The last "still planking" post

OK, we are really almost done this time. 3 planks to go. We've even scheduled our planking party for 5-7pm, March 6. You're invited. Rather than wait for that momentous occasion for a blog update, I figured I'd post about some other goings on in the shop.

But first, the obligatory progress shots....

Riveting is getting interesting. The tight squeeze for the inside guy can make one a little moody. To rivet one plank, you're down there for about 3 hours. This is the end of one such run.
I just realized going back through some of the pictures I've posted that most were taken after Friday clean up. Here is a more realistic picture of our shop, except usually those sawhorses would have something on them.

Upstairs there are 3 boats getting started. Two new apprentices, instead of building a susan skiff (of which we have 4 for sale already) are building a 1/2 Peapod. Apparently it is for taking to trade shows and the like. Not sure if it will row very well.


As for boats that will float, we build those too. The first is a Lawley tender. The porcupine look is caused by all the zip ties they used when steaming in the oak frames. They are a lot easier (and cheaper) than about 200 clamps.


But for sheer sexiness, you can't really beat this boat. This is a Abeking and Rassmusen tender. Check out the stern on this one.


Of course, sexiness has its problems. That curvy back end caused both garboards (that is, the bottom plank that meets the keel) to crack in the back, despite steaming.

I should mention both of these boats are for sale. They are being built on speculation. Hopefully come spring someone with a big boat they need to row out to will be looking to replace that old
plastic dingy (Jimbo, Muzzy?).

It is fun to go up and look at these tiny little boats. I think we could fit 5 or 6 of these boats into our hull.

In other news, our woodturning class started. This past week I turned a mallet. I'm sure woodturning is fun, but right now, it is actually kind of a chore. After 9 hours in the shop, I have to drive 40 minutes for a 3 hours class, and I don't get home until 10:00. Maybe someday I'll be glad I learned.

On a more fun side project note, I'm building a 1/2 hull model. I've been scrounging the library for "my boat." There are limitless designs out there, and I've always been drawn to the turn of the century ocean racers. The ones with the long overhangs, curvy transoms and spoon bows. Of course, those boats were all 100 feet long. Well, around 1930, Phillip Rhodes designed a few boats that look like these classic racers, but in a more managable size. This one is designed at 24 feet.



Could this dream become a reality someday? We'll see.

Stay tuned. Hopefully next post I'll figure out how to do video and we'll get a home movie of the boat flip.

Still Planking, Part 2

The days are getting longer, the shop is getting warmer, and the boat is getting heavier. Only a few more planks to go.



It is getting pretty cozy underneath the boat. Jamie recently went out and bought us some Christmas lights to hang up inside. The mood lighting is nice. I'll have to get a late night picture for the next post. We also have a new team member, Dylan, so there are 4 of us now.

The planking is getting a little more aesthetically tricky. Now that we are getting to the very end, we are running out of room for the plank edges to run. We are constrained by where the last plank was placed and where we know the final plank must go. We want a nice fair curve that results in a plank that starts wide in the middle and ends up skinny at the ends. It shouldn't go from wide to skinny, then back to wide again, which is known as fishtailing. We are running a delicate balance in the front end of the boat between having a fishtail or having a sheer line (that final plank line) that is too flat (i.e. not fair... i.e. ugly). This is the kind of stuff you don't learn from a book or a two week boatbuilding course. You have to build the whole thing. Now I know to pay a lot more attention in the lining off phase (you can read more about that on a prior post... we took our best shot, but we didn't know the implications... now we do).

Now a little shout out for my IBM compatriots (** geek alert **)... this planking stuff has all sorts of opportunity for lean manufacturing. I'm constantly doing tact time calculations on the process and finding tombstones. There were 3 of us working on a process that takes 1 person about 1 week/plank. We should be able to do 3 planks/week then right? Our average for the last month and a half has been 2, an output that would have any mfg manager breathing down my neck (our managers are pretty lenient here.... probably has something to do with our pay scale) Now that we have an extra person, our potential goes up to 4 planks/week, but this potential is mitigated by the reality that we can only work on 2 planks at a time on the boat (one on each side). But there is plenty of work that one can do on a plank before you get to the boat (see Planking! post from last Dec.) It is the classic case of 4 rowers going at a steady pace being able to go faster than 4 at different paces. We'll see how it turns out. I wonder if the IMEC conference would accept a paper on this.

In other news, I met Nicole out in the White Mountains for some snowshoeing. We climbed Mt. Madison on a beautiful Feb. day. The views were fabulous, although the wind was a little rough. Nicole didn't like her crampons very much.

Still Planking

Here are the progress shots . . .


The 2 planks clamped on are now riveted, so that is 11 planks down, 15 to go. I'm currently working on #13, the mid-way plank! We are pushing hard to get 5 planks on every other week. At this rate we should be done planking by the end of February.

