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.