Hull Ends

Oh god, at the end of every work day when we are high-fiving each other, we are always marveling at just how much more boatlike the boat looks. But today, for reals, at the end of the work day, the boat doesn't just look boatlike -- technically if you dropped it in the water, it would actually float for several minutes. Today, we attach the hull ends. 

We start by beveling the edge of the bottom sheeting. 

And since we are cutting up two perfectly good pieces of plywood with complicated angles, we draw a picture to help us.

We cut our first cut along the edge and our second cut after we snap a chalk line.  After that, we check for fit and, magic!  It fits. 

We had already put on a first coat of thin epoxy.  Now I needed to thick coat and screw the ends.  I think I did this epoxy work alone, which might have been a first.  So I was a little busy and didn't take a hundred intermediate photos.

However, when done, I took celebratory photos from almost every angle.

Again, screws every 3 inches on the edges and 6 inches in the field.  That's a couple hundred screws. 

So at the end of this day, if the boat were flipped over and plopped in a pond, it would float for several minutes before slowly settling to the bottom.  Exciting.

Sheeting the Hull

It looks easy, right?  What could go wrong?  Four rectangular sheets of plywood lined up together on a horizontal surface made to fit them, screwed down on all the edges.

But as soon as we started sheeting the bottom of the boat, we realized this seemingly simple task would be more complicated.  How do we jockey all these sheets of plywood into perfect alignment, secure them together, turn them over to apply epoxy and then put them back into perfect alignment before screwing them down.  And somewhere in there, we had to apply butt blocks to where the sheets came together.

We tried laying out the plywood correct side down and applying one of our patented temporary butt blocks to hold the ends of each sheet to its corresponding partner.   But when we awkwardly tried to turn this paired 16 foot long überblatt over, the warblinesss of it pulled those temporary butt blocks out, causing us later grief.  So we tried another tack.

The plans called for butt blocks at the place where each plywood sheet met another at its short end.  Got that?  Read it a couple more times.  (No butt blocks were needed on the center line because the sheets met in a butt along the keel stringer.)  So we realized we could install the permanent butt blocks and the strength of these would allow us to manipulate each pair of plywood sheets.

These butt blocks were a little trickier than the single butt block on each side stringer because they needed to be installed in the spaces between each of the stringers.  So installing the butt blocks looked like this:

1. Put all four sheets precisely where they needed to go, correct side up.  
2. Crawl underneath the boat and draw lines where the stringers met the sheeting.  
3. Turn all sheets of plywood upside down in place.  
4. Measure (and carefully label) each space where a butt block needed to fit.
5. Cut the butt blocks 6 inches wide.
6. Coat the butt blocks, the spaces where they fit, and the plywood ends with a first coat of thin epoxy.
7. Coat the butt blocks and the ends of the plywood with a second coat of thickened epoxy.
8. Fit the plywood together carefully.
9. Put the butt blocks in place (noting the careful labeling)
10. Screw the shit out of them with screws every two inches

Whew.  And this is only a preliminary step (but really one of the most complicated).

After this cured, we had two pairs of plywood joined end-to-end that were pretty bombproof and could be manipulated awkwardly, but safely.

Somewhere in all this, I found time and space to give all the top surfaces of the boat a first thin coat of epoxy.  Now we gave the hull sheeting a first coat where it would join to the stringers.

We gave that time to become tack-free so manipulating these long joined pieces would be easier.  We took the plywood off the top, and gave the top surface of every stringer a second coat of thickened epoxy.  We also epoxied the edge of the plywood where the two long pieces would meet each other along the keel stringer.  Then we awkwardly person-handled the sheeting into place.

We put in a few screws to hold the sheets in place, and then went around and put screws every three inches.  Kai gave each screw a little tap with the hammer to get them started.  This made my finishing the screw with my power drill that much easier and faster. 

So with screws 3 inches apart on all of edges and 6 inches in the center, it was by far our most screwy day at 448 screws. With all these screws, we got afraid that by the time we got around to the final side the epoxy would have cured, so we put in every third screw on all edges and then went back and filled in.

After this, it was kind of exciting to get up on the boat and be able to stand there.  Of course it's upside down, but still.  It felt a lot more boaty than the piles of lumber and sawdust and sticky epoxy goo we'd been playing with previously.

After the bottom sheeting cured, I was able to release the come-along which has squared the boat during this procedure.  I was relieved that slowly de-tensioning the come-long was a non-event with no creaky or poppy complaints from the boat.  Sweet.

Correcting Mistakes II: The Usefulness of Square Corners

When we went to put sheets of plywood on the top, er, bottom of the boat hull, they didn't really line up.  WTF?  It seemed unlikely that four sheets of plywood were manufactured not quite square, so we had to look elsewhere.

