Page 9 - Progress, Some More Problems

Here's a picture of where I'm at.  You can see I've made it around the chines and I'm working my way towards finishing off the bottom.  It gets tricky during this section.  You have to taper the ends of the strips just right, and, using a plane, you add a bead to the side of the strip that fits into the cove of the adjacent strip.  I'm getting better at it.  Some of my first attempts were pretty bad.  It's going to take some patches or plenty of putty to fill in the gaps.  If I have to sand down the high spots to match the low spots, I'm in danger of having a paper-thin hull in places.  I've already patched one particularly low section.  I just whittled a wedge of redwood that matched the low spot, and glued it right onto the side.  It looked like I accidentally got a little piece of wood glued to the side of my hull.  But when I planed it down flush, it looked fine.  I'm probably going to have to do that a bunch, eventually, to fix my mistakes.  I'll try and get a picture of it posted here soon.

I had a setback which led to another problem, which led me to make a note to myself for what I should do differently on the next boat.  I ran out of strips this week.  I discovered that I had a whole bunch of strips on which I hadn't routed the beads and coves.  What was I thinking?  I had bought a couple more redwood boards, plus a black walnut board to use for accent strips.  I needed to have another ripping session to rip those into strips, then a routing session to put beads and coves on ALL my strips.

I needed a whole day for this.  Unfortunately, this happened the week before Conference Week, and I anticipated being in my classroom all day writing report cards.  PLUS, the weather forecast was for up to 5 inches of rain that weekend.  I need to have my garage door open for ripping and routing strips - my setup hangs out into the driveway (see page 5 and page 7) - and the rain would drip off the roof, onto the garage door and into the garage.

WELL, luckily, I was able to make much quicker progress on the report cards than I had anticipated.  When I got home in the afternoon the weather was dry and looking hopeful, so I decided to go for it.  I set up the saw and tables and started ripping.  When all the boards were ripped I moved the saw out of the way, set up the router table, and started routing.  I didn't even break for lunch.  By late afternoon I was starving, but the strips were all done.

However, I have to admit that I was feeling the time crunch and the threat of rain, so I was in too big of a hurry.   I discovered later that the new strips weren't exactly the same thickness as the first batch.  They're really, really close, but not exact.  It's not a big deal.  They still work fine, but they don't nestle perfectly against each other the same way they would if they were exactly alike.  Next time I'm going to make sure and buy plenty of wood before I start, then rip all of the strips the same day.  Then all of the strips will be exactly the same thickness, whether it's a smidgeon over 1/4" or a teensy-weensy bit under.  So what if I end up with enough leftover strips for half a boat?  I'm not planning on quitting this boatbuilding habit anytime soon.

I also rushed the setup of my bead and cove bits in my router table.  They have to be exactly the right height, and have to bite into the edge of the strip at exactly the right depth.  Having strips that were a fraction too thick meant that it was impossible to get them exactly centered.  I also had them cutting a bit too deep at first.  I can use the strips, but they're not as perfect as they could be.  Next time I will make sure I have ample time to set things up without rushing.  To get the bits just right you have to adjust the height, run a section of strip through, check it, adjust, cut, check, adjust, cut, etc. until it's exactly right.  I could have been a little more patient
 

Here you can see the progress I'm making on stripping the bottom.  When you get up past the chines you put in two "keel strips" that run down the length of the opening, on both sides of the keel line.  Then you alternate - you put a strip in against the curved strips coming up the side, then one next to the straight keel strips, etc.  The last two strips that finish the bottom are supposed to be pretty hard.  You have to rip or plane off the cove, then do a lot of shaving, fitting, planing, sanding, fitting, etc. until you get a sliver of wood that exactly matches the odd shaped opening.  Glue them in and Viola!  The bottom is finished.

 
 
 
 
 

This shows how the strips come together on the ends.  (This is the stern.)  I've done a rough job of planing down the ends into a flattened shape.  I'll plane them down more carefully, then glue several thin strips of ash to them.  These become the outer stems.  They make it easier to give the ends a finished appearance (easier than trying to make all these wild ends of the strips look nice) and the ash provides a stronger base for the ends, which is where collisions and bumps are most likely to occur.