More Hops

Was going to work some more on the boat since my lovely wife is out of town on a work trip. Noticed that another plant was ready to harvest. Had a little friend checking in on the hops.

It produced easily twice as many hops as the other plant, at 3 full and 1 partial 5 gallon buckets. Some of the cones were a full 1"x4". This is a sliding door's screen for scale. 3-4" deep. Going to need to get another screen door, as it probably won't dry quickly enough.

Sides connected via rub rail

Connected the 2 sides together today. Getting close to having something 3-dimensional. Once they are connected to the floor, it should start getting much easier visualizing how to put together the rest of the puzzle.

Also, I harvested the first hop plant this week. Got about 7 gallons worth. Dehydrating it and vacuum sealing it today.

Back to boat building

Today I built the bottom. Laying down parchment paper under all the relevant surfaces to catch any gorilla glue foaming out, I was able to do the glue up single-handed. There is a 1/16" out of alignment over 4' of 3/4 ballast plate on the forward end. I tried correcting it several times, but each time, it over-corrected in a different area. A plane should be able to knock down an excess + the glue squeeze out.

Before dropping the 3/4" plywood which you can see on the left. I took care to put excess gorilla glue in any of the knot-holes, to try to prevent any excess voids:

I had to take apart my diy squat cage to make room for the boat building. All the extra weights came in handy for clamping. The forward 4x8 was slightly raised in the center, so plenty of extra weight there to flatten it:

Catching up

Haven't posted in a while. Been busy opening the house up for summer. De-winterizing boats. Planting a garden. Building a rack for our kayaks and stand up paddle boards. Training my hop plants. Today, I picked spruce tips for a spruce-tip pale ale, with a Norwegian farm-house yeast (Hornindal Kviek). Planning on brewing tomorrow. Here's what 1 pound of tips looks like:

The tips taste very lemony, and only very faintly has a piney taste in the background. In fact, it is a natural source of vitamin C, and was used by Native Americans to treat scurvy.

Bow Nailers

Got the hull sides cut apart. Made my bow nailers. Slight confusion, as both the plans and the booklet reference 1x6, but the materials list calls for 1x8. Bought by the material list, so I had plenty of spare layout room. The 2 boards don't quite fit 8 ft on the same side of the board, so you need to lay them on opposite sides. Looked to match the curve of the cut-off pretty well.

When I went to glue it down, following Dave's suggestion to use small chunks of 1/2" plywood as spacers, the curve wasn't quite deep enough. I don't have a plane (yet), so I used a sander with 60 grit to shave a slight bit off each end. Also, you can never have enough clamps when boat building!

Here is the first glue-up done. The nails weren't nearly as soft as I feared. Not quite enough glue squeeze out as I thought I was going to have, so opened up the GluBot's nozzle a bit more. If you are still using the bottle the glue comes from, it is totally worth picking the glubot up.

Spaced the nails 1" from the edge.

 And a picture of the glubot, you can see how squeezing the very soft plastic pushes glue up the tube, meaning you don't need to shake the bottle to get glue down to the tip in a half-empty bottle. The cap is also on a lanyard connected to the cap, so you don't loose it.

Nailing practice and sides partially cut out

What do you do when the project requires nailing a few thousand nails, and those nails are significantly softer than iron nails, and you haven't driven a nail in 20 years?

Bought the skinniest nails I could find in the bulk selection. 1 lb of #6 drywall nails with annular rings, just like the bronze nails used for the boat. I tried to anneal a nail, but it didn't seem any softer than then rest. After 5 rows and no bent nails, called it good enough. Also, added a few on the far side of the vice, and used a 10 lb barbell weight to practice nailing into thin wood where the weight absorbs the blow of the hammer, allowing the nail to use most of the energy.

I laid out the sides, and cut away the aft and forward ends. Waiting for my wife to help push the 8' cuts through the table saw. Bought a new plywood saw blade for the table saw to help get smooth cuts. Only had the cheap generic blade that came with the saw.

Boat model done

Well, almost done. I haven't added the rigging to attach the sail to the boat yet. Excuse the extreme mess, boat building generates plenty of it.

Modeling

All the major wood is now in. I have the silicon bronze fasteners, TB3 and gorilla glue in quantity. So I sat, staring at the instructions. My eyes keep going crossed whenever I start reading to many sailing & construction jargon words in a row. Until I can fit all the pieces together in my head with perfect clarity, it makes me hesitant on actual cutting of wood. Shemaya, from the junk rig forums had suggested that I make a model out of project/foam board. And as luck would have it, my wife was trashing a project board from work, the same day I mentioned I was thinking about making a model.

I have all they "plywood" 4x8 pieces cut out, using a 12:1 ratio (1 foot = 1 inch). It gets a bit messy, as while I can do the math, my ruler doesn't have a .41666 mark, so I have to guestimate. This chart has been useful to find the closest fraction (in the .41666 example above, 13/32 if you were curious). I'll have to adjust some measurements a little bit, since the foam board is all 1 thickness, but it should give me a good visualization tool. And I can feel safe, that if I mess it up, I'm not burning a $50 sheet of plywood. As soon as I have some of the components built, I'll post some pictures.

