Almost Done

It’s coming down to the finishing touches now!

Here is the mast, roughed out from a pair of 12′ 2x4s glued and screwed together. I couldn’t find a halfway straight 4×4 of that length, so this was a compromise.

Here is the lee board, made from two pieces of scrap 1/2″ plywood glued and screwed. The leading and bottom edges were rounded by hand and eyeball with a 4″ grinder.

The tiller, just a piece of 2×4 sawed in half. The grip was also carved out with the 4″ grinder by eyeball.

Meanwhile the hull painting was completed. Here I have added a pair of oars and locks.

The mast, boom (a length of 1 1/4″ dowel), tiller, rudder, and lee board freshly painted.

The mast being fitted, and the step marked. Once everything was square and plumb (verified by eyeball), I traced around the base of the mast on the boat’s bottom with a pencil. With the mast removed, I drew an X in the traced “box”, drilled a 1/2″ hole, and inserted a 1/2″ galvanized carriage bolt up through the bottom after squirting some silicone around the bolt head. That is my mast step. I bored a 1/2″ hole in the center of the base of the mast, and this slides down over the bolt.

A co-worker graced the transom with his handiwork. All that’s left now is the final rigging…

 

Other Bits and Pieces

Here I have a piece of 1/4″ luan plywood roughed out for the “fore deck”. This bent easily over the curved deck beam seen just below. The interior has been painted  prior to installing the decking and seats, and I painted the under side of those too. Oil based porch enamel was used to help seal the wood. No primer, because I wanted the oil to soak into the wood.

You can see here that the wood really soaked up a lot of paint. It took three coats for really good coverage.

The third coat finally finished. I let each coat dry for 24 hours before laying on another.

Here I paused, to whack together a little “trailer” for the boat.

I used some treated 4x4s which I had on hand, and this axle assembly from a discarded garden cart.

This proved a bit weak, but the addition of a couple 2×4 braces stiffened things up.

This works very well, and as you will see later, I actually pulled the boat down to the water with it behind my truck.

I used a ratchet strap slung from the overhead to hoist the boat up off the saw horses it had been built on, then lowered it down onto the trailer.

Then pulled the boat into the grass to flip it over for painting the hull.

The boat sat nicely on the trailer upside-down.

I cut out, glued and screwed from the inside this stub keel. It does wonders for helping the boat track straight under oars. But if I had it to do all over, I would have sacrificed the increased draft for a full length keel. With that, a lee board might not be necessary. Maybe I’ll modify it in the future…

Anyhoo, on to the paint. You can see I did some filling and sanding first, to smooth things out a bit. I used Bondo filler.

And there we are. Once again, the paint is just oil based enamel porch paint. Three coats, with no primer. Now we’re close to the home stretch…

 

 

 

Finishing The Interior

Planking completed, the interior came next.

I added a center frame to the transom, as well as the top crosspiece. the top was beveled to match the sweep of the sides, and the center frame was notched for the transom chine piece. All angles were taken with my bevel gauge from the boat as built. Polyurethane construction adhesive was liberally applied to everything before screwing down with deck screws. You can see the adhesive that squeezed out when the screws were driven home. I cleaned up excess adhesive with old rags as much as possible, and the rest was sanded off after curing.

Beginnings of the seats. Two 2x4s run athwartship in the foreground, glued and screwed, form the base for the thwart and mast partners. You can also see that I added 2×4 blocks to the transom frames to support the seats.

Seat brackets added to frames. On the right is the butt block joining side planks, and on the left is one of the bottom panel butt blocks. Glue and screws on everything, of course.

Seat trial fit for marking and cutting.

Frame for the aft seat, to be tied into the side seats.

Aft seating all together. The whole “U” shaped unit is still loose so it can be removed for painting the underside prior to installation.

I didn’t have much 1×10 left, so I ripped the rest into 2 inch wide strips that will make the thwart seat. The 2×10 in the center will become the mast partners.

From aft looking forward.

Rub rails installed. These were base board trim pieces, one of the few bits of lumber I bought specifically for the boat.

Lots of clamps needed to bend the rub rails on.

The hull is now complete, except for some minor filling and sanding.

Next comes painting of the interior and seats before the seats, thwart, and partners are screwed down.

Planking

Framing complete, it was time for planking the hull.

I sawed out my 20 inch high lengths of plywood, plus a little extra for trimming.

After clamping them in place, I used this rig to trace the bottom curve onto the plywood for trimming. A process called “spilling”, basically taking the plank’s shape from the boat as constructed so far.

Another view of the process, this time from the inside of the hull. The bow’s angle as well as the bottom was taken from this set up.

Here is the starboard side planked. Once again, the wood I had was not long enough to cover the nearly 12 feet of this boat’s length, so I had to use a six inch wide butt block to join the plywood panels. Here you see them glued and screwed together, and the seam filled with polyurethane caulk. This caulk was also used along the chine logs where the sides meet the bottom, as well as on the bow and transom seams.

Here you have the planking finished. I was forced to plank the port side in four separate pieces due to a shortage in my recycled wood. The planks met on a frame to which they were glued and screwed. The second joint aft (common to both sides) was landed on a “sistered” frame that I glued and screwed to the original frame in order to give a greater area for attachment in that place of high stress. I placed the longest pieces of plywood along the greatest curve in the sides because they bent more easily than shorter pieces. This helps keep things as smooth as can be, which is not only pleasing to the eye, but more hydrodynamic as well.

Starboard side as viewed from the stern. Here I have sanded the putty “payed” to the seams and the countersunk screws. “Paying the seams” is an old nautical term for filling them with pitch after they’ve been caulked with oakum to seal them up tight.

The full inside view. The planking didn’t quite meet up with the sheer stringers all the way forward as you can see. The void was filled with polyurethane caulk. Not a big deal being high above the waterline.

