Week 20 before launch - Producing the 4th and 5th planks

 

 

20.07.-26.07.15

Producing the 4th and 5th planks

As we decided to get the opportunity to work on every boat Ant and Mark joined me this week and Ross changed to Stevens 12 1/2 Hereshoff.

We started the week making the templates for planks Nr. 4 & Nr. 5 and cutting the pieces plywood we would need. The procedure was the same as described before and Tuesday morning we had the glued planks ready to be shaped. But....

Ant and Mark working with my dustpreventing
multifunctional  routerhousjig ver.1.2.5

I had the idea, to glue the scarfs with epoxy without added Silica to get bright finished nice gluelines. Good idea but bad mistake. While shaping the planks Ant realized some large gaps inside the scarfs and we found them glued together very badly. After some discussions the decision was felt ....

 

The rescarfed and repaired plank no 4 already glued

 "Cutting the scarfs, clean up and plane them new"

                                                                                                                                                                To loose not too much time we glued the planks and scarfs already on the hull and so on Tuesday evenening the planks were placed  and we could start plank No 5....

...which was sucessful finished on Thursday evening.

After trying different techniques we came back to good old handwork and started scarfing the planks manually again. Only one thing we changed. We piled all 3 plankpieces and scarfed them all in one. A sweaty but also very fast and accurate method.  

 

Week 21 before launch - Planing down the garboard, producing the 3rd planks, producing the keel

13.07.-19.07.15

Planing down the garboard, producing the two 3rd planks, producing the keel

 

This week I started with great ambitions. On Sunday I made a scarfing jig for the router hoping as to be faster in producing the single planks. Parallel to the planking was the further work on the keel part of the program. Soon I realized that my (well working) jig was to small for my following planks cause of the always varying scarf angles.

Planing down the left overlap of the garboard and plank

The first two days of the week Mike (one of our intructors) helped me to plane down the garboard overlap on the hog, to get a smooth and flat surface for the Iroco-keel to be fitted on later.

Ross while working on the skeg

Ross shaped the keel to the rabbet-line. It was a hard piece of work, cause the 130mm width and more than 2000mm long piece of laminated wood needed very intensive chisel- and planework. At the end of the week  (Friday) Ross told me tired but very proud to have finished his work.

The positioned skeg

I wasn´t as successful. The already last week started production of the 3rd plank was finished Monday evening. Happily I put it on the hull...... jet it didn`t fit...... I tried again and again..... but had to realize: the shape was wrong, the lines didn´t match the marked hull points. I was definitely frustrated.

Plank No3 waiting to be shaped

Tuesday I started to produce a new template. The same procedure from the beginning but with my new and now larger router jig ver2.1.3. I finally got both planks number 3 ready.

Sunday evening the planks were glued and also the aft keel-part was nearly finished after I had shaped it with the power planer.

At least it was a successful week although I hadn´t reached my target, which would have been plank Nr. 5 at the end of the week. 

Next week ....

Week 22 before launch - Producing 2nd garboard/2nd planks & starting the keel-production

06.07.-12.07.15 

Producing the second garboard + 2nd planks & starting the keel-production

On Monday I wanted to fit the garboards, but Ross needed me to prepare the Iroko-pieces for the keel. Pete started to scarf the 2nd garboard-pieces.

In the evening again Eva helped me to glue the garboard.

On Tuesday I again wanted to finish the garboards but I managed only to fit the first one. At least we managed to do that. The two next (2nd planks) were projected to be scarfed and glued. But only one was. It ooks as if a lot of weekend hours will be needed in the future.

On Wednesday things began to flow. We started to produce the template for the 2nd planks and in the evening I happily could say "Hey, the two garboards are glued onto the hog and one plank is already waiting to be cut and shaped"

Marking the bevel nedeed for the landing

 




To fit the planks perfectly onto the moulds it was necessary to flatten the moulds for the planks. The second point was to bevel the garboard to allow the following planks to sit on a bed (the landing or overlap). To get the right bevel I used a fidd as shown on the picture. The overlap is twice the plank thickness as is the gap on the fidd.

The two planks, one already finished, the second waiting to be copied with the router.

To get the correct shape it is necessary to produce EXTREME  accurate templates as I realized a few days later. Never try to hurry!

Here you can see the two planks fitted and waiting to be glued.

Week 23 before launch - Inner stems, hog & 1st garboard

29.06.-05.07.15

Inner Stems, hog & producing the first garboard plank

Adapting the hog to the stems

The backbone consists of  the two inner stems and the hog. The hog is the base where the garboards (the first and lowest planks) will be glued onto. 

To get a smooth curve from the hog to the stems to be connected I drew on the hog the extended line of the stems and  carved a lot of small grooves to make it easier to chisel it down.

The result - stem & fitted hog

Sometimes you have to do something which does not really need to be done. For example putting the outer stem onto the inner stem - just to see how it will look. In the gap between the outer stem and innerstem/hog the keel will later be fitted.

aft stems

bow stems

Leveling the hog to the moulds

The next step was to bevel the hog over the whole length to the level of the moulds.

The line from the hog to moulds has to be smooth so the garboard can adapt perfectly to them. This process has to be done very carefully because the sailing performance of a boat depends on a large percentage on the lining of these planks.

After leveling the hog to the moulds we had to do the same with the stems. The planks have to fit to the stems at a certain angle, which changes constantly over the whole length of the stem.

As a preparation therefore, we did "revolved sections" of the stems during the lofting. That means we constructed the angle of the incoming planks to the stems. That enabled us to plane the now required bevel on the stems.







On Thursday we started to line up the planks. (that means we divided the "boat hull" into 14 parts (7 each side) to find the best shape for the planks. To get nice and fair lines, we used long wooden battens. We came to a solution, which was a compromise between our results and the proposal of the designer Iain Ougthred.  This process of trial & error took a whole day.

By Friday evening I was behind my projectplan, the garboard pieces were cut, but far from being fitted as projected ;-) - so a couple of extra hours at the weekend were needed.

Friday evening  Eva assisted me in glueing the first garboard plank. Saturday I cleaned it and Sunday I started to fit it to the backbone.