completed shed.  Originally I thought it would only have a roof tarp, then I decided if I want any chance at all of working during the winter I'd better wall it in.  Even with the walls, the greenhouse effect may not be enough to do epoxy gluing in the dead of winter (December, January).  I left the end open to carry in the plywood. 

 An inside shot.

 When I was ready to go get the plywood (90 miles away), I thought I'd better call them a day or two ahead and confirm.  Glad I did, they only had 4 sheets in stock.  After talking to a couple of different people, they said they would place an order for more and it would be 2 weeks because its got to come from the east coast.

7 weeks later....  The plywood finally arrived! 

Had borrowed the brother in-law's trailer with the thought I would tow it with our Nissan Rouge, even though the tow capacity is technically less than what the trailer and plywood would weigh.  But the week the plywood arrived, the Rouge was in the shop.  Ended up using the brother in-law's car and trailer.  

The good news is that the plywood turned out to be nearly as beautiful as their brochure showed it, and the new price was only a little more than the original price they quoted.  Even at the new $80 per sheet it still saved me $1200 more than what I could find locally.  20 sheets of 12mm (1/2 inch) and 4 of 6mm (1/4 inch).

Here's the stack of plywood.  2 stacks making a 16 foot long table to work on. 

 

The work shed all battened down.  (I still have the door to make.)

 

 

Boat shed progress again!

 Been busy with work and other things, so just getting back to it.  After all, it's just a hobby and I'll work on it when I want to.  Besides, I'm still working full time.

This temporary structure needs to hold up for a few years which led to certain design issues.  

First, I wanted it to be as low as reasonable to not stick up like a sore thumb to the neighbors.  The edge board is at a height of a doorway, so the total height is only about 8 foot 8 inches.  The north flower bed (in the back of this photo) has an 18 inch retaining wall and a 6 foot fence so this is only about a foot higher than that.  

We get some fairly strong winds in the winter and to keep it from blowing away I decided to secure it to the ground by putting that extra foot of the posts into the ground like a fence post.

How do you create a level structure when the lawn is certainly not level and the holes are only dug to about the same depth??  I filled the bottom 2 to 3 inches of the holes with concrete, using a laser level to adjust the amount of concrete.  When dried, I set the trusses into the holes as if it was a level slab of concrete.  Zappo, a perfectly level structure.

The rest of the hole was filled with pea-gravel so that when the time comes to take this down I can vacuum out the gravel with a shop vac and just lift the posts out. 

Now some of our winter winds can be very strong.  I once saw my garden shed lift off the ground, and later bolted it down to the concrete slab.  So just in case, to prevent the posts from slipping out of the pea-gravel I added a lag-bolt about an inch from the bottom of the posts.  It will have to drag that lag-bolt up through the gravel.

Last weekend I dug the holes.  This weekend I did concrete on Saturday and installed the trusses on Sunday and added the three horizontal stringers.  It still needs further work before I can put the tarp over it, but at least I'm making progress again.

 

Boat shed progress

 With the old boat now gone and that work done, the next step is getting the working shelter built. 

The boards all cut and angled, I assembled the four trusses. Luckily I already own a cheap air nailer. But the thing about an air nailer is adding just one more nail is super easy and it's easy to go overboard. There's a little over 300 nails in these so far !!

 

Design Decisions

 Why I chose a power boat rather than a sail boat.

 

Cosine Wherry fix-up completed

 The seats and hardware have been re-installed.  This completes the work I intended to make it ready for sale.  I won't call it a complete refurbishment or anything near making it 'like-new'.  It's 28 years old by the way.  The keel and bottom-paint need more work, but not enough to prevent it from going in the water.  

The oars are padded with foam backed carpet pieces to protect my new paint.
 

For those wondering about the uprights in the middle of the hull from previous pictures, they are not only center supports for the seats, but provide for the rowing foot braces.  These were custom made for me by a machine shop out of aluminum and the two sides screw into each other with a large bolt.  The uprights have 5 holes in them to adjust for the length of the rower's legs.

 Also note the 'cabinet-bolts' adjacent to the oar-locks that prevent the strain of rowing from busting out the oar-locks and splitting the gunwales.

 

Varnish completed.

 The varnish completes the work I intended to do to get the boat ready for sale.  I had never planned a complete refurbishment to bring it back to being 'like new'.  I just didn't want to sell it as a 'fixer-upper'.

 I'll give this a week or two to completly dry/harden before putting the seats and oar-locks back on.

 

Trim Paint Completed

 I took a vacation day and made it a long weekend to accomplish the painting.  Last weekend saw the final bit of sanding completed.

Masking took the first morning with the first coat completed in the afternoon. 
 

The next day began with giving it a light sanding to rub off the burr's raised up by painting bare wood, then the second coat followed by a third coat on just the easy to roll-on surfaces.

The fore-deck looks pretty good considering what it had looked like.

