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).