When we assembled the stringers with the cross beams, we had squared the pieces more or less, but little errors at the quarter inch level really add up over a 20 foot boat.  We hadn't thought to square the boat up as a whole unit.

So now we measured corner-to-corner to find that there was a difference of about and inch and a half.  Not giant, but enough to make the plywood fit funny on top, er, bottom.  We hadn't made a rectangular boat hull, we'd made a parallelogram.

That night I had a dream:  We were using a come-along to square up the boat.  Brilliant!  Thanks, subconscious!  So that morning, we grabbed my come-along and screwed big-ass eye bolts into the opposite (long) corners.

My come-along didn't go the distance, so we borrowed a hooked chain from the boat trailer and doubled it up.

We worked for a while to find the route for the chain and the come-along that when tightened wouldn't tear the building form apart.

We then started working my rusty come-along to square the boat.  Kai was working the come-along originally until she realized with horror that one of the two stops that keep the ratchet from violently unratcheting broke off and fell out.  She didn't want to have to explain to people for the rest of her life about that gnarly scar across her forehead so she passed on that job.

So I got to work the come-along.

After a half dozen clicks under tension the boat was approaching square.  Oh wait, too far.  Back off.  Whoops, too little.  More tension.  We played that game back and forth for a while.

Until finally the two corners were within a quarter inch of each other. Once we got the sheeting on the bottom screwed and epoxied down, the boat would stay square.

Next we sheet the bottom of the hull.

Correcting Mistakes I

Today, the chickens come home to roost.  Remember that pesky three degree error?  As we assembled each of the stringers, we could see that the pieces didn't come together quite right.  It would have been laborious but simple enough to cut new ones, but oh no. 

I figured I could just cheat the difference on either side.  But that left an irritating overhang on the ends of the stringers.  We knew that when we put sheeting on the ends, that little overhang was going to be a problem.

So I attacked the overhang with a handsaw. 

And then a sander.

It came out looking pretty sweet. 

Three degree error erased.  Like it never occurred.  Maybe we can just forget it ever happened.  (Well, except for the blog, I guess.)

So now we put the first thin coat of epoxy on all the frames.

This prepares the way for us to start sheeting the bottom and the ends.

Cross beams

This was an exciting day because for the first time, the boat was one piece.  Not just a pile of lumber.  Not just a bunch of stringers.  But one single solid piece that was even boat shaped.  More or less.

Earlier when we were making the pieces for the stringers we trimmed a bunch of edges off of 2x4s.  Now we got to use the table saw to make some really weird-shaped boards.

We cut an edge off here, and a corner here.  There was a beam on either side of the bottom, a beam on either side of the top (the one near the ground since the hull is being built upside down), and a porch beam  that supported the edge of each of the two porches, for a total of six beams that hold the boat together latitudinally.

We epoxied and screwed these beams into place, making the boat a single piece.  We were so stoked that we pretty much took a photo from every possible angle.

There is an additional bonus beam not pictured here that we totally forgot until later.  It is clearly indicated in the plans, has notches in the stringers and so on.  I just overlooked it when we were makin' stuff.  It is the motorwell mount.  It goes across the raked end of the bow, uh stern.  We realized it was missing after we finished the beams and so notched the stringers and installed it.  So imagine that in the photo below.

And then Kai took a nap.

Side Stringers

The side stringers are the sides of the boat.  So far everything we've been doing was stuff inside; here we finally tackle something that will ultimately keep water out.  Yikes!  And because of the complexity of the build and our boat-tardedness,  it took us about seven hours per side to assemble.

In our last build day, we finished assembling the keel stringer and the two skeg stringers.  We used the plywood  cut for the side stringers as a pattern to ensure that all of the stringers would be identical(ish). 

I'll spell a few things out here so you can appreciate the challenge of assembling the side stringers:

• The plywood for the sides was in 3 big pieces; 
• There were two long (and slightly warped) pieces for the top and bottom, and two end pieces cut at a slightly incorrect angle (remember that pesky 3 degrees?); 
• Once the pieces are coated in thickened epoxy, everything is slipperier than a greased pig; 
• And to top it all off, all screws holding it all together needed to go in from the outside (plywood side) with all the loosey goosey bits skittering around underneath as we try to put in screws from above.

Pretty much a recipe for disaster.

We hit on a helpful idea:  Temporary screws from the inside.  We could butter it up, put the pieces in place, and use temporary screws all the way through the two-by pieces and the plywood to hold everything together.  Then we can flip the whole thing over and put all the permanent screws in the plywood from the outside.  Later we remove the temporary screws.

Okay!  Sounds like a plan.  Or a sketch of a plan.  A lot of critical things needed to go right, so we made a step-by-step plan.  Later referred to in arguments during the day as "The Plan."  As in "Stick to The Plan!" or "Oh God, are we changing The Plan?"

