A year has passed

It has just occurred to me that the first anniversary of my boat building adventure just slipped quietly by last week.

I am further ahead than I envisaged I would be when I started this. I have had a lot of fun so far, also a bit of pain with some large and small screwups. But as I doing this 99% by myself I have no one to blame but myself.

I have really enjoyed learning some of the simpler things, how to put a decent edge on a blade, gaining prowess with various power tools. I have always been okay with tools, but I think I now approach things with more finesse, care and attention.

This coming year will hopefully see the hull finished, and the flip come into view on the horizon.

Spokeshave

My spokeshave arrived today. Brand new, but only $20. To be honest it's not worth a cent more. The blade had no edge, which was fine, and I was able to fairly quickly sort that out. I quite enjoy sharpening tools.

As you can see from the photos it had two adjustment knobs, but one of the shafts was bent, even with it straightened it is difficult to make fine adjustments as the knobs bind. I am going to see what I can do about that.

Having sharpened the blade I reassembled it and then took to a scrap piece of wood......bitterly disappointed. Nothing I seemed to do made it work well. It either dug in, chattered, needed far to much force etc etc.

So I retreated to you tube to get some training / advice on how to use it. I usually find you tube a wealth of information on the correct way to use something, but there is actually very little on there about spokeshaves. Anyway after about an hour of surfing I found the answer buried away in a forum post, the blade goes in bevel down, not bevel up. Well what a difference. It now performs like I expected. I think I need to have another round at sharpening the blade but I was still able to get nice consistent shaves with good control and minimal pressure.

Still need to practice some more with it, but I think I will soon be able to takes to my frames with it.


Having finished writing this, I was thinking about some of the stuff I saw on you tube and certainly with the wooden versions, they were definitely bevel up......interesting.

Routing the notches

I have been using a jig I made for routing the keel notches and it works very well.

Only problem I have had is my notches slowly getting too deep, and I have since discovered it was caused. Y the stop on the router depth setting. It had a fine adjustment that was slowly winding itself in. Now that I know I can watch out for it.

So got notches done for 7 battens done now. Only frames 0 to 4 thou.

Router vs screw

Router won !!!

Battens part 2

My spokeshave didn't arrive so I have moved back to working I the battens

I am reasonably happy with the fairing at the aft end, so I started cutting the notches for the battens. So far I am only cutting into frames 0 thru 4. I have so far cut 10 notches.

I am cutting them with the router. Took a couple of notches to get the jig setup properly, but it is now cutting perfect notches. At about notch 4 my router but sheared off, couldn't see any reason why, but they were cheap bits. So quick trip to bunnings to get a new one. Hit a couple of screws with the new one, but hasn't damaged the bit thankfully.

Battens

I did a bit more fairing tonight particularly around frame 7. However I have ordered a spokeshave and I think this will do a better job so I have stopped fairing for the moment.

So I started to look into the battens. So far like the fairing, I am only looking at the bottom. Up to about frame 6 looks fairly simple but it rapidly get complicated from there with the batten being bent in two directions and twisted as well. Up around frame 8 is going to be a barrel of laughs. :-(....

I have been trying to work out which bits need joining and how to optimize my stock of battens. The two nearest the keel need about 1000mm added, but I don't want the two scarfs side by side. The 3rd one out also needs about 350mm.

I can see some fun times ahead. Practically I am probably still a week or two from doing anything serious.

There are going to be some tricky cuts where the battens meets the chine or stem, I am going to need to get those sorted before joining where ever possible.

Fairing and damaged tools

Spent a fair bit more time on fairing this weekend, and on the bottom I have completed the "bulk" fairing and am now slowly closing in on the finished lines.

Managed to put some serious nicks in one of my planes TWICE !!. Both time from hitting screws that I don't remember putting in. Just got the blade cleaned up after the first hit then find another screw. Bugger !!.

When I was laying out the frame I built up a pedestal for the breast hook to sit in. Well today I cut the top couple of layers back so I can get into that area without interference. It was during this work that I put an almighty gouge in a chisel. No idea what I hit.

Still a lot of fairing to do on the bottom before I move on to the sides but it is really starting to take on its lines now.

Guide battens

Tonight I dragged out about half a dozen long thin strips I had left over from making the sheers and clamped them to the hull. What needs to be done is now infinitely more visible, and thankfully more or less what I expected from yesterday's research.

Now I am a little daunted by how to actually achieve the result. I am thinking that a spokes shave might be a useful tool to have to put the bevel on the frame. Thankfully they can be bought quite cheaply.  The second photo shows the strips lying on top of Frame 6, and the angle of the required bevel can be clearly seen.

Guess what - more fairing

Spent another couple if hours removing the bulk of the material from the chime and keel on the other side. This was punctuated by having to take my power plane to bits, the depth adjuster jumped the stop and so it would plane anything.

After doing that I decided to look at the stem, and chine forward of frame 7. Really unsure here so decided to ponder it while sharpening my planes and chisels. Still not sure after that so went and re-read the instruction again, then read the boat building with ply chapter.

Still not happy so I surfed the glen -l site for discussion and more importantly, photos of this area. This left me feeling happier about it.

More fairing

Spent an hour or figuring out what to do about frame 1 last night, and today put that plan into action, so now both side of frame 1 have a spacer glued on.

Then filed the remaining chine / frame and keel frame junctions to get my reference for fairing

Then it was out with the power plane, I had already taken quite a bit off one of the chines but a lot more still had to come off. I could only do one side as the spacer was being glued on the other side

Then I took to the keel, this was a bit harder, had to climb in amongst the frames and the lead kept getting tangled so I made this cranes type assembly to keep the lead up, the top swings around, worked ok.

Also set about fixing a problem up at the stem. There is a mistake in the Monaco plans (well I think so anyway).

The breast hook is made of two laminations of ply. One of the laminations has a notch in it for the stem to fit in, but this notch is too deep and the natural thing to do is push the stem all the way into the notch. Problem with this is that the front of the stem is supposed to be flush with the point on the breast hook so I had to glue yet another spacer on so that I had something to fair to a point.

After that I got into attempting the rabl method to get the stem taper correct, this worked ok up to the point where the chines met the stem. As I mentioned in an earlier post, my chine has arrived at the stem with a bit too much twist. Once again I may have to glue in some filler blocks.

Fairing -

I am well into the fairing now.  So far I have filed down most of the chine / frame & keel / frame junctions to get my reference points.  I have also started to plane the bulk of the waste material off of one of the chines.

Taking things nice a slow to try and avoid screw ups.

I have discovered that I have an issue with frames 1 & 2 on both sides.  I haven't fully investigated it yet, but it seems like the angle of the bottom pieces of the frame is wrong.  At the point the frame meets the keel, its about 5 mm low, but by the time the frame gets out to the chine, if almost perfect.

The sheers are finished

The last length of sheer went on today. Another big milestone.

Started setting up to hit the fairing stage. Marked a centre line on the keel and did a general clean up of the area.

Fairing #1

So tonight I started fairing. Very gently for a start. I took a few swipes along one of the chines with the power plane before swapping to a hand plane.

I could have taken a lot more with the power plane but wanted to practice fairing with the hand plane.

At this stage I find the process quite therapeutic but I'm sure after a few more hours at it that will wear off.

I have sort of jumped the gun a bit, I still have one lamination of sheer left to fit but couldn't resist.

I also dropped my #6 plane tonight and broke the handle. Very angry with myself over that. I have glued the handle back together and I don't think any other damage has occurred.

Starting to slip on my schedule but not much I can do about that.