A piece of 1/4 round glued and screwed to the bow to fill the space where the side planks came together. Yes, the sides were a bit uneven. A few minutes with an angle grinder fitted with a 30 grit sanding disc took care of that.

Transom top frame added. The top was beveled to match the side frames. A center frame was added later to take the rudder hardware.

Here I am spilling a carlin, or deck beam that will support the foredeck.

Installed after marking with the help of a batten and sawing to shape. Here you can see the gaps filled between the planking and the sheer stringers.

That completes the framing.

Framing

The stem was cut and beveled from angles taken with my bevel gauge. The maximum height of the sides is 20 inches, as determined by the material I had on hand, so my frames took this into account. All measurements were taken from the center line.

Here the midship and transom frames have been erected. Angles were set by what suited my eye. The frames were glued with waterproof wood glue and screwed through the bottom with deck screws. Lines drawn at 90 degrees from the centerline dictated their position.Transom frames required compound angle cuts to set the transom angle and flare of the sides.

More frames added to help the plywood flow around the curves and to stiffen the boat. The greatest angle is midship, decreasing slightly fore and aft. The bow is drooping in this pic, but that was fixed later on.

Using 2 inch wide strips I’d sawed from the 1x10s that made up the strongback of the “recycled” building jig, I clamped them in place and made my marks to notch the frames for the sheer stringer.

I placed a spreader between the midship frames and bent the sheer stringers around after applying glue. They were screwed in place as well. The clamp pictured is holding a butt block which I needed to join two pieces of sheer stringer, since what I had was not long enough for the whole span. The bow has the least curve, so that is where I made my splice.

Next I added my “chine logs”. I didn’t have enough wood for continuous bands like the sheer, so I cut pieces to fit between the frames, taking their shape from the bottom traced with a pencil. I left a half inch all the way around for the side planking. Again, glued and screwed through the bottom.

Here is the transom chine log. You can see the angles of the log and frames really well here. Again, this was all “eyeballed” by yours truely.

Laying Out The Bottom

On the last post, I left you with this picture:

I selected the station mold plywood from my Long Point Skiff building jig that would give me a suitable bottom for the sailboat taking shape in my mind. The blue chalk lines were already there in the center of each mold, so I lined them up and set to measuring, then making my marks. Screws were driven where you see the clamps, and I bent the batten around them. Then I drew my cut line, and repeated the process for the starboard side.

What I wound up with are the three pieces that now make up Keep It Sailing Stupid’s bottom. This is all “junk” 1/2″ CDX plywood which I bought cheap, only intending it to be used for the building jig. Now it is becoming a boat instead.

Next, I cut 6 inch wide “butt blocks” out of the same material to join the plywood panels, then liberally glued and screwed them in place with exterior grade wood glue and deck screws.

Here is the finished bottom, with a bit of rocker set by some 2x4s wedged under fore and aft  just for grins. I had to do the aft butt block in two pieces because I didn’t have anything long enough to cover the span entirely.

I hoisted the bottom up onto my saw horses, and adjusted them until my calibrated eyeball was happy with the rocker. Then I whipped out my trusty bevel gauge to set the angles of the bow, sides, and transom. I set the height of the sides at 22 inches maximum, because this not only “looked” right in my mind’s eye, but it also happened to be the most possible with the wood I had on hand. This being done, I cut out the stem, midship frames, and transom frames from the 2×4 stock I salvaged from the jig’s station molds. All this done from mental image, and calculations from materials I had on hand. I see a boat already, don’t you?

Here’s How It All Started

I bought the plans, and had every intention of building a Long Point Skiff, after perusing dozens of plans for small plywood powerboats. The Long point appealed to my appreciation for classic lines, simplicity, and especially in economy of operation given it’s low horsepower requirements. It would be a little more difficult and expensive to build than some other designs, but that would pay for itself quickly in low fuel consumption compared to others. The boat had everything I wanted: room, shallow draft, and economy. But it was not to be.

The economy continued to falter, prices increased dramatically on life’s necessities, while my pay stagnated and even fell due to increased “insurance” costs. I was heartbroken, and essentially broke on top of it. The building jig for the Long Point was already complete, but there was no money for the building of the hull. Then, my wife and I lost our house. The house and my 16′x20′ workshop! I very nearly left the jig for the next suckers who got a mortgage on that place, but at the last minute I decided to cart it over to our new rental by the water…

This was the strongback for the Long Point jig, which later became chine logs and sheer bands, as well as seats and a rudder blade for my sailboat. The 2×10 cross members became a stub keel and the mast partners.

Station molds and their 2×4 reinforcements became the framing and hull.

After I had disassembled the jig and carted it over to the location you see pictured here, I still had every intention of building the Long Point. However; gasoline, food, and utility prices rose so much as to swallow entirely the savings my family had realized by moving in just a few short months. The Long Point project was officially dead, being on a shoestring to begin with. But what to do with the jig?

I tried to sell it, along with the plans I’d bought. No takers… And still this burning desire within me to get back on the water, somehow. I grew up in boats, and being boatless to me was like being marooned on an alien planet. My world is one of both land and sea, and the loss of one element might as well be the loss of a limb. Even the loss of life itself. I had to improvise somehow.

Eyeballing the now useless jig one day, I was suddenly struck. There is enough material there to build some kind of boat! My mind began racing, and I whipped out the drill with phillips head chucked in to finish disassembling the jig. When I was through, I had a stack of partial 2x4s and the bare plywood station molds as I had cut them out many months before. All this before me, my mind’s eye began to see the boat that could be. I started arranging, and re-arranging pieces of plywood. I measured, cyphered, contemplated… Then I saw in my mind what could be, and set to work. From what was now scrap wood, there would be a boat. And so it began.