Landing School Boat Launching

A great week of learning, teaching and boat launching last week at The Landing School where I instruct in the Wooden Boatbuilding Program. These students just launched a Joel White designed Maine Coast Peapod. It performed great at the launch last Friday. We enjoyed a jaunt in the Kennebunk River during a small craft advisory. We ducked out into some of the swell, three of us aboard, to see how mannerly a Peapod is in these conditions. Even I was struck -- again -- by how well behaved a sea boat the 'pod can be, whether bow to or stern to the waves. We turned around and rushed in with the swell and tide as the regular Fall start students watched on and snapped photos.

With most of my work in plywood, CNC cutting and making boat kits, it is a joy to help students learn to build a boat in solid wood and one that does not depend on epoxy for holding it all together or fairing over mistakes!

Finer points of final assembly.

Check out the Programs at The Landing School on the Rocky Coast of Maine.

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Whiskey Plank

Progress slowed somewhat due to family considerations around Christmas and New Year.  However, I finally got around to cutting the sheer strakes for my Somes Sound.  I had to break into a new sheet of plywood, as the remaining scarfed planking stock was too narrow to fit my final sheer planks.  So I had to scarf some new stock and cut the strakes from this.

I fitted the strake on the starboard side today which seem to fit very accurately.  John Brooks states in his book, Glues Lapstrake Wooden Boats, that by the time you get to the final strake you will be an expert at planking- can't say I am an expert, but for sure the final planks go one more confidently that the garboards!

It's a traditionally styled boat, and as far as I understand it is tradition to celebrate the final plank with a whiskey!  So the bottle is ready, but until we get the final strake onto the boat, it will remain unopened...
.

I also started building my centre board trunk.  It's quite an enjoyable break from the routine of planking, which is quite repetitive.  The plans include full sized drawings of the trunk, so it was reasonably straightforward to create a template in 1/4" ply and use this to create the trunk sides using a flush trim router.  I say "reasonably" because it did take a while to comprehend the new terminology - trunk posts, trunk logs, trunk log cleats, etc..etc.!

Similarly I used the finished trunk sized as a template to finish the trunk posts and ensure that the trunk ends align perfectly.

I'm hoping to get the trunk completed this week-end and get the final strake fitted.

Rough cut centre board post awaiting final  flush trimming

For those of you who are similarly about to embark on building your first wooden boat, I can vouch for the advice which I received that as you move through the project, some of the mist clears and things become more comprehensible as you progress.  I'm hoping that this optimism on my part is not misplaced!

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Found Building a strong back for a cedar strip canoe

HOMEMADE WOODWORKING TOOLS

Strip Built Kayak

Sample picture only for illustration Building a strong back for a cedar strip canoe

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Access Building a strong back for a cedar strip canoe

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Hull Painting

Spent quite a while sanding and filling and fairing the lead keel into the hull. Spent a whole day dusting and vacuuming the shop to eliminate as mush dust as possible.  Then I hung a polythene tent over the hull to prevent any further dust from landing on it.

I heated up the hull by using an infrared panel underneath the hull.  Then tack ragged the hull.  Afterwards, I applied two different types of primer - one which is specified for under water which looks like silver paint and the other primer an aluminium primer for the top sides.

I applied 3 coats of primer and lightly sanded in between.
 Next I applied a top coat of Hempels Brilliant Enamel.  The first coat went on very watery - I had thinned it about 10%.  It ran and sagged and looked awful!  So I lightly sanded it back and applied a second coat un-thinned this time.  It dried to a nice shinny colour, but the finish was poor - t looked like leather!  So I called the Hempel technical department who suggested my paint was probably stored too cold before use.  They suggested I store the paint in the house to bring it slowly up to room temperature and not to thin it during application.  I have been using high quality brushes, so it's a bit disappointing getting such a poor finish.

With Brian's help, I have since sanded down the second coat to a flat uniform finish and am pondering how to apply the top coat.  I'm thinking that I have too much a differential in temperature between the hull (about 15degC) (which is heated from underneath) and the ambient temperature 10degC and the paint which was probably a few degrees lower again.

More trial & horror!

In between, I steamed some ash again to make a new tiller - the first version was unsatisfactory.  I found I had a lot of spring back because the wood had probably cooled too much before I had it bent onto the formers.  So I re-steamed it, and to my surprise it straightened out completely and then bent much more easily onto the former.  I haven't yet unclamped it, but I'm hopeful for a better result.

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How to get Stitch and glue sea kayak plans

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Sails & Trailer

Some good progress to report since my last post.  I installed the centre board having applied several primer coats to the inside of the centre board case and 2 coats of antifoul.  Some smaller jobs were finished such as installing the traveller on the transom.  Next up was to make new mast tangs for the shrouds.

Then a call came for the sailmaker, Yannick Lemmonier,  to say that my sails were ready and he could come to fit them, to make sure they fitted correctly.

Yannick had already sent me a sail design viewer with his designs for my boat, which were very interesting:-

And here they are in real life:-

Here is the jib with Yanick Lemmonier from West Sails in the background.  Yannick took great care in every detail to make a beautiful suit of sails.  I was curious to see the batten in the jib and apparently a small roach cut in as well.

Here you can see the mail sail being hoisted - a very satisfying moment!

Spurned on by this progress, I set about enlisting my friend Brendan to help build a trailer.  We had looked at a number of commercial designs but all need some modification and our local galvanizing company will not galvanize any metal which has already been galvanized, so if modifications were made they would leave the structure susceptible to rusting.  So nothing for it but to order up the steel and trailer components.  We used some of the original molds to allow us accurately site the hull supports.  Having the boat plans to hand was very useful in deciding dimensions.

Here are some photos of the trailer nearly completed - just needs to be fitted to the boat to make sure it works and then off to get galvanized.

We designed the trailer with an extendable tongue which consists of 60mm box section sitting inside a 70mm section, and secured in place by two removable pins.   The bunks are adjustable and the rear bunks are designed to be removable so that they are clipped off before launch and retrieve.

In this next photo you can see where the extension tongue is held inside the larger box section for on the road towing and when these pins are removed you can extend the tongue to various lengths to suit the launch ramp - hopefully this will allow us launch without launching the tow car as well!

Tow coupling hitch is bolted to the inner box section which is nested within the main centre channel of the trailer

Adjustable and removable rear bunks with magnetic real lights

Adjustable mast support and winch assembly for bow of boat.

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Oars and Rowing at the Wooden Boat School

Clint will be teaching his Traditional and Modern Oarmaking course at the Wooden Boat School in July 2010. There are a huge number of wonderful course offerings up there this year and Clint is proud and honored to be a part of the scene.

Students will leave the course with actual, usable, and beautiful oars to put on the gunwales of there boats and go rowing. If anybody wants to make a paddle instead, the skills and processes involved are no different from oar making and we'd be happy to have you in the course.

You can visit Wooden Boat School's on-line course catalog for more information and also see my website for more information about our line of oars, stock and custom made.

Clint Chase Boatbuilder -- Oars

Wooden Boat School -- Oarmaking Course

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