Another milestone just reached : we are now planked to the waterline everywhere on the boat, meaning she really is a boat now! It will float (I hope).

In other shop news, 3 other boats almost completed.

The Peapod . . .


The Herreshof 12 1/2 . . .


And the Brave Little Mouse . . .

As you can well imagine, the shop is a beautiful place to be right now. The big boats are coming along and the small boats are getting their final paint jobs and varnish. The joy of seeing these boats completed is somewhat tempered by the lack of new commissions. We are starting 2 new boats (2 different types of yacht tenders) this month on speculation. Hopefully we'll get some good new projects for the summer.

Outside of the shop . . . it's shrimp season! I can stop on the side of the road and pick up a pound of the sweetest little shrimp I've ever tasted for $1.25. I'm a little bummed the guy took Sunday off, I was really looking forward to ceviche tonight.

Interlude - Mexico

Happy New Year! Nicole and I just got back from a couple weeks in Mexico. Our friends Rachel and Noam also came down, as well as a bunch of folks from Nicole's family. Her parents and sister/brother-in-law now own this place in Zihuatanejo...

With this view........


It was pretty much heaven. A vacation from my vacation, as it were. We spent several mornings learning how to surf. This was the first day.... by the 3rd day we were in waves as big as ourselves. It was great, but after about 3 hours of breathing salt water, Corona starts to look awfully good, even for a beer snob like myself.


We also did a lot of cooking, and shopping in the markets. The seafood and fish was particularly good, but all the veggies were fresh and wonderful.

It was Christmas, so pinatas were everywhere.....
We did a cooking class one day. The cooking part wasn't all that great (we made soup), but the trip to the market was wonderful. She described how to handle all the weird stuff in the market. Here is a dish I made up for our last night in Mexico.... Grilled Octopus and Cactus over a Roasted Tomato and Jalapeno Salsa.


We also got a little sailing, hiking and snorkeling in. We hiked a new volcano. This is unique in the world.... a volcano, whose birth was witnessed in modern times. In 1942, this land was completely flat. A farmer was tilling his fields when the ground started to bubble. He called his friends over to try and fill the holes with dirt. It didn't work. 9 days later, the volcano was formed (about 1000 feet of vertical above the plain) and a town was destroyed in the lava flow. The remains of the church are still there. The church was brand new and almost finished. They were working on the 2nd tower when the volcano erupted.

This is the 2nd floor of the church... the lava flow is about 1 story high.


Back to work tomorrow!

Planking!

Well if it was a canoe, we'd be about done planking by now. But it's not, so we'll be planking for another couple of months. Not sure if I mentioned this last time, but there will be 26 planks on the boat when it is all done... 13 per side. This is a lapstrake boat, meaning the planks will overlap 1" to give it a very traditional look.


Putting on a plank takes about a week. Theoretically, our team of 3 should be putting on 3 planks a week, but theory and reality don't always meet. Here are the steps....

1) Choose a few boards from the pile
2) Resaw (the thick ones) or plane down to 3/4"
3) Drill out knots and bung
4) Create Spiling Planks / pick up points on the boat
5) Layout and scarph 3 or 4 boards together
6) Plane the entire thing down to the final 5/8" thickness
7) Transfer Spiling marks, batten off, cut top (bottom of boat) edge to line, bottom edge roughly
8) Steam the ends of the plank to get the twist in
9) Fit the top edge and ends
10) Mark the bottom edge
11) Batten off and cut bottom edge
12) Cut gains (1/2 laps at the end of the planks where the overlap tapers to nothing)
13) Sand
14) Rivet
15) Create bevel to accept next plank

We've got a couple months, so I'll post pictures of these steps (and to make it fun, I won't be doing it in order) along with a progress picture.

Anyhow... we've almost got 6 planks on. The 6th just needs to be riveted. Here is the port side. The bottom "plank" is for spiling. It is a temporary, skinny plank we put on the boat. The plank above it is marked where the next plank needs to land, and the molds below it are also marked (remember lining off?). To pick up these points, we use a compass set at a fixed radius and create arcs on the spliling plank. Now it is a simple trick of geometry to find out where those arcs were originated from when we put this spiling splank on the new plank.


Here is the spiling plank laid out on a set of new boards. Using the information on the spiling plank we'll align the new boards in such a way that when we scarph (glue) them together, we'll get a long cedar board with the appropriate bend which will allow us to get the correct pattern out.


Enough of boats for now. Off to Mexico!

Lining Off the Big Boat

Would somebody please leave a comment? All this blog work and I don't get one peep. Makes me think nobody is reading this thing.

