With the successful launch of Perseverance last weekend at G9 behind me, its time to get back to work on getting the little boat finished.

Yesterday, I applied the 2nd coat of epoxy to the center third of the interior, as well as the remaining length of the sheers. This area is now ready to be painted.

This area between frames #1 and #2 is ready to be painted.

The aft third of the interior still needs a 2nd coat of epoxy.

Read More..

Eight days to the G9 Boatbuilder Gathering. Today I checked the tracking on my shipment of epoxy. Its not due to arrive for another 5 days.

As much as I had hoped to have "Perseverance" ready or usable in time to take it to G9, Im beginning to think thats not going to happen. Im also beginning to not worry about it, either. Truly, whats the rush? Its not a competition. Yes, Id be disappointed this year to not be able to show my boat to other builders who have inspired and encouraged me along the way. But, if the boats not ready yet... then its just not. Im not gonna stress out about it. 

Still, Im going to keep pushing forward & well see what happens.

So... Todays update:

Ive started painting the interior of the hull. I also bought or ordered more hardware and supplies necessary for the completion and usage of the boat:

• Stainless steel eye-bolt
• 2 fenders
• 2 fender lines
• 2 dock lines
• 2 Stainless steel fender cleats
• 1 Stainless steel 6" Herreshoff cleat (for the deck)
• more stainless steel screws
• Z-Spar Captains Varnish
• Perko oarlock sockets
• Perko oarlocks

This eye bolt will be mounted to one of the transom knees. It will be used to attach a safety line to the outboard motor, in case the motor vibrates free from the transom. I got this idea from the Utility that I got to drive at last years boatbuilder gathering (G8).

First coat of Whitbey White brushed onto the forward section of the hull.

Read More..

June is upon us, and with it my daughters birthday, as well as the arrival of the stifling summer heat and humidity were "blessed" with here in the south. Ah well... Every day above ground is a good day, and this day is off to a great start.

It was a beautiful, clear morning as I drove on traffic-less back roads, listening to Aaron Copelands Third Symphony (possibly the greatest piece of American music) on the radio. Passing a faded American flag, backlit by the early morning sun, I thought of my grandfather and the hardships he endured during the 1940s... and of how, with the nightmare of the war behind him, he used to drool over 1950s Chris-Crafts at a local boat dealer. I only learned about that recently, along with the fact that hed contemplated building his own boat.

But, Im digressing.

The Sheers:

"Youll never have enough clamps." Start building a boat, and youre going to hear this early-on from other boatbuilders. By the time you get to installing your sheer clamps, youre going to need them. (I wonder if thats why theyre called sheer "clamps"?)

Sheer clamps, also frequently referred to as "sheers," are the long boards that form the top rim of the sides of the boat. They extend from the outer corners of the transom, and meet at the stem, forming the pointed bow of the boat.

In any case, the Irwin "Quick Grip" bar clamps youll see a lot of in my photos are great all-around clamps. They arent perfect, however, nor are they indestructible. Although I had many 6" and 12" sizes of them by the time I was ready to install my sheers, I still needed to get larger 24" clamps of both the Quick Grip and standard bar clamp varieties. The 24" Quick Grip clamps were perfect for holding the sheers upward into position. But, this style of clamp just couldnt complete the bend of the sheers up forward. For this, the standard bar clamps do a much better job.

Sheer clamp notch in the transom frame. This shallow notch would later pose its own challenge.

A 24" Quick Grip clamp (back) holds the sheer upward into position. A 6" clamp (front) is being used as a lever to twist the sheer into the required vertical orientation.

A 24" standard bar clamp holds the forward tip of the sheer into its fully-curved position against the breasthook and stem.

The stock for the sheer clamps themselves was again Southern Yellow Pine, as with the chine logs. This was for the same reasons of the wood being both inexpensive and easy to bend. The sheers are built from two layers of 1-1/4" x 5/8" x 12 material. I ripped the 4 strips from a 12 "1x6" board from Lowes that had fairly vertical grain. Of course, a so-called "1x6" is in reality only 3/4" thick. I planed the 4 pieces down from 3/4" to 5/8" using a small planer/jointer my dad bought from Harbor Freight. In retrospect, I probably shouldve planed down the board first, then ripped the 4 pieces.

