Seats

Here are a few shots of the seats. These all came together quite quickly other than of course cutting the recess for the stringers. I wish I could give you some good advice on how to do this but I can't. The best I can do is to say sharpen your tools and place your work bench close to your boat because getting this to look good is a slow and patient process involving a lot of testing and then back to the bench.

Oh, chalk; this would be my piece of advice. Cover the stringer with chalk so you can see where the seat is touching the stringer.

To set the locations of the seat supports you first need to level the boat on its water line and athwart ships. I have a self leveling laser that really helps with doing this type of thing. Once it was level I moved it inside the boat and marked all of the support locations.

I am going to put an 1/8 inch veneer on the fore and aft seats so that the wood matches all of the way through the boat on the seats. To do this I had to lift the seats all around this height. The other benefit of this was in fitting the plywood to these areas. I used the tick stick method but still found that I couldn't get a really good fit. However the veneers are only 4 inches wide so fitting these is a lot easier to get a good finish.

Breast hook

My approach to the breast hook is a bit different to what Arch describes. For a start I laminated the block up from two pieces of 3/4 inch Fijian Kauri with the grain running at right angles.

Rather than scribing the lines on the block and shifting them as Arch describes I started by making a template from some ply scrap. This gave me an exact pattern at the top of the sheer. I then copied this onto the bottom of the block. I cut the block on the bandsaw to these lines square to the block surface.

One little amendment to this is due to the angle of the stem and the fact that the top of the block is 1/4 inch above the sheer. To account for this the top edge against the stem needs to be moved forward, 1/8 inch in my case.

Next I cut the angle to match the back of the stem. In my case this meant moving the line under the block back 3/4 an inch. I cut down to this line with a saw and chiseled out the waste. From here I was ready to cut the angle on the side of the breast hook to match the angle of the sheer. First I scribed a line 1/4 down from the top surface, the level of the top of the sheer. I then set the bandsaw to the angle of the sheer and cut the edges of the breast hook so that the top of the cut was 1/4 from the top surface.

Perfect fit! All that was left to do was plane the camber into the top of the breast hook to bring the edges down to the top of the sheer.

In the end I think this was a good way of doing this as I was confident that the block would be the correct shape rather than risking moving several lines. However having never done the latter then I’m not sure how difficult it would be.

Turn over day!

The day finally arrived where I could turn here over. After two coats of epoxy it was looking great and all that was required was a few more hands and a few bubbles of course.
Finally outside and looking great. This is the first time I could stand back and look at the boat and appreciate the length.
Now with that done it is time for a drink all round.

Rudder and Tiller

I built the rudder over Christmas in between too much food and beer. To build the rudder I diverted from the instructions a bit. First I created a board using some Fijian Kauri and Tasmanian Oak. Next I made a template from plywood from the dimensions on the plan. I used the template to mark out the rudder on the board and cut it close to the line with the bandsaw. I then used the template to trim the board to its final shape with the router.

Next I marked on the rudder the cutout for the tiller and the bottom edge of the cheeks. I then attached the cheeks to the rudder with screws above and below the tiller slot and then trimmed the cheeks to shape using the router. I then removed the cheeks and used the bandsaw to cut the rudder into its three peices.

Here is the end of my tiller. Probably a bit much for a small boat but it was a bit of fun doing it.

Deadwood and stem facing

To complete the deadwood required a 1 inch think plank about 7 inches wide and 12 foot long. This wouldn't have been a problem back in Auckland but being new to Melbourne it took a while to find a timber merchant that had Fijian Kauri. Eventually I found a great one that had all sorts of exotic woods. Very exciting for a boat builder, maybe a bit boring for others.

The deadwood was very easy to shape and attach to the boat, however it did expose a problem with the flat I had planned along the keel earlier. It wasn't quite straight near the stern which required a bit of filling.

The stem facing went on great. When I planned it down to the lines as per the plan it lined up beautiful with the planks. It ones of those parts of the boat that people cannot help touching when they see it.

Planking, planking, more planking

Well I haven't posted in a while but as you will see I have been busy. Busy planking that is. I must say that after a while this gets very boring but its good to see the boat growing.

Cleaning up excess glue is a painful job but now I've turned her over I appreciate the time taken to remove most of it while wet.

The scarfe joints have gone together well. They look better on the inside than the outside so its is good I am not finishing bright on the outside.

Here are a few more shots of the planking as it progresses.