Enough complaining. So last time we were getting the pieces together. They are now attached and on the mold. Here are shots of the front and back of the boat. The mysterious rabbet is now not so mysterious.


Not sure if I mentioned this before... but this is a double-ender. No transom.

The next step is lining off. Basically, we are putting temporary sticks (called battens) on the mold see where each plank will lie. This exercise is mostly for aesthetic purposes, but we also need to make sure that the planks aren't too wide where the boat makes a sharp turn in the center. We start in the center, where the girth is longest. We mark some plank sizes on the center mold, (They start off about 7" wide, narrow down to 4" near the turn of the bilge, and then grow again to about 6") then geometrically diminish them for the shorter girths on the other molds.

Here is the incredible geometric diminisher.

We place some tick strip on the marked center mold to pick up all the plank sizes and then place those on the bottom of the diminisher. We then draw lines from each plank endpoint to some point in the distance. Then we go to a different mold and pick up the distance between the keel and the sheer. We line those points up to the sheer and keel lines (the outer ones of the triangle) and pick up all the plank positions, then transfer those points to the mold. Confusing, eh? All this ingenuity could have been avoided if we just used the metric system. Basically, all we are doing is reducing each plank size for the change in girth down the length of the boat. But what is 59/74ths of 4 1/8"? I have no idea... so we use the incredible geometric diminisher...but I'm pretty sure I could tell you what 59/74ths of 9.1cm is, and even mark it on a mold. (It is 7.25cm by the way).

All this diminishing is just to get us close anyway. Next step is to run the battens (using the marks we just put on the molds as guidelines) along the length of the boat. Then, you stare at them. Here is the building crew doing the hard work of lining off. To my left(your right) is Josh and then Jamie, my building partners on this project.

All kidding aside about standing around and looking at this thing... this was tough. The marks we made work well up to about 4 feet from the ends. Then you have all sorts of crazy stuff going on. The lines twist and turn and if you just used the magically diminished points you would end up with a boat that floats, but an ugly one at that. What makes it tough is moving one line effects all others, in 3 dimensions. Anyhow, after a lot of cursing and moving, we finally ended up with lines that we liked.


In other news.... the other big boat is getting set up as well. This one is right side up.
The 12 1/2 (right side of the picture above) is almost done.

The peapod is planked......

One final note.... the beer making equipment has come out of the closet. We just brewed my first batch in years. Should be ready to drink after the Thanksgiving break if I can get it bottled next weekend.

On to the big boats

Hi again. Still busy up here in Maine. Had a nice break last weekend with Nicole in Boston. We met up with old friends (Jeff and Manjere... we went to their wedding in India) as well as Ashley and Ramses.

We had a special guest this week in the shop... Nigel Irons, the designer of the large open boats we are working on, came for a visit. It was very interesting to here his take on designing and building boats. He is all about working with the best of the old and new. If you haven't heard of him... he designs America's cup boats, as well as the super fast trimarans that have set around the world speed records. The person commissioning the boats also was at the shop. He recently completed a 2 year voyage around the world. He gave a great slide show.

Things are humming at the shop. I'll start off with a quick summary of what is going on :

Reepicheep : A yacht tender the shop built years back and went on that around the world journey. It is back for restoration and the addition of a sailing rig. The frames are in and the centerboard and centerboard box are installed.

Heresshof 12 1/2 : The venerable daysailer. Remeber that keel pour? Well, this thing really looks like a boat now.


Susan Skiffs : Vanya spent some times finishing up the skiff Thomas (a summer intern) started but didn't quite finish. And Sarah is almost done with hers.

Peapod : 14' row/sailboat. 8 of 10 planks are on!

And finally, my project... the twin open boats. We've been working on the backbones. I've done a stem and keelson (the top part of the keel). It has been a facinating process to see the lines we developed on the lofting board come to life. The molds are one thing. Intuitive even.... just cross section of the boat. But there is this thing called a "rabbet" where the planks meet the backbone. Seeing how this is represented on the lofting board and then being rendered in 3D in wood is educational to say the least. It is exciting to work on pieses that actually become part of the boat rather than just a construction aid.

Here is the stem. The rabbet is the cut out that runs along the right side. Note the stem is currently sitting on the keel. Hard to see, but there is a bevel along the top of the keel.

Here is the keelson (or at least a few feet of it... it is over 20' long). You should be able to make out the bevel on this as well. When this piece is attached to the keel, the 2 bevels meet and make a right angle to accept the bottom plank.
Now look at the stem picture again. See the big notch in the bottom right of the picture? That is where the keel/keelson meet the stem and the rabbet must flow smoothly from one piece to the next (since that is what the plank will want to do). Will it all work out? Find out in the next installment!

Oh.. one last word on the wood we are using. The keelson / keel stock was a piece of oak 6" X 10" by 25' long.

Eric