Overall fitting of the sheers was easier than the chines. The bevel in the forward frame notch was milder for the sheer than was needed for the chines. Unlike the chine, which twists as it bends, the sheer is supposed to remain in a vertical orientation.

Prior to bending the sheers fully, I wrapped towels around the wood and poured boiling water on them, then let them soak a while. After doing this a couple of times over the course of a couple of hours, the sheers bent easily into place. I measured the angle at the junction of the breasthook and stem, and used this as a guide to cut the forward tip of the sheers. After some additional fitting, I clamped the sheers into place and let them sit overnight. Later, I drilled holes & screwed them into position at the breasthook, frame #2, and frame #1.

I could not determine a way to drive screws through the sheer and into the transom frame, however. This was due to the shallow nature of the transom frames sheer notch. Rather than drive a screw through the back of the transom and into the end grain of the sheer, I decided to simply let the epoxy hold it for the time being.

The instructions state that you need to drive screws through both sheer layers & into the frames. However, I did not see a way to hold the sheer into place long enough to let the epoxy dry without driving screws into the frames. This was particularly the case because I had to force the sheers into a vertical orientation by using bar clamps as levers, as shown above.

Once the first sheer layer had been fitted, it was time to disassemble, add thickened epoxy, and re-assemble. I used System Three Gel Magic, thickened with mahogany sawdust. I attached the sheers at the breasthook and frame #2 first. Then later, after the epoxy cured at those joints, I finished the aft section.

Forward tip of starboard sheer (layer 1) attached.

Forward tip of port sheer (layer 1) attached.

After the first layer was on, I sanded it in preparation for adding the second layer. Fitting the second layer was easier, since it basically just had to lay on top of the first. This is where you need a lot of clamps!

Soaking the forward end of sheer layer #2.

Starboard sheer layer 2 bent & fitted into position.

2" silicon bronze screws were staggered between those used to attach layer #1.

Disassembled & ready for epoxy.

Waiting for the epoxy to cure. I used Glen-L Poxy Shield thickened with #2 silica and mahogany sawdust.

Et voilà!

Since layer 1 was screwed directly to the frames, I drove 1-1/4" silicon bronze screws through both sheer layers on either side of each frame. I hope I countersunk these adequately for fairing.

Repeat for the port side.

Both layers on & laminated!

Read More..

September 15, 2015

After sailing the boat on several longer sails in a variety of wind conditions,  and also with and without crew of varying experience, some changes need to be made.

1.  Reefing:  I need to install additional downhauls and jiffy reefing in order to instantly reef when sailing single handed.  Right now,  I need to crawl to the bow, redo the tack, and take the sprit off the clew and move it up.  Way too long and dangerous if I fall out!

Update, Sept. 26th:  Added mizzen downhaul for the main and the mizzen, both are on the port side of the boat.  Process is as follows, takes 2 minutes per sail:

1. head onto port tack 
2. drop mizzen
3. loosen snotter
4. cleat mizzen reefing downhaul
5. move sprit to next reef clew. 
6. raise mizzen 
7. set downhaul
8. set snotter

Go to Starboard tack and repeat with main.  

main reefing downhaul set permanently in reef tack on sail.  

mizzen reefing downhaul is just below snotter.  

2.  The mainsheet is awkward, and people have a tendency to sit on the sheet while sailing downwind.  I have ordered two swivel cams to take the place of the stand up blocks, fairleads, and clam cleats.

Update, September 26th:  got the Harken rotating cam cleats for port and starboard and now the mainsheet control is much simpler.  Guests will be hard pressed to be sitting on the sheet now.

Harken cams on rotating base.  Tough to sit on!  

3.  The stern cam cleats for the mizzen are about 1/4" too high.  I need to lower these just enough to allow the tiller to pass over.  I could then turn on a dime.

sept 26th - done

A small cut in the coaming made with the multi-tool did the trick.  Unfortunately, the screws no longer were in the mahogany blocking and necessitated a hard to find #10X3" stainless screw.  A 3/8" plywood block is added below to shore it up.  

