Dynel on deck

As promised, here are a couple of photos of the decks covered in Dynel (glued on with epoxy):

I'm gluing on the Dynel in four pieces, here I'm cutting out the port-side deck piece.  

All the pieces on the boat...but not trimmed as yet.

Corner before trimming...

Corner after trimming, hey that looks better.  The Dynel cloth--which is soft and bends easily--wraps around the the edge of the 1/4" ply deck.

The completed job.

Forward view.  Note that the rubrails will cover the screw holes along the top of the sheerstrake.  With the toerail to go on soon, I'll finally be able to trim down that stem, which I've left rough-cut for months.  That'll be a good day...

With the deck completed, hurrah, it's on to rubrails.  More on that later.  Plus I'm thinking of adding a little trim piece to the bottom of the sheerstrake.  No structural function, just for looks.  Plus there will be a small toerail on the foredeck.  Once that's done, the exterior hull will be complete, with interior work like seats, floorboards, etc. to go.  Plus gobs of finish work--and spars--of course!  So, until next time, it's goodnight from him.

Finishing off the deck

This week I finished off the deck, so here's a few photos of how it all came together.

This shot shows the various blocking pieces cut and fit.  These are made of scrap 1/4" ply left over from planking/decking, and they add strength to various key parts of the boat.  For example, the foredeck will support a mooring cleat and, of course, there will be a hole through the deck for the mast, so there's a fair amount of blocking in that area.

With the blocking done, I finished rough-cutting the various 1/4" ply deck pieces.  Here are all the pieces drilled for screws (little #6x3/4") and ready for glue up.

This is called a "jump stick".  It lets you "jump" over something to mark on the other side. In this case, I'm marking the inside edge of the plywood deck where it meets the carlin.

The shrouds will be attached using these 1/8"-thick bronze tangs which stick up through the deck.  Two bronze machine screws go through the clamps and, for good measure, the tangs are bent around and under the clamps. This transmits the load coming from the shroud directly to the clamp which is securely glued/screwed to the hull and decking.

Here are the four tangs, ready for installation.  Why not two, you ask, since there's only one pair of shrouds?  Well, for fun I'm going to have two "settings" for the shrouds:  a "single handing" setting using tangs along the sheer about one foot aft of the mast and a "racing" setting where the tangs are about four feet behind the mast.  The shrouds, which will be made of wire with rope tails or possibly a modern low-stretch rope like Spectra, will terminate at a cleat on the coamings (not at a conventional turnbuckle) so I suppose these would technically be called running backstays.  When in the "racing" setting, the shrouds will provide extra support to the top of the mast but also require resetting for each tack.  The "single handing" setting should provide more-than-adequate support and, importantly, won't require resetting when tacking.  In either case, the windward shroud can be slacked off if necessary while running.  Note that this feature is NOT shown on the Sail Plan at my Sketches and Plans page...which I'll update after the boat is done.

OK I'm finally ready to glue in the deck pieces!  I started with the forward triangular piece.  I broke the deck here so that I could reach forward under the deck to clean up any glue mess.  The deck is screwed down about every 18" with addition small ring nails as needed...but, as usual with this type of construction, the glue is doing most of the work. 

Here's the rest of the deck getting glued in place.  I'll put some epoxy putty in the various screw holes and dings and sand it smooth for the Dynel later on.

Well that's it for now.  Next time I'll have some photos of the Dynel going on the deck...plus the start of the spars.   I figure it's about time to start on those since they will need multiple coats of varnish and I don't want that to hold up the launch spars.  Plus it's a fun thing to do, so I don't mind getting started...  

The second plank goes on, some 'glassing, and (yes) more spiling

With the second plank cut out and test-fitted, next up is the 'glassing of the bottom and garboards.  Actually, I used Dynel cloth, epoxy-saturated, so I suppose 'glassing is not the right term.  But the process is the same:  cutting the fabric roughly to size, mixing up the epoxy, wetting out the cloth with resin, trimming off the excess cloth with a razor knife after the resin has dried a bit.

Here's the dynel cloth glued to the bottom/garboards.  I'd say dynel is easier to work with than fiberglass cloth, and some say it is more resistant to tearing.  In any case, epoxy-saturated dynel over 5/8" ply--not to mention the outer keel, which comes later--will be plenty rugged for this boat.  Note the blue tape around the edges that you can see under the dynel.  This prevents the epoxy from gluing the rough edges to the boat and gives a clear line for knifing off the excess cloth.

Here's the dynel job with the rough edges cut off.  Note that the dynel does NOT extend all the way to the end of  the plank.  That's because the last 1" is beveled for gluing to the next plank;  no need to dynel that part.

Here's plank number two going on the boat. As mentioned earlier, this is the first of the 1/4" planks, so it bends quite a bit easier than the 3/8" garboards.

To cut the gain along the edge of the plank, a rabbet plane and a piece of scrap nailed 1" from the edge does the job.   

With the first plank glued on, time to do the other side.  If you look closely you can just make out the fact that the plank lap "disappears" into the stem;  the result of the gains cut in the plank.  Recall that once planking is done there will be an outer stem glued and bolted to the inner stem, what you see here is the inner stem.

Time to spile the third plank.  I found that I was just able to get the third plank out of my scarfed 1/4" plywood sheet, which is not quite 16' long since the scarf "robs" some length, with only about 1/8" to spare.  Lucky!  For the next three planks, however, I'll need longer sheets for the planking.   Since this boat has overhang both bow and stern, the planks get longer as you go along.  That'll mean a second scarf to get the total length over 16'.   I might have purchased a few 10' sheets of plywood, which are available from some dealers, but I think I'll use what I've got.  (Note:  The rectangular thing hanging from the mold is a longboard used for sanding hulls and such. I'll try to clean up better in my next batch of pictures!)

A piece of left-over 1/4" ply is glued to the end to get the length I need to do the final three planks.  I'll need about 16'3"-16'6" for the fourth and fifth planks and 17'0" for the last plank, also known as the sheerstrake.  By the way, I'm doing all my scarfing and plank layout and cutting on the floor.  Why?  Well, there are a lot of advantages to building your boat in a well-equiped boat shop...but I can hardly take away precious bench space from a paying job!  I'm building BELLE in my spare time at the shop, it's been a great arrangement for me which I really appreciate.   The floor is fine for these jobs.  (OK maybe next time I'll make a temporary planking bench from sawhorses...)

Well the second plank is on.  My one concern is my molds are quite far apart (28") and I'm worried the 1/4" ply won't have enough stiffness \ to naturally follow a fair curve between the molds.  There was no problem with the 3/8" garboard, but the 1/4" is significantly "floppier".  I  think I'll try a slightly different technique in gluing up the remaining 1/4" planks.  Stay tuned!