Details details...

A boatbuilder said to me the other day:  "Why does the last 10% seem to take 50% of the time?"  So true!  Once the hull and major parts are done, it's a mad dash to the finish line.  The last few weeks seem to go on forever, as you get more and more anxious to see her in the water and take her for a sail.

 Lots of details left to do, here goes:

Here's the bronze centerboard pull in place.  I left it a bit long for final in-the-water testing.   I'll be able to notch the bar to allow a couple of intermediate centerboard settings, in addition to the usual all-the-way-up and all-the-way-down.

To test the centerboard pull mechanism, I lifted the boat up using a strap and an overhead chain hoist.   It checks out fine.

Here's a couple more bronze pieces ready for installation.  First, I fabricated a jam cleat for the mainsheet using a standard closed-base bronze cleat and some brass sheet (top piece).  Then, for the mast, I made a tang for the throat-halyard block with some leftover bronze half-oval, a short piece of copper tubing, a washer, and screws (bottom piece).  The throat-halyard block hangs from this tang, which holds it away from the mast.  A detail found on a lot of gaff-rigged boats.

The boom jaws are glued and screwed to the boom, with one copper rivet too.   Since this photo, I've completed the jaws for the gaff too, and sanded everything (locust "burns" easily as you can see) and started on the varnish.  The final touch will be to tack pieces of leather to the jaws (to protect the mast) once a couple of coats of varnish are dry.  I have some rugged dark-brown leather that should work well and look good various places on the boat that are prone to chafing.

I also used locust for all the cleats and reefing blocks (if that's what they're called) for the mast and boom.  All the cleats on the spars will be locust;  the cleats on deck will be bronze.  This picture shows the cleats just after bandsawing them to shape and just a bit of rough sanding.  The very top cleat is the first one ready for varnish.  Simple paper patterns as shown are used to mark the locust for cutting.

Next week I'm going to run the boat outside on the trailer, pop in the mast, and get various dimensions for the rigging.    I've also mailed out a couple of sail plans to local Maine sailmakers.  Once I hear back from them, I'll place the order for the sails.  I considered making the sails from a Sailrite kit, but I eventually decided to buy "ready made" sails.  I just don't think I have time to finish the boat AND make sails before the spring!  Until next time...

BELLE moved to ground-level shop...plus work on spars and coamings

It's been a while since my last note, in the meantime BELLE has moved!  She's not quite in the water, but at least she's getting closer.  Last week, with much-appreciated help from coworkers, we lowered the boat down from the loft, put her on a trailer, and brought her around to a ground-level shop.  My original plan was to pop her in the water, just to take a look, but the tide wasn't right to launch in the creek next to the shop.  I'll do that in March some time, when it warms up a bit.  My apologies, I do NOT have any photos of BELLE hanging tenuously (actually quite comfortably) from the overhead crane in the shop, I was too nerved up to think of photos!  Still, exciting to see the boat on a trailer and to be able to stand back a bit to take a look at her;  up in the loft, I could never really get a side view from any kind of distance.

Anywho, the coamings are now done and I've moved on to completing the spars (remember those?) and various other bits and pieces:

Here's the last photo from up in the loft!  With the first coat of varnish on the coamings, I made the centerboard cap pieces (Port Orford cedar, left bare), finished off the floorboards (ditto), and temporarily threw in the seats just to take a look. Except for the trim pieces around the foredeck opening, this is pretty much what she's going to look like on launch day.  A couple of months in the sun and  the floorboards and cap will starting turning a nice gray color (like old cedar shingles)  Fun to see BELLE coming together at last...

There are varnished oak trim pieces above the opening;  the side trim pieces will be painted.

After the move:  on a trailer in what we call "Junior's shop".  Next to BELLE is a Castine-class plank-on-frame daysailer in for some winter work.

A quick look at the aft end of the cockpit, with the slatted seats removed.  I've got two coats of varnish on the coamings, at least three more to go.

Meanwhile, back in the loft, I've gotten back to work on the spars.  Here I'm using a little gauge to check the boom as it  is planed and sanded to shape.  (The gauge is made from scrap plywood. A hole saw cut the curve to the right diameter.)

The top end of the mast, shaped to fit the mast band.

That's a nice piece of boat jewelry from Davey.  I'll mount a small block for a flag halyard at the tippy-top of the mast...perhaps I'll use flags to spell out "England expects that ever man will do his duty" on launch day!

