Progress on boats goes somewhat like the progress when sailing. There are these periods where we seem to be racing along, and others where we're working, but not much progress is visible.
These days it seems like racing, but it could just be that I've been somewhat remiss in my blogging duties. Looking over the recent photos, there's LOTS to post here. Let's get to it.
First of all, a few more photos of the shutter party from Emily Ferguson.
© 2008 Emily L. Ferguson
Sigh. Perfectly good whiskey...
© 2008 Emily L. Ferguson
Robin and David do the final attaching.
Thanks Emily! You can find more of Emily's work at her online gallery.
One of the tricky things about this stage of working on the boat is installing the floors and frames that couldn't be installed when the molds were in the way. I showed you some photos of the floors that we've been tuning up to fit into the boat, but what I didn't really show is how tight the quarters are for this work.
For instance, up at the bow,
there isn't just a lot of room to work. You can see that there's a gap between the first frame and the next three frames aft of it... that's where we need to install a new pair of frames and a new floor.
The biggest difficulty, however, has been fastening the floors to the frames. You may recall that the floors are each bolted to the frames. These bolts run sideways through the frames into the floors.
When the planking wasn't yet on the boat, it was an easy matter to drill up through the frames and into the floors from outside of the boat. Now it's a different story. First of all, there is about 4" between the floors and next set of frames.
That makes it very hard to get a drill in there. We're using a right angle drill with the most compact head that I know about, a Makita, with a shortened drill bit to get into the space.
The problem is that you have to drill essentially blind at an angle through the floor so that you come out in the center of the adjoining frame.
If you angle too steeply you'll drill into the planking; too shallow and you come through the top of the frame. No do-overs. Yes, it's hairy at first, but after drilling about a dozen of these things... it remains hairy. Never the less, we took deep breaths, called on our inner Zen boatbuilder, and went for it. As you can see, they came out pretty dang nicely.
Then Karl had to go and ruin all the tension by finding a very nifty little device
that attaches to a normal drill and allows you to get close enough to drill straight through from the frame into the floor, thereby eliminating the problem of coming out of the frame badly. These kids and their newfangled tools...
After the holes are drilled between the floors and frames, we through bolt them together. Then comes the other mildly tricky part... cutting off the excess threaded bolt protruding through the nut. You don't have any room to get a hacksaw in here, and you really don't want to ding up your planking by running a reciprocating saw into it. Using an angle grinder is ok, but it tends to heat up the bolt quite a bit. My favorite tool for this kind of situation is the Fein Multimaster.
It cuts by vibrating a saw blade very quickly, the same way that the saws used to cut the plaster cast off of your arm work. If the vibrating blade touches something flexible, like your skin, it doesn't cut like a rotating blade would... mostly it just tickles. When you get a vibrating blade like this in contact with something solid, however, it's a whole different deal. It cuts very nicely and with a great deal of control.
Just in case, though, we like to put something between the bolts and the planking to protect it from errant saw blades. A flattened section of soup can works nicely.
Of course, you can't attach all these frames and floors until you finish framing the boat! That's right, with the molds out of the way, there are a number of frames to be cut, steamed, and installed. We started with some frames that had been cut about a week earlier, and all but one of them broke. It was a very sad day in boat builder world. I guess they dried out enough in just that short a time. So, back to the saw.
Nothing like cutting frames from 2" thick chunks of frozen oak. Mmm, now that's a good time.
However, freshly cut frames are just what the doctor ordered, and we hardly had any failures from this batch.
It can be a little tricky installing frames in a boat that's already planked. You have to make sure that you've accurately marked where your frames are going to go on both the inside and outside of the boat for one thing. That way, when you start drilling your pilot holes for the screws from the outside of the planking, you actually go into a frame rather than into mid air.
Here you can see the location of the frame has been marked out on the inside of the boat in preparation for the hot frame that's coming from the steam box.
Once that frame gets in the boat, there's the problem of how to hold it in place while the person on the outside of the hull drills and screws it down. We give it a pre-bend before handing it up into the boat to help, but it still has some spring to it. It doesn't lay down in the boat like Play Doh.
We drive the frame down into the socket in the keel first, bend the frame against the planking, clamp the top of the frame to the ribband that's above the sheer, and pound it down a little more to force it against the planking. Then we get serious.
The diagonal stick of wood with the orange clamp on it is being wedged up against the frame we're installing. The clamp pulls the stick upwards against the frame, while its other end is held in place with a C clamp. This exerts quite a bit of force against the frame and keeps it pressed tightly against the planking while we fasten through the hull.
As we worked aft, the area we had to work in got smaller and smaller until only one person could fit inside the boat.
But, with much less fanfare than at the shutter party, the last frame went in and we were suddenly done. It's too bad we'll be shutting down the steam box, the heat was nice...
David's been working on the caulking these past few days. The process starts with getting your cotton straightened out and wound into tidy bundles.
He likes to run 4 lines at a time. It saves having to go back and forth, back and forth along the boat.
We leave the ends free along the rabbet at this point.
Later, we'll run a seam of caulking down the rabbet and twist into each of these tails. Appropriate, given how much these little tufts look like rabbet tails...
Caulking is a good job for a cold shop. It keeps you warm.
The process goes like this:
caulk the tightest seams first. The planks will move a little bit, so this tends to tighten up the more open seams.
Move along the length of the boat driving about 6" of caulking in enough to make it stay in the seam.
And then go back over what you just did, driving it down to the bottom of your caulking bevel.
Seems easy, but it takes practice to get it just right. There's even a caulker's union for folks who do this full time.
While David's been hammering away, we've removed the final molds from inside of the boat. At last, it's a clear shot from stem to stern.
This really is one nice looking boat.