The Plan was the thin dividing line between slightly stressful work and sheer madness.  The illustration on the corner of The Plan was what we didn't want to happen.

So we did the usual and put wax paper under everything, and coated everything with the first thin coat of epoxy.  This is more like painting, familiar, and not too hectic.

Then we tackled the butt blocks.  This is where the sheets of plywood that form the sides meet.  We put these in first, because we wanted to make sure that when we started attaching the two-by pieces the plywood wouldn't move or shift.  The butt blocks are six inches wide, buttered liberally with thickened epoxy (including between the two ends of the plywood) and secured with an assload of screws.

Then we got serious and epoxied all the two-by bit, including all of the ends where they would meet each other.  We secured them down temporarily with long deck screws to the plywood (and accidentally to the floor in a few places).

In a harrowing effort (would it stay together?!) we flipped the stringer over so the plywood side was facing up.  Now we could put in all of the stainless steel screws required by the plan.  A screw every two or three inches.  That's a lot.

At this point, we are tired, probably dehydrated, covered in sticky epoxy, tangled in extension cords, our hair is falling in our eyes as we bend down, and little flies have decided that now would be a good time to investigate our nose and ears.  Our latex gloves are torn and getting tangled in the drill bit as it turns, the screws are not very sharp and so are not going in very readily, and there is still a lot of work to be done before the epoxy completely sets.  Just wanted to set the scene here.

But naturally, we handled it with superhuman grace, no one got frustrated whatsoever, and we maintained our amazing good humor throughout.  Any stories you hear to the contrary are lies made up by our enemies to slander us.

Kai hit on the brilliant idea to start the screws in the proper location with a few knocks of the hammer.  So she went around, ahead of the drill, putting in screws at the requisite distance, staggering them as necessary.  Again, we'd discovered the razor edge of sanity and found the narrow path just this side of it.

So in the end, we had a side stringer.  And after another long day, we had two side stringers.  Woot. 

Here, all five stringers are in place.  The cross beams connecting them are a sneak preview of the next build day.  

Again, looking at our work at the end of the day, the boat is much more boaty.

Keel and Skeg Stringers

It most conventionally built wooden boats, the frames refer to what you might think of as the "ribs" of the boat running across ways (that's "athwartship," to you, matey!).  In the Glen-L Waterlodge, the framing members run longitudinally and are called stringers.

So building the boat frame means assembling the individual stringers and then tying them together with various cross beams. 

There were five stringers total.  Two side stringers, one keel stringer in the middle, and two "skeg stringers" between the keel and the side stringers. While the plans are relatively straightforward about building the stringers, there are lots of pesky details to consider, notches for cross beams, plywood reinforcement, butt blocks to make sure the plywood on the side stringers didn't leak, and a subtle curve to the deck that will sit on top of the stringers.

The keel stringer used big pieces of plywood to structurally reinforce the member and did not have overlapping two-by pieces.  The skeg stringers did have overlapping two-by pieces but no reinforcing plywood. The result will be two big storage bulkheads under the decks on either side of the boat.

The side stringers of course had plywood that covered the outside surface of the boat and no overlapping two-by pieces.  We'll talk about these and their butt blocks in the next build day entry.

The notches for the cross beams were easy, though we still forgot a few and had to cut them out of the already assembled stringers.  The porch deck beam notches were not really dimensioned properly on the plans and so we had to do a little improvisation later. 

We built the stringers on the asphalt floor of the barn.  It was flatish and shaded, so we didn't bake as we fretted over the details of our new stringers.

One challenge we faced was making sure that each member we built matched all the others. The plans suggested literally building them one on top of another.  This didn't seem that practical, so we hit on a solution:  Using the plywood already cut to shape for the side stringers as a pattern for our other stringers.  That way we'd know that all the angles would be correct and all the pieces of each member would be in the right place.

We used what we called temporary butt blocks just to hold the side plywood in place while we were using it as a pattern.

So in these photos, you can see the side plywood under our stringers as a pattern. 

From left to right: keel stringer, starboard skeg stringer, and port skeg stringer.

So for each stringer, the process was more or less:  Lay out the pieces for fit on our plywood pattern; put wax paper under anything we didn't want to be permanently adhered to anything below, temporarily screw down, as necessary; apply a thin coat of epoxy to both surfaces of every joint; apply a thickened coat of epoxy to one side of every joint; and finally fasten together all joints with stainless steel screws.

 

After the epoxy on the stringers sets, we could put the stringers on the building form. 

Exciting!  It is looking more boat-like every day. These incremental changes are probably pretty minor looking to other folks, and the progress may seem pretty slow.  But for us, it is crazy.  Look we had a pile of lumber!  Now we have this boat(ish) thing!  Amazing!