Centerboard case finished. Bolting frames. Sanding

May 31, 2023 by Lukasz Kumanowski

Last steps before epoxy encapsulation.

I turned massive bolt heads into smaller diameter, to fit bungs for gunwale. There will be hardly any pull here, only sheer forces should I collide with anything hard. Smaller diameter heads will not compromise these joints and will be aesthetically more pleasing.

I drilled broadly to avoid splitting the plywood. Just in case each frame/bulkhead is clamped strongly so that the screw thread can carve the wood without risk of splitting it. Holes are first filled with unthickened epoxy and screws are degreased in acetone. I aim to make it a strong joint.

Bangs glued in and trimmed flush.

I trimmed centerboard case and sanded for epoxy coating. All sharp edges softened to small radius - will hold finish better and spare my legs when I unavoidably collide with them.

I felt frivolous so front and back edge of the case is trimmed with American walnut. The rest is mahogany.

I sanded all the interior, knocking down sharp radius on all parts. Vacuumed the boat so I can start with epoxy coating.

Next steps, after I coat the interior, will be filleting and painting the bilge and tanks. The rest will be kept bright. Fillets in the bilge are mostly for easier maintenance - preventing dirt and water from staying in tight spaces.

After the epoxy cures I will install quarter knees and fill tanks with foam. Deck and benches will come next - for them I plan to use Owatrol oil, for easier maintenance and satin feel. Same for thwarts which I will probably glue from Siberian larch or northern pine.

Lastly I will make mast partners - that will be oak. With that in place I can lift the boat onto trailer and start disassembling the shed - to make place for building the mast.

CB-case trim. Main sheet cross member. Bits & pieces

May 28, 2023 by Lukasz Kumanowski

Centerboard case should have been finished before mounting into building frame. I left the final trim to be done when the hull is finished.

Side reinforcements and cup are made in mahogany.

Dry-fitting. As this is a rather crucial alignment I use three guiding screws so that the whole cup does not move during gluing.

Masking tape - to avoid epoxy spills inside the centerboard.

Glue spreaded, bangs hiding screw heads already in place.

While this was curing I milled another piece of mahogany - for main sheet cross member. The kit comes with a nice, ornamental pattern for this piece but I chose to make it in simple shape, just with rounded edges.

While at it - I decided to cover the plywood edge with a thin mahogany veneer, to blend with the main sheet cross member. This edge will be visible every time I open the hatch so it was worth an effort to make it look good. I planed down plywood edge by a millimeter and milled a matching veneer.

Plywood edges on bench-bulkhead connection need to be somehow protected and hidden.

Since I plan to keep the interior bright I milled trimming piece in larch. Glued in place, will be trimmed after epoxy cures.

I finished shaping and dry-fitted oak quarter knees. They will be glued after epoxy coating of the interior.

Last thing for this weekend was drilling holes for gunrail-frames bolts.

I will use massive bronze screws (diameter 8mm) which are leftovers after my work on Meritaten’s frames and floor timbers. They have a bit too wide heads for bangs which I have so I will have to mill them down a bit.

Next weekend I want to epoxy-coat the interior so during the week I need to:

finish CB case trim

sand the interior

Gunrails - finishing touch

May 24, 2023 by Lukasz Kumanowski

I glued the remaining starboard gunrail during the week so today I planed them down to smooth, uniform surface.

Next steps:

bolting gun-rails to frames
centerboard case trim
fillets in the bilge and flotation tanks
sanding of the whole interior
epoxy encapsulation
painting
sole boards - gluing, bolting
quarter knees at the transom
mast foot and partners
… and other remaining bits & pieces

It feels good to be able to see her sheer line with rails installed. Not as pronounced as on American boats but rather modest and balanced. French style.

Wrestling with gunrails

May 21, 2023 by Lukasz Kumanowski

This is a job for two persons, really. Long and semi-elastic wood pieces which need to be bent and squeezed into the hull, wanting to jump out of the place destroying sharp and fragile edges and shaped ends.

But I work alone so some sort of systematic approach was needed.

I started with measuring the length along sheer plank. I use paper masking tape - it is almost non-elastic and sticky. Even if it stretches a bit - that’s not a bad thing: the piece will be a bit too long which is always a good margin.

