A mini-journey: Tiny (part II)

The terrace claimed a few weeks but helped to gain some material for the boat build. Firstly I had to replace some 10x20cm beams which stocked me with a 6m pine piece, part of which would still be reusable. Don’t know where yet, but maybe for laminating the keelson. In the same fashion I purchased some extra 3m long radial cut (or quater sawn) 5x15cm beams that I used for ripping 1x5cm planks for planking the hull. And 2.2x12.5 planks for the hull bottom.

Ripping planks and planking

I don’t own a table saw, so armed with a circular saw, clamps, and a straightedge ripped two of the beams into approximately 1.1 cm thick (to account for any planing of sanding afterwards) planks.

But I was too eagerly getting ahead of the process. To start with planning for planking I needed to fix the stem to the strongback in a way that will not interfere with planking afterwards. But still be rigid enough to stay in place.

And again, the alignment itself is easier if you have the centerlines marked up on the parts and then when spotting it from the aft of the boat these should form one stright line from transom to frame to stem. Also measuring the diagonals between starboard/port side extremities will tell you if the pieces are set at straight angles from the centerline. It is tedious work and might take some time but eventually will pay off.

To measure out the hull planking I used some battens to mark the sheer (where hull side becomes deck) and chine (hull side becomes bottom) locations. Theres not much room to play on the transom nor on the frame, but the stem piece I left oversize on purpose to have some room to play with.

It ended up taking more than a few adjustments but by nightfall which in the end of August-beginning of September seems to come so suddenly after the short and bright summer nights, I seemed to arrive at a solution that was ok. So I would need 10 planks per side, I decided to leave the chine and sheer planks without cutting, the original size, because it seemed to give maybe a more rigid and sturdy structure. Although…I might come to regret that decision at the end when all the plank edge lines will not seem parallel to each other. The rest of the space needed will be divided equally between eight planks: measuring 3.2cm on the transom, 3.65cm on the frame and 4.6cm on the stem.

Luckily I got my hands on a simple home-use thickness planer so I managed to plane all my circular-saw sawn planks to common dimensions. Although the few nots in the lumber still caused the planks to bend a bit differently, it was so much better. Still it made me realize that since I’m not building a side from one single board, I should have measured and constructed more frames onto the strongback, so the the bends for planks would have been more uniform. Instead I decided to go with temporary batten-supports on the inside that I could use for fixing the planks tight and uniform bends. At a later time I can take these out and fill the screw-holes with epoxy and sanding-dust putty.

Another thing I figured I will not do is caulking in the traditional way with cotton, hemp, or similar. This is for two reasons:

• the thickness of the boards is rather small,
• but more importantly, the boat will most probably spend most of the time on shore meaning it will need some adjustment time any time it goes into the water.

So instead I’m going to be laminating the planks edge-to-edge with epoxy and hopefully the epoxy will give the hull more rigidness too.

The spiling (or “measuring out”) for carvel planked boards is a bit more complicated and there are a couple of methods you can use for doing it (if you’re interested then The Art of Boat Building offers a really nice overview of these).

Since my planks seemed to be all really nicely and uniformly wedge-shaped, I opted for an easier solution of simply marking the expected edge locations for boards on the stem, frame and transom on the port side and then dry fitted one on the hull, marked it and cut two simultaneously (for port and starboard). Just to be sure everything works out and I will be ok with the shape that comes out of all this, I decided not to permanently fix the planks but only do a dry fitting first.

When all the pieces were measured and cut to size it was apparent that I’ll need to use a few more temporary support battens on the inside to get the curves nicer and more uniform across the planks as is visible on the next photo.

After carefully marking all the planks (which side, which order), I took them off and started re-assembly. This time for good - with epoxy on the stem and transom, and on both plank contact surface. As I had some leftover sanding dust I used a mixture of epoxy and sanding dust just enough to make the prepared putty of a gooey yoghurt thickness so it would be easily applicable with a small paintbrush not flow as easily. Still, the first coat on the contact surfaces being clear epoxy and only then applying the makeshift putty.

Bottom

For the bottom I had purchased some 2.2x12.5cm (tangential cut) boards which I decided to cut in half length-wise as it will be easier to follow the bottom curve on the chine. To lay all of the bottom I needed to get rid of the stem support, so the best way to proceed seemed to be to prepare and fix half of the bottom first, remove the supports, and then prepare and fix the rest.

At the same time as I was preparing the bottom boards, I got the chines laminated in from two 1*2.5cm wide strips of wood. These are offset from the hull planking and each other so that the whole construction can later be planed to a flat surface to attach the bottom boards.

With the first set of bottom boards cut to size, planed, and planed to thickness of 2 cm, I decided it was high time to get the transom worked on - cut the hull side planks to shape and sand the whole aft part to a flat surface. Followed by planing a bevel into the freshly laminated chine and cutting the transom cleats to shape.

With all of this done I was ready to start installing the bottom boards. These are all set with some distance over the side of the hull so they can be later be trimmed down to the angle of the hull. All the bottom boards are also laminated in the same fashion as the hull sides.

At a later thought - I could easily mark the point of intersection for every bottom board outer side and the hull outer side with a pencil so I would not have to do any guesswork when grinding the edge afterwards. But the idea came too late. Approximately for half of the boards I used a handsaw to transfer the hull side angle to the bottom board bottom side by sawing it lengthwise. It is a usable method, but marking the correct location on the go seemed to be much more faster and accurate way to go. I’ll know next time.

When the first half of the boards was installed, I removed the beam support. And additionally lowered the middle frame bottom part as the “final shape” had been finalized once more a few centimeters downward (and here my greetings go out to all filebased-format data storers - I feel the _final_final pain). Now the rest of the bottom boards could be measured, cut to rough size and planed to dimensions.

With all of them installed I got a grinder, fitted with a 24 grit disc, and grinded the edges down to the supposed angle I marked before. This cuts nicely, but be aware that it does cut fast and maybe sometimes more than you need. Luckily all went well and I could start sanding the hull and bottom in preparation of smoothing the hull, filling the temporary support screwholes.

Sanding, sanding and more sanding

There’s more photos of this but not really much to talk about. The last weekend was happily spent sanding away the whole hull, epoxying the seams and the screwholes for the temporary side-supports. And then sanding some more - as the bottom planks had cured, also the bottom.

Since the weather is finally turning bad (rain and colder), I got a friend to help me lift the boat hull off the strongback and indoors where I can now spend a couple of days safely epoxying a second coat on the screwholes and also bottom seams and then check for a weather window to take it outside again to do… some more sanding… :/