Getting Back to Boat-building

[Charlie43]

After a month of setting aside progress on my current build, a double-knuckled, vee-bottomed pram, to prep for the coming market crash, to re-build my varnish station, and to knock out some Fall chores, I glued up the outwales today.

I estimated 500 grains [NB: not grams, which is too gross a measurement to ensure a never-failing cure] of epoxy would do the job and came within two brush stokes of not mixing too much. Also, this time, I forced myself to wear Nitrile gloves.  I've been using epoxy for 30 years and never had an allergic reaction. But when properly-fitting gloves can be found and are so cheap, there was no longer an excuse not to wear them, given that I want to depend on epoxy for another 30 years. Predictably, because I was wearing gloves, I almost didn't need them, because I was also making an effort to work as cleanly as possible.

Tomorrow, I'll glue in the scupper blocks. The next day, the inwales. Then I'll fit seat-risers, crown the transoms, clean up the interior, then flip the hull, fit and install a skeg, clean up bottom, move the boat to my varnish station, and re-set up my lofting-table for my next build, which I'm not sure what it's going to be, whether a seven-plank rowing gig, a three-plank sail boat, or a light-weight, tortured-ply canoe.  Any of them would be fun. It all depends on how much complexity I want to deal with.  My inclination is 'simple and fast', which probably means a different plan entirely, maybe a clinker stem dinghy for which I wouldn't be drawing the plans, but using some from Stanley Small Craft.





http://www.harborfreight.com/5-mil-nitrile-powder-free-gloves-100-pc-large-68497.html

http://stanleysmallcraft.net/epages/171f198d-3099-4ff2-8724-120d466c8268.sf/en_GB/?ObjectPath=/Shops/171f198d-3099-4ff2-8724-120d466c8268/Categories/Category1/Clinker_Ply_Designs

Charlie

[Charlie43]

Just transferred the boat to my fitting out/ varnishing station and set up my lofting station for the next build. The blue you see is tape to protect the bottom while I plane down plank overlaps. As yet, I have no idea which boat I'll build next. But waist-high sheets of plywood make a good place to read or draw plans.

[Charlie43]

The river trial was successful. It pointed out that the design is a failure for me not weighing enough to put that hull down on a proper waterline. I bobbed like a cork. Also, I launched without having installed my usual doubled skegs for thinking that just a keel and the vee of the bottom would enable tracking. Wrong! That hull was so squirrelly as to be nearly unmanageable. With my usual style of flat-bottomed, double-skeged prams, I can track a straight-line quarter-mile with never an oar correction, which means rowing is rhythmic, reflexive, relaxing. Today, it took full concentration and effort to stay on course. Not fun.

After some stewing, I realized there's nothing wrong with the hull shape. It's me and the boat who are the mismatch if rowing is intended, but that it would take very little work to turn that hull into a sailboat, just a mast step and partner, a dagger-board trunk, some buoyancy bulkheads (for when I inevitably do capsize), hiking straps, a different seating arrangement, a beefed up transom, fittings for the rudder, etc. In short, just small details that would make a good winter's project while I also build another rowboat.