Transferred to the piece.

I take stem and transom profile using a small wood block and transfer them onto gunrail.

Cutting with handsaw and trying on the boat. Stem looking good, transom-end is a bit too long, as expected (or hoped!).

I pair it with a thin saw until it can be pushed into position.

Before gluing I copy the piece onto the next gunrail plank which will be glued on the inside.

And so comes gluing. Stem profile fits nicely although I managed to damage rubrail edge when wrestling with the gunrail…

While this side cures I repeat the procedure for measuring and cutting rubrail for starboard side.

To fit it in place single-handed I first insert pointy edge into stem cavity and clamp the piece close to the stem. It will not fit all the way to the stem at this angle yet.

Next I slowly bend the gunrail while moving towards the transom, placing it on frame tops. Once close to transom I place a clamp as a frame which will hold the batten if it jumps out of position.

Now I can safely put transom end onto the transom. Ilur has this part angled so I use it as a convenient wedge, pressing down the batten alongside.

It moves all the way down while the stem end goes into its proper place. It goes even more smooth when the glue is spread, acting like a grease.

By the end of this weekend I managed to glue entire port gunrail and half of the starboard side. And I run out of clamps!

Rubrails. Floor suports

May 19, 2023 by Lukasz Kumanowski

Fitting rubrails was a bigger job: I carved the stem to half-oval, tempered at the front. Now I needed to match a profile to fit this compound shape. Same at the aft where I already added some curvature.
Oh well, on my next boat I’ll keep all square and boring. For now I need to play with a bit more complicated fits.

One drawback of having the hull painted already is that some of this paint needs to go away for gluing. Preparing the stem for rubrail.

Anticipating that there will be a lot of squeeze-out epoxy I prepared my secondary job: additional floor supports. Some medium-difficult geometry conditions.

One trick for those who mess-up measurements by a millimeter: an old brass screw can make up for missed length. Epoxy is a wonderful stuff.

Port-side rubrail glued yesterday.

Floor supports used part of the squeeze-out, the rest was used for filleting in the bilge.

Temperature at night dropped to 3 degrees above freezing. Too low. Epoxy did not cure entirely overnight so I waited with clamps removal till late afternoon.

Today I fitted and glued starboard rubrail. Just in case I cranked the kerosene stove so I can continue work early morning tomorrow.

And yes - you cannot have too many clamps!

Food for dreams

May 14, 2023 by Lukasz Kumanowski

While looking for typewriters on flea market I stumbled upon Nautical Almanac from 1953. It is, of course, outdated concerning celestial navigation tables but still useful for learning this skill. You can’t buy new ones anymore - they are only available in digital format.

The week after I found this treasure I got unexpected packet. It turned out to be from Leif! He made me a few surprises before with sending me magnificent nautical books. This time I got his sea charts and lots of tips for sailing destinations.

There you go!
After finishing work on my boat for today I sat down on the floor and started studying these charts. The old almanac by my side - I could pretend I’m in XX century, preparing the journey and planning equipment purchase needed. I like these old commercials and marine chandlers catalogs.

Gluing battens and half-frames

May 14, 2023 by Lukasz Kumanowski

I should know better but it always surprises me how much time small things can take when messing around with boats.

Rubrail and gunrails battens which I glued yesterday did not cure properly overnight. The glue was still a bit soft. Temperature at night was 5 degrees so not bad. It must have been hardener pump which gave too little substrate. I’ve cleaned it and tested - yep! There was a solidified clump inside which hindered proper flow. Well, that happens after winter, good that these joints are not structural.

I took them out into sunlight, to speed up curing. By the end of the day they were cured and safe to install.

So instead I decided to glue battens and half-frames which reinforce the bilge. In my kit there are 3 of these for each side.

It took the whole day, I run out of clamps so there are still some battens to glue. I’ll do that during the week.

With these jobs done I will make fillets in the bilge and flotation chambers. Hopefully I manage during evenings so that I can glue rub- and gunrails and apply epoxy coating during the long weekend.

Rubrail preparations. Decking.

May 13, 2023 by Lukasz Kumanowski

Finally the temperature allows working with glue!