Ordering supplies

I finally got a quote back from the other lumber yard, and they wanted $72 for 1/2 ACX fir, and $81 for the 3/4. So maybe the $50-55 a sheet at the first yard isn't so bad. After looking into the relative (de)merits of the pine plywood, I think it's worth it to shell out the extra for the fir. I'll look for quotes from a bit further afield, but if nothing new shakes out, I'll be picking up the wood this weekend.

Sent in my order from Amazon for the large containers of glue and Jamestown Distributors for my fasteners.

Sounding like next week, and I'll actually get to start working on the boat itself.

Lumber shopping

I went shopping for the (initial) lumber at a local lumber yard. They were asking $52/sheet of Fir AC 1/4" plywood, with no mention of whether it was interior or exterior. Makes me question if it was way overpriced. Home Depot doesn't have anything exterior grade that isn't also pressure treated, and who needs more chemical poisons in their life? Lowes has BCX for $21 in store, so the ability to pick and choose is there. There is 1 more lumber yard in town. Going to request a quote from them tomorrow.

Menard's has it for $24/sheet for radiata pine 1/4" ACX in store, or aspen ACX for a dollar more, but have to special order it. Reading about the radiata pine makes me more inclined towards the aspen if Menard's is where I end up at.

A last option is a custom cabinetry shop that also sells hardwood lumber. Got my Baltic birch plywood (and clear 16' cedar boards, not quite as relevant) for my skin-on-frame kayak build from them, very impressive stuff. They claim it has exterior glue, but I have seen some confusion on whether the 4x8 sizes use exterior grade glue. The kayak has held up very well, but it dries out in between uses and it isn't in direct contact with the water, so maybe not a great comparison.

So many options, from species (Fir/Pine/"Radiata" Pine/Birch (Baltic presumably?)/Aspen), to glues (Exterior required presumably?), to the ability to pick out which pieces I want, makes what should be the easiest part of the build that much harder.

If anyone has any suggestions, I am all ears.

Introduction

Late last fall, I bought plans to Dave Zeiger's 16x4 triloboat. The original plan was to build her over the winter by closing in and heating a stall in our unattached garage in Michigan. The work, cost of materials, and cost of heating deterred me from following that plan. Now that it is warming up, enough that glue has a real chance to go off, I thought I would start shopping around for some materials. I really enjoyed reading others adventures in boat building. So I decided to start a blog. Maybe someone might even get inspired to do it themselves. There are several documentations of Dave's larger boats, but none that I can find for the 16x4.

Some day I would like to make a "full size" triloboat (8x32 or so). I really admire Dave & Anke's lifestyle, and may someday follow their footsteps. So making a quick & easy version of their boat will allow me to dip my toes into the water without being pot commited. Having something large enough to go on a short vacation or long weekend, without sinking a couple thousand into a commercial boat that I would have to figure out where to store, marina fees, buying a vehicle to tow, etc., made sense. Another plus is to gain the experience and confidence to go larger if & when the time comes.

One thing I do worry about is not having much in the way of nautical experience, and while I am relatively handy, I do better when I have a clear set of instructions to follow. Dave's blog has enough written to be an instruction manual in and of itself, and the 16x4 plans comes with a small booklet builder's guide. But I sometimes have a hard time visualizing what he is talking about in the booklet, and his blog is so vast a treasure trove that finding something specific can be problematic. So I think my build will involve lots of sitting in a chair, staring at the boat, trying to work out in my mind how to accomplish a particular task. Conquering the list of terminology, both nautical and carpenter's will be a small project by itself. In the end though, it is basically a wood box with a plexiglass top. Surely I can figure it out!

I suppose I should talk a little about myself, and what kind of experience I have. I am a middle age computer programmer/database administrator/business analyst. Happily married to an "aggressively" extroverted wife, where I am mostly introverted. My hobbies in no particular order: black-smithing (forged a knife, onto my second one now), beer brewing (have a chocolate cherry stout fermenting right now), rock climbing (if I can stay injury-free long enough), gaming (spades/pinochle/board games/magic the gathering, D&D), reading (sci-fi/fantasy, and way to much internet blogs & forums), hiking (mostly weekend, hopefully that will change), hammock camping (mostly in the winter).

As far as my practical boat building experience: Growing up, my father had a small wood working shop with mostly basic hand tools, drill & a table saw. Mostly learned by helping him on projects around the house, finishing a basement, building a deck, making a tree fort, and so on. My first and only boat building project was a 16' skin-on-frame kayak. 6 years later, it is still holding up great. Moved onto a 550 acre in-land lake 2 years ago, and the house came with a small 1-2 person plastic sailboat. Been playing around with that, but finding days that I don't have plans, wind isn't blowing to little nor to hard, means I get out roughly 6 times a year. Hope to change that with the new boat.