Boiling wood and the obvious culinary metaphor

Now that the boat is flipped over, things are moving pretty fast.

The first order of business is to get some frames into the boat. This step requires the ever popular steam bending process. But wait! Our gurus have decided our steam boxes don't get hot enough (although a perfect steam box would be 212 degrees, in reality they are around 180). So they acquired a cement trough big enough to boil the frames. No question, the surrounding environment will be 212. Here is Brian doing the sous chef thing over the boiler. He is in charge of timing. Just like pasta... if the frames are in there too long, they get too limp, but if you don't go long enough, they can break. You want them al dente, which for frames this thick, is about an hour.


Once a frame is pulled out of the boiler, things happen fast. There are 2 of us in the boat which step on the frame, trying to line it up where we want it (we marked lines up and down the boat where the frames should go... every 9"). This gets about 80 or 90% of the bend. Then we clamp the frame at the sheer (top) and as we continue to step on the frame, we hammer the top of it to force it into submission.

Not only do we have to bend the frame to the curve of the boat, there is also some severe twist in the front and the back. We never broke a frame due to the bend, it was always on the twist. But the boiler worked great... out of 70 frames, we only broke four, two of which we were able to still use (for a shorter frame). Good thing, since we only had 2 extra frames when all was said and done.

But we aren't done yet! To hold the frames in place, you rivet through each plank. Since we were doing a frame every 5 minutes or so, we couldn't actually do the riveting. We just put the nails in and left them poking out. This made for a medieval torture device for the 2 suckers in the boat, especially at the ends of the boat where things get narrow. Look closely and you can see all the nails in this picture.

But once everything was riveted (nearly 1000 rivets... took the 4 of us about a day) and the molds all taken out, you get some fabulous picture taking opportunities. Oh, and the boiling turned the skin of the oak frames black (actually, a little purplish). We think that it is just a reaction between the iron and the wood being boiled in it. What a cool contrast though.


The orange stuff is red lead... keeps the bugs out.

We also made floor timbers. These guys are custom fit at each set of frames. They will be bolted into the keel and riveted to the frames. If they look tricky to fit... they are even trickier than you think. Not only do they take the shape of the cross section of the boat, they are over an inch thick, so you have to take into account that the cross section of the boat changes over the course of the thickness of the floor timber. In other words, bevel them, especially in the fore and aft sections.


On a personal note... the kayak is getting a few fresh coats of varnish. That will teach me to use cheap varnish on a boat. Unfortunately, the shop is really, really dusty. Even with my little tent, I still get lots of dust into the drying varnish. I didn't realize until now how good I had it in my basement. Oh well, it's a boat, not a piece of furniture.

Roll er' over

Finally, no more planking. Here she is, with a little mood lighting.


At the apprenticeshop, a completed planking is a good excuse for a party. The planking party was fabulous. We lit up the shop with christmas lights and the glow was something to behold. There are traditions as well, such as beer pong on the lofting boards, Maker's Mark, and something called a wave test (after the Maker's Mark, you roll across the boat as a wave would. Not sure if this is a valid test for the boat. . . I have a suspicion that it is to get the builders a little dizzy, and since we built a 28 foot boat, we got real dizzy).


We tried, but we couldn't keep partying forever. Lots more to do! We prepared the Oak stock for the frames. We pickle these in the ocean in preparation for steaming. Turns out that the steam isn't what allows you to bend the frames, it is the heating of the water already in the wood. Dry wood will not bend well, as the steam only penetrates 1/16" deep. There has been a rash of frame stock being lost to Neptune recently. Here are our attempts to keep the frames close at hand until we need them.

After a week, they are still floating right next to our dock.

Well, this post is called roll er' over, but we can't do that quite yet. We've had to caulk the rabbet with cotton, fill in all the holes from the rivets with filler, sand her down, and mark the waterline. The waterline marking is pretty low tech. You level off the waterline mark (which we got from the plans and is marked on the stem and stern) away from the boat and tie 2 strings between these level sticks located for and aft. Then one person sights along the 2 strings and tells the other person standing next to the boat with a pencil whether to move up or down.


OK, Now we can roll her. The boat, with all the molds inside, weighs in the neighborhood of 1000 lbs. Since there are a bunch of apprentices hanging around, it really is not a lot of weight. The problem is rolling her in a controlled fashion so that the plank edges don't get squished. So we build some wheels for the boat. The lofting came in handy again. I pulled it out and then marked down my constraints. First, the boat should turn and be level on the waterline when finished, high enough off the ground so the back of the boat doesn't hit. Second, the widest point of the boat, with the wheel and the mold, does not exceed 10 feet, so we don't hit the ceiling. Finally, the inside diameter of the wheel has to be wide enough so that the center of the boat doesn't hit the ground when rolling. With the lofting I was able to play around with circles of different diameters, centered at different places. When I had what I needed, making the circles was easy. It was just like making a mold (see prior post). Here is the result.

The wheels are attached to the mold and the keel. They also have padded "spokes" which will support the boat without crushing the plank edges as things move over. There is also a little bit of sideways support to keep the wheels from racking one way or another. Well, enough theory, time to test it out (if you want a bigger view, click on the video which will take you to You Tube where you can make it full screen).