4.  bring the vertical trailer posts in  a little to center the boat better on the bunks. (not done yet.

5.  Put some finger grabs on the starboard platform/floorboard. (not done)

6.  Added some cleats to the stern bulkhead to serve as a tie down for the masts, and also a place to tie off the tiller when I need an extra hand for the boat, or if I want to heave to.

The boat is great otherwise, and a blast to sail.

Read More..

It used to be that the only way to get your memoir published was to be a famous person or an interesting writer or to have such an interesting life that someone else wanted to write your memoir for you, as told to style. The truth is that a lot of people have had interesting lives and it is too bad that more of them dont write memoirs, but then, what would we do with billions of memoirs.  Where would we store them all?  And if you think about it, a lot of the memoirs would be more or less similar or at least that is what people think.  And so, hardly anyone writes memoirs at least in statistically significant numbers and instead of there being a vast and repetitive glut of memoirs, theres a vast array of lives that have never been documented in print.
So it seems that Andrew Gronholdt had the sense that his life lived mostly in the Aleutians during a time when traditional Aleut culture was rapidly being overcome by the mainstream American culture might be worth putting down in writing.  Apparently, Gronholdt worked at his memoirs but but died without getting them published.  According to the book, Gronholdts daugher, Sharon Gronholdt and her friend, Mike Livingston decided to edit Andrews writings, lay out the book, add photos, many of them taken by Andrew and publish the book themselves though Blurb, a print on demand publisher.
So there it is.  Mike Livingston sent me a copy.  I have leafed through it, looked at the pictures and started reading it.
The title and the cover picture both made me think that the book was primarily about bent wood hat making.  But it isnt.  Its about Andrew Gronholdts life just off the Alaska Peninsula in the north Pacific in the Shumagin Islands, the place where Vitus Bering discovered Alaska and sea otters and set off the chain reaction that led to the colonization of Alaska by the Russians.
The Russians sold Alaska to the Americans who then began to work on Americanizing the native population.  By the time that Andrew Gronholdt was born, the Americanization was just about complete and much or even most of the Aleut culture was disappearing.  Andrew Gronholdt, however, must have had a sense that the culture needed preserving or in the case of wooden hat making, reviving from the death it had suffered a few decades earlier.
The book is lavishly illustrated with photos as well as some of Andrew Gronholdts sketches and working designs for various Aleut inventions, not only the hats but also bailing pumps, fox traps and other things that Andrew was interested in.
The book at a price of $109 a copy is probably not within everyones budget, but if you are interested in Aleut or Alaskan history at the beginning of the twentieth century, you may want to talk your library into getting a copy. Or if you do have the $109 you can get a copy at Blurb.
By the way if you think your own life or the life of someone you know is worth documenting, co-editor Mike Livingston encourages readers to just do it and put together a book and publish it through Blurb or one of the other self-publishing houses.  We probably dont need everyone to write a memoir but a few more might give the humans of the future a bigger window into the past.

Read More..

One of my readers sent me some photos of chairs made in Mexico by traditional means.

Full view of the chair.

Lashed construction holds the parts together

Lashings hold uprights to the bottom ring.

He writes in part,
I recently got back from a trip to Mexico visiting my wifes family. When down there we saw a style of furniture construction which reminded me of skin on frame, in that it involves multiple relatively poor quality pieces of lumber lashed together in a way that makes it both strong enough to do its job and is also very resilient to impacts. It seems to me that this chair and SOF (bicycle wheels as well) are so strong is because loads and impacts are dissipated by transferred them to multiple small, relatively weak, parts instead of concentrating them on one part that must be thus very strong. The type of furniture is called Equipale and was very common in the state of Jalisco. (I do not know if it is a regional style or a national one).
And Im adding some photos of two chairs of ours that were falling apart because the glue was coming undone. These were chairs where the parts were held together with glued dowels.  The glue failed and the dowels pulled out of their mortises one evening at dinner while a friend of ours was sitting on one of these chairs.  The dowels were still stuck on one end and drilling them out would have been tricky so I just reassembled the parts and lashed around the joints.  The chairs now have some movement in them since the lashings dont make completely rigid joints, but overall, they are hanging together.
This isnt skin on frame technology, but it is lashed and doweled construction where lashings take the place of glue or screws  to hold parts together.