I started late today but managed to cut scarfs for rubrail and gunrail. I was ambitious and started with cutting them by hand. With rubrail (which is L-shaped) it kind of worked but I was not happy with the result so I build a jig and cut all scarfs on the table saw. Much quicker and results are repeatable.

While these are curing I worked with fo’c’sle decking. Some CAD (cardboard aided design) work was needed.

Filling fo’c’sle with decking is usually done with planks parallel to long axis and tapered towards the bow. I played with this idea, checking how much waste will this approach produce with my 120mm wide stock.

Well, that would be quite a lot of off-cuts indeed. I decided to use another pattern, mostly seen on yachts: with deck meeting king-plank in the middle. In my case the king-plank will be a hatch for anchor rode and other muddy stuff. This way I could use full width of my planks.

Spacing between planks is 5mm, as recommended in plans. This shall allow space for wood to expand and provides ventilation for bilge and flotation tanks.

The only drawback with this pattern are thin, sharp plank edges - fragile and catchy. To minimize this I will file them down in rounded shape. They will hold oil better, too.

I run out of wood when I worked on aft deck but managed to carve both side planks and a few for bench on port side. Final shaping will be done once all planks are in place.

During the week I got my rudder hardware delivered. Beefy stuff, silicon bronze from Davy.

The plan for tomorrow is to install rubrails and start working on the rudder and centerboard.

Once rubrails and gunwales will be installed I will finish filleting work in the bilge and glue all battens. Next will come epoxy coating of the interior.

Foam shaping, deck planks

May 07, 2023 by Lukasz Kumanowski

Very cold May this year: at night the temperature still drops below freezing, no way I can do anything with epoxy in my boatshed. Instead I am occupied with garden work and chopping wood for the next winter. Boatbuilding is proceeding very slow.

I finished shaping foam panels which fill flotation tanks. Easy but rather boring activity. I used wood chain to take hull shape and transferred it to panels.

This foam, unlike styrofoam, is elastic and does not break into small bits. Once these panels are installed I should be able to remove them without damaging them, should I need to work on flotation chambers.
Almost perfectly shaped to hull form.

I chose to leave an air gap under battens and under deck planking. I don’t want the wood to be in contact with them, especially when they get wet from spray or when the boat gets swamped.

All battens dry-fitted.

I started cutting planks for the deck. I will use plain Northern Pine, readily available here, cheap and lightweight. Folks at lumber store allow me to browse through their stock, to chose wood with as few knots as possible.

The deck and benches will be oiled or treated with Roslags mahogany (which is linseed oil with tar). I’m not sure yet. Roslags mahogany is making wood darker - and with time it becomes almost black. I like it - and it smells great - but it may be a bit tacky and stain clothes. On the other side - it is a proven way to protect soft wood on traditional boats here.

Battens, seat riser, rubrails and floatation tanks

April 23, 2023 by Lukasz Kumanowski

One of these many jobs at boatbuilding which do take time but results are hardly visible.

I fitted all battens supporting floor boards. A bit more fiddling was required for seat risers - I had to enlarge and adjust openings in bulkheads and frames, to properly “seat” this long batten.

I made all battens, rubrail and gunwale from Siberian larch which I ripped before winter. Today all got plaining and sanding, to be ready for installation.

Dry-fitting:

I realized that gluing them now would be a mistake: I need to first fill flotation tanks with foam. And before filling with foam I need to epoxy-coat these tanks. Which can be done only during weekend, when I can run several coats wet-on-wet during the whole day.

Well, I removed battens and started fitting the foam. Someone suggested to fill chambers with liquid/expanding foam. That would ensure entire chamber to be filled and would be much quicker to do than cutting and fitting these panels. Yes - but it would be a messy job. Besides - I want to have possibility to remove the foam if I would need to access these chambers. Even with seat risers and all battens around I will be able to extract panels. Digging in hardened foam would be a miserable activity.

Another possibility could be to fill chambers with styrofoam “chips” - these which are used to secure packages. They would fill the space entirely so no cutting and fitting needed. Extracting them is easy. But will there not be a lot of air pockets in between these chips? Pockets which will fill with water should the boat capsize?
I need to check this option.

Anyway - during the week I plan to install rub- and gunwales. Weekend, if it will be warm enough, will be used for epoxy coating the interior.