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.