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.

Concrete finished

 Got the extension poured.  Hard work mixing concrete by hand.  Came out looking good.

 

Boat Shed

 Started purchasing the lumber for the boat building shelter.  Some 8ft and 10ft in my commuter car.

For the 12 footers I used the wife's SUV.  

Staging the lumber for the eventual build.  The 15x30 tarp for the roof arrived via Amazon already.  Historic note: those are the very saw-horses I built the Cosine Wherry on 27 years ago.

 

Garden shed concrete extension

 The first part in extending the concrete slab the garden shed sits on was repairing the broken corner (outlined in red here).  This corner was broken and settled with a sizable crack between it and the rest of the slab.  The repair is about 1-1/2 inches thick in the lower corner in the picture, tapering to nothing on the upper-right edge.  I bought some 'Sand/Topping' mix, which is essentially concrete without the gravel.  That 60lb bag turned out to do only about half.  Luckily I started on the thinnest end!  It took another 60lb bag of regular concrete to finish it.

The main pour is all prepped and ready to go. But after moving all those bags of concrete, I was done for the weekend.  Lift in the store, lift into the car, lift out of car into wheel barrow, lift out of wheel barrow.  I count I lifted a 60lb bag 76 times!  That's a total of 4,560 lbs.

Ancient photos

For those interested in the Cosine Wherry.  I found some old film photos from 1997 and scanned them.

 

Wherry Refinish - part 1

 Not wanting to sell the Cosine Wherry as a fixer-upper, I'm working on repainting the seats and trim.

The seats are just bolted in, so removal for a sanding and repaint was a matter of minutes.

 

I've begun scraping the gunwales.

Here's the bow sanded down to bare wood.  Why I constructed this out of several pieces I don't recall.  Anyone whose ever tried to force glue, putty, or paint into a hair-line crack knows it's near impossible.  So I took a dremel tool and widened the hair-line cracks to be big enough to accept an epoxy putty. 

Here's the transom knees.

Another obstacle - A place to build

 Having no garage, I'll need a place to build the Redwing.  The boat cover area where the boat and trailer will eventually reside does not allow any room to walk around it at all.  This means I'll be building in the back yard.  I'm sure this is a tradition of many amateur boat builders. 

I could purchase a pre-made event canopy.  But a 10'x20' is about $200 and would be rather flimsy for a long term project.

 

For about $250-$300, I think I can build a 10'x24' tarp covered structure, using 2x4 lumber that I could then reuse to re-frame the boat-cover/garden-shed later on.

 

It'll be located just off the patio area. 

This is all still just in the planning stages at the moment.

Boat Storage - an obstacle

 Our house has no garage.  It does have a long driveway along the side that extends into the back yard.  Shortly after moving in, I built this combo garden shed / boat cover.

The new boat will be 4-1/2 feet longer than the row-boat, and 14 inches wider.  Plus the eventually new boat trailer will be wider also.  

The solution will be to move the garden shed portion 4 feet to the left, and to rebuild the boat cover portion to be both longer and to have its posts positioned wider.  There is currently 3'-3" of concrete to the left of the garden shed (where a wood pile is located).  I will add a short extension of concrete to accommodate the move, and as long as I'm pouring concrete I'm going to fill in the corner between the boat cover and the flower bed.  That little area of lawn has always been annoying to mow and with the wider boat we'll need that area as side walk to go to and from the porch door to the garden shed.

 

 I know I won't need new boat storage for a couple of years, but knowing of an obstacle for which you have no solution would make the whole project a waste of time.  

Step one in building a boat

Step one of building a boat is of course to sell the old boat.  Especially when I only have one boat parking space.  I can't sell it as a 'fixer upper', so I will be refinishing the pealing paint on the seats and gunwales, and maybe a new coat of captains varnish in places.

Boat for sale:  Cosine Wherry - 14' (SOLD)

Mathematically designed for efficient rowing and stability. Designed by John Hartsock, published in the book “Rip, Strip, & Row!” by J.D. Brown. 

Built of Western Red Cedar strip and fiberglass by R. Durand in 1997. 14’2” length; 4’4” beam; approximate weight 140 lbs. Seats and trim recently refinished. 

Oars and trailer included, asking $3,000.

I'm trying to figure out where to sell it. Do I try Craigs-List, Ebay, publish an ad in Wooden Boat magazine? Should I take it to a boat Festival? Toledo Oregon has a festival in July and the entrance fee is is only $75. I saw a Cosine Wherry sell online for $4,200 w/o trailer, but it was in pristine condition. I'm worried that it may take months and I'll have to let it go for a pittance.

I posted on our family blog about my plans to build a new boat and sell this one.  Less than 48 hours later, I got a call from my brother. His wife had seen the post. He called and said 'consider it sold'. Knock me over with a feather... that was easy! 

About the Boat (The Proposal)

This is the plan I found in a catalog of boat plans from Wooden Boat magazine.  I had considered 8 or 10 different power boats and sail boats out of the three catalogs and pondered on them for years.  Now that I'm serious about building another boat, I've decided the winner is the Redwing.  It's modest size, mildly powered for just puttering around, and includes overnight camping-on-the-water ability.

Here is an image from the internet of what a Redwing 18 looks like.  Of the various ones I've seen on the internet, I like the paint color scheme of this one a lot.  Time will only tell whether mine will look as good.
 

The decision (opening post)

Years ago, during my bachelorhood, I happened across a book in a bookstore about building a row boat.  I thought 'I could do that!'.  It was a 14 foot 'Cosine Wherry' row boat.  It took 1-1/2 to 2 years to build it.  

Over the years, rowing a boat any great distance has become less fun and I've dreamed of alternatives.  I considered putting an electric trolling motor on the wherry, but this added other requirements to the point I began pondering just building something different.

As retirement approaches, I've finally decided to go for it... 

I've decided to build another boat!