That's it for now, until next time.

Making the birdsmouth mast and more

One of the fun things about boatbuilding is next:  spars!  For this boat, I'm making a solid-wood boom and gaff plus a hollow mast (to save on weight aloft).  I decided to go with the "bird's mouth" technique for the hollow mast.  All the spars are made with nice clear Douglas fir.  Why not Sitka Spruce, you ask?  Well, have you seen the price of Sitka Spruce lately?  Also, Doug fir looks very nice varnished--nicer than many types of spruce, in my opinion--and the weight difference won't be significant for this boat I don't think.  Gaffers like BELLE have relatively short masts, so that helps too.  If you want to know more about wood spars, here's a few links:

• There's a good discussion of how to dimension small-boat spars in William Garden's The Making of Tom Cat.  He uses the small catboat Tom Cat as an example, giving numbers for both Doug fir and spruce and hollow vs. solid spars.
• I used the Birds' Mouth Spar Size Calculator to figure out the dimensions of the staves...many thanks to Clint Chase for posting this!
• Skene's Elements of Yacht Design also has good information about wood spars.

First I ripped out eight identical strakes on the table saw with the trademark "birdsmouth" on one side.  Since the spar tapers at the top, and a bit towards the butt too, each piece needs to taper as well.   I marked one piece with a batten, rough cut it on a band saw, and planed down to the line.  I then used this master to mark a second piece and cut and planed that one down too.  I then used these two identical "master pieces" (so to speak!) to plane down the remaining six pieces to size.  In this photo, the master pieces are on the outside, separated by spacer blocks from three strakes that I'm planing down to size. As you can see, the plane (a #5) rides on the "masters" and cuts down the inner three strakes.  A couple of passes with a power plane got things started. ( There are various ways of cutting out these strakes...using routers etc...for a small spar like this I'd say this worked quite well.)

I'm going to use pipe clamps to glue up the spar, here's a test run.  I'll double the amount of clamps shown in this photo for the actual glue up.

Voila...the glued-up spar.  This is actually Phase One.  A strip of packing tape along two strakes allows me to split the spar open to add blocking...see next photo. To the left of the mast are the "blanks" for the boom--glued from two pieces--and gaff.  I'll eight-side, then 16-side, these the old-fashioned way.  The hollow mast starts out eight-sided, so it only needs to be 16-sided on it's way to becoming round in section.  Then a bit more planing and a bunch of sanding to produce the final tapered, round spars.

With the spar opened up, I'll now shape blocking at the butt, deckline, and top to add stiffness to these areas.  In theory you could do it all in one step...but it seemed easier to do it in two discrete steps.  Once the spar is glued back together, I'll then shape it to 16 sides with planes and then sand it round. 

Meanwhile, I made up this centerboard pin from 3/8" bronze rod.  The plywood discs have pieces of 3/8"-inside-diameter bronze tubing to act as guides.  These will be screwed/glued to the side of the centerboard case.  There are removable brass plates (not shown)  on the outside to hold the pin in place...and keep water from getting in the boat.  There will also be a piece of bonze tubing embedded in the centerboard for the pin to run through.

Here's the discs shown in the last photo being glued to the side of the centerboard case.. I also screwed/glued cleats on each side of the case, towards the top.  These cleats line up with the tops of the seats and will allow me -- if all goes well -- to have lift up floorboards.  To make a (relatively) large "sleeping platforn",  the forward floorboards will fill in the space between the side bench seats and the centerboard case, resting on these cleats.  Not clear?  Well I'll be working on that in a bit, more photos to come...

Finally, after much hand-wringing, I finally cut down the transom!   This changes the whole look of the aft end of theboat...and I have to say I'm happy I did it.  Yes, that's a 35-yr-old British Seagull Forty Plus hanging there...my father bought it new years ago...and it actually runs!  There's a temporary piece of plywood clamped to the transom to protect it from scratches.  I have a nice block of yellow pine that I'll use as the final outboard clamping block.  To be honest, I may buy a more, umm, modern outboard at some point.  But the ol' Seagull will be the Official Power on launch day, that's for sure.

Next time:  more work on the spars plus maybe get started on the floorboards and seats.  Until then, good night and have a pleasant tomorrow.