Here I reenforced each doweled joint with a lashing.  Even if the glue fails, the joints will not pull apart.  The string lashings function like ligaments in animal joints.

Here, my lashings pull all the legs toward the center.  This approach is less work than lashing each joint individually. Now that I look at this photo, Im thinking that I should paint the lashing some color other than white.

Postscript: I first saw these two chairs at a neighbors yard sale.  I didnt care enough for them to buy them but picked up some lamps.  Next morning the chairs sat out in the alley next to his dumpster so I grabbed them.  Painted one red and the other one blue and reupholstered the seats in yellow vinyl. Subsequently painted the blue chair orange.  I believe the chairs now have a few more decades of life in them.

Read More..

Ive had two different prototype paddles kicking around for a while that I was not able to get to the point where I liked them.  What I typically do when I build new paddle designs is to overbuild them and then whittle away at them until they work to my satisfaction, or at least until their performance does not improve any more. Sometimes, it is just not possible to rescue a paddle design.  I have to walk away from some paddles and simply write them off as a learning experience. I generally have no idea how a new paddle will work until I actually try it out.  I would like to say that the more paddles I build, the better I get at predicting paddle performance, but I would be lying.  The only way I can tell what design will work is to actually build it and try it out. 

 

I should also mention that a paddle must be matched to the boat as well as the paddler to perform well.  A paddle is not a good paddle in the abstract.  A paddle is a good paddle only for a specific set of conditions.  In this case, I happened to have my King Island kayak readily available and that became the test platform.  The King Island kayak was fairly well suited to this particular paddle test because the King Island kayaks high deck calls for long paddles and the set of paddles I was testing were fairly long, 98 inches.  I had already modified both paddles based on previous tests. One paddle had started out at 102 inches long and I cut it down and the other had a loom that was way too fat for comfortable use and I had slimmed down the loom on it.  The thing about the fat loom was that it felt good in the shop, but out on the water in action, it was just too bulky.

Heres a shot of the inside of the King Island kayak. Note the high deck ridge.  The thing about a high deck is that it forces you to hold the paddle up higher which means that it has to be longer to reach the water.

And here is a shot of the two test paddles on the deck of the kayak.  The lower paddle was based on a paddle shown in an old illustration. The upper paddle is a breakdown version of a more conventional Unangan shape except for the loom.

Both paddles are versions of an Unangan (Aleut) design. The Unangan paddles are asymmetrical with the loom offset from the plane of the blades. 
And so I had my test paddles, test boat and test pond, San Francisco Bay.  Even though I had whittled away at both paddles and tried to improve their feel, I preferred the one piece paddle because it was lighter and seemed to move the boat with less effort.  The breakdown paddle felt heavy and more ponderous in the water. 
After the initial test I did a little more whittling and then took out both paddles again and this time I had my GPS with me.  The GPS gives me a speed readout which I can use to measure top speed for a boat or paddle and if I have two or more paddles, it gives me top speed for comparative effort.  Effort expended is pretty much a subjective measure but on a given outing, swapping paddles back and forth several times gives me a pretty good idea of comparative efficiency of two paddles.
And this is where the GPS comes in.  Although one paddle may feel better than another the one that feels worse may actually be giving me a better top speed. It may feel worse because it moves more water and makes me work harder.  But if I am simply cruising, comfortable feel of a paddle may be more important than top speed. Comfortable feel may also be an indication of better efficiency of one paddle over another. 
So to sum up, paddle design for me is a pragmatic exercise.  I have to test paddles on the water to tell whether they are any good and results are often surprising.  In a future blog, I will get more specific on factors that make for a good match between paddler, boat and paddle.

Read More..