Even with using good painter's tape, which is supposed to have a light adhesive, the tape pulled up a lot of the old varnish.  This made no difference on the inside since I'm going to give it a new coat anyway, but on the outside just under the gunwales suffered and will need a touch-up.

Progress again

 I was away on a business trip and then came home with a flu of some sort, so I've been down and out for a good 4 weeks.  But I got back at it this weekend.

 

I was able to sand the inside of gunwale by using my oscillating tool, but instead of using its sanding attachment I stuck sandpaper onto an old metal blade using hook and loop material. It worked quite well.  

Also mixed up some epoxy and filled the cracks of the fore-deck.  Why the ugly brown color.  The epoxy is nearly clear and is very thin and runny, even thinner than paint somewhat.  To make a crack filling putty I added 'wood flour' which is just sanding dust.  I had some very old stuff in a jar.  I think it is cedar wood which is why it made the putty a dark reddish brown.  This picture shows the cracks over-filled, so it should be able to sand flat.  We'll see.

more later. 

 

WIG Post

 WIG Post (definition): A "While I'm Gone" post to fill in during delays or times of absence.

Here's a Redwing-18 'launch style'.  Built without the sleeping bunks, making for a shorter cuddy cabin and a large open day-use cockpit.

 

WIG Post

WIG Post (definition): A "While I'm Gone" post to fill in during delays or times of absence.

 

One thing I've noticed on pictures of the Redwing-18 on the internet is how the size of the motor well varies.  Some are longer, some are higher.  This is the shortest one I've seen.  I had to zoom in to 400% before it dawned on me what I was seeing.  He's got the tiller handle of the outboard motor sticking through an open front.  He didn't bother with remote steering by a ship's wheel.

 

WIG Post

 WIG Post (definition): A "While I'm Gone" post to fill in during delays or times of absence.

 

The plans call for the ship's wheel on the front of the motor well.

But I may do like many others and place it on the cabin.

More Wherry work

Here is a picture of the inside of the wherry.  What appears as dust in the bottom is actually the top layer of varnish peeling and flaking.  The refinish painting project of the wherry includes doing a lite sanding of the inside and at least one coat of varnish/polyurethane (two if there's time).  The project of refinishing of the wherry was only meant to get it good enough for sale.

 

Gussets and Braces

 I promised myself not to build the boat-building shelter (boat shed) until my prior commitments were done, which are repainting the Cosine Wherry and a project of rebuilding shelving and coat hooks on the back porch. But I'm excited enough about this project that 'preparing to build' the boat shed is somehow justified.

The shed's 2x4's will be assembled using plywood gussets and corner-braces.  A total of 36 pieces.  CAD drawings allowed easy design and cutting dimensions.  The curves are mostly to make it look good. I also rounded their edges with a router.  Don't want to bump my head on a sharp edge.

 

 I managed to make them all from scrap pieces of 3/4" plywood lying around the shop, leftover from previous projects.  I rarely throw out bits and pieces of good wood.

Wherry Gunwales

 The easy parts of the gunwales have been sanded, but the edges against the hull and all those holes between gunwale and inwale still need to be scraped and sanded to at least remove the loose paint.  To get at the bottom of the gunwales on the outside I tilted the boat up.  The boat has been hanging from two straps and tilting the boat only gets you so far then it slides back down.  I added a third strap with one end hooked to the opposite gunwale and that allowed me to really tilt it.

While it was up, I washed a few years of dirt and grime off the bottom.

I also realized the keel has been scraped and scratched a fair amount.  All those times of running it up on the beach.  Not all of those beaches were pristine white sand.  It should only be paint damage, as the bottom and keel have multiple layers of fiberglass. 

Wherry Refinish - continues

 Completed the sanding and painting of the seats.  It was a beautiful weekend, weather wise, so I set them up outside.

 Put almost the entire quart of paint on these few pieces.  There couldn't have been 2 ounces left in the can.  Used a satin-finish oil-based enamel.  I was worried the roller was not putting it on as smooth as I'd have liked to have seen, but when completely done and dried I think it looks fine.

Waiting for paint to dry... (with scotch).

 

Marine Grade Plywood

 Construction of the Redwing uses 1/2 inch plywood for most of it.  Boat building is done with "Marine" grade plywood which must meet Lloyd's of London specifications; primarily a single species of wood, no gaps, minimum repairs, and special glue.  Although marine grade comes in several varieties of wood, most small boat builders use "Okoume" wood (pronounced Oh-koo-meh).

It turns out prices vary not just widely, but extremely!!  A national chain store sells the 1/2 inch sheet for $239.  A Portland Oregon marine lumber store sell it for $185.  My local home-building lumber store, only a 1/2 mile away, actually carries it for $135.

A couple of weeks of internet browsing turned up specialty-wood lumber store in Albany Oregon (100 miles away) is selling it for just $72 a sheet.  Not only that, but their manufacturing source makes a 7-layer 1/2 inch, whereas my local store's 1/2 inch is 5-layer.

So, when I'm ready for plywood, it'll be a road trip towing a utility trailer borrowed from the brother-in-law.