Good News / Bad News

The universe telling me something?

The number one thing every blog warns against is the crooked keel. This is mostly due to the way the aft part of the keel lies on its taper, and the solution is to prop it up a bit to avoid it lying flat. The good news: I was successful in preventing the crookedness due to lying flat. The bad news: my keel now curves AWAY from the table about half an inch. I propped it too high. Sigh.

The centerboard trunk glue up paradigm.

Aligning the keel so it doesn't lay flat. It worked - too well.

It doesn't appear as serious as some others, though, as I could easily bend it back and lay the keelson on top without any noticeable curve. That makes me think after the lead pour, screwing in the cap, then the keelson, not to mention stitching to the bilge panels, I don't expect this to be much of an issue. Still, it's annoying as I went out of my way to try to get this one right, and oversteered into the ditch.

Meanwhile, as that was curing, I put together the keelson and let that sit under a battery for a few hours to set. It's too long for the shop (or just about anywhere else in the house, really) so I set it up by the front door. This was fun to get downstairs for the dry fit.

Battery + keelson puzzle joint = longer keelson

Resigned to a krooked keel for now, I sanded everything down smooth and applied a 1/2" roundover to the bottom.

Close up of roundover and void in the plywood. Roundover was OK. The void isn't something I did.You can also see a void between the centerboard blocking and the keel blocking (this is the triangle timber between the centerboard trunk and the keel nose). I'll fix this when I do the flip.

Roundover and another blocking joint. This is the extra piece I added because the keel blocking pattern was too small. Turned out OK. Need a little filler here and there to finalize the work. Like the one earlier, I'll take care of this at the flip.

I then sat it up to admire the work so far and felt a rush of pride. It was like watching a thing rise from the nothing, this thing that was at one time a series of two dimensional panels was now a 9 foot behemoth in my small basement shop. It doesn't look like a boat yet but I can get a true sense of the scale. It also sits up very nicely on its edge; very well balanced with just a touch to send it over. That was a bit of a surprise, and a good thing. I brought it to the family room and laid down next to it, as if I were in the cabin. As everyone says, this is a big little boat! If this is my reaction now, I'm bracing the neighborhood for when I actually make real progress.

First view of the keel assembly. Very proud poppa! The frog tape is when I laid down a dry fit on the wrong side of the non-mirror half of the keel.

Perky - the full keel with keelson laying on top. Need to fair the noseblock a little bit, which I expected as I kept it a little pointy on purpose to sand down later.

What would this blog be without a requisite shot of the boom gallows? After 2 layers of epoxy, sanded to 220, I put the first coat of varnish on it, and once again the colors popped.

First varnish layer. You can see the notches from the band saw here. The macro angle makes it look more distorted than it really is. Debating whether to brush over with white paint or leave as is. Otherwise, looks fine when not zoomed in 200x.

It's a funny thing, because the sanding brings the epoxy down to a matte grey finish that looks terrible. And then a little bit of chemical coatings get applied and pow! It's shiny and new again. I'm a fan of varnish, even moreso because this was leftover from another project and I didn't have to buy it.

The Runaround

The belly of the beast.

A few random things over the last couple days, nothing individually exciting, but not exactly boring, either. I called some tire shops in a last ditch effort to salvage some wheel weights and on the fifth call, someone said yes. All it takes is one, as they say. I hiked over there to a shady part of town (hence, the name of the tire shop will be Shady Tires) where a burly dude walked me to the back of the house and pointed to a metal drum with a very fancy "lead" sign painted on it. He asked what I was going to use it for and I said a sailboat. He said, that's pretty heavy for sailboat. Point, Shady Tire man. If I were indeed planning on putting a 30 gallon steel drum with 300 pounds of lead in the water with a sail on it, I suppose it wouldn't work very well as a sailboat. Good thing life jackets are on sale at the new West Marine.

Before anyone could change their mind, I asked if he would help me load it into the car. This car, by the way, is really a car. It's not even a very big car and at one time was considered a semi-luxury car. It's definitely not a truck or even a minivan. So into the passenger seat goes the barrel full of lead. I got into the driver's seat and said I'll bring the barrel back and drove away, dumb with luck.

Very fancy lettering for a lead barrel, no?

I got home and immediately began sorting the wheel weights. After five minutes, I was thinking eBay wasn't so bad. This is nasty, nasty business. I paused and wanted to really be sure what I was doing, so I went to my bookshelf and pulled down that particular volume of the Encylopedia Brittanica and turned to "identifying wheel weights". Oh, wait, that's what I would've done in 1984. Actually, what I would've been doing in 1984 was trying to hack my way into a blue box to make free long distance calls from one county in New Jersey to another. It definitely wouldn't be building a sailboat.

Who knew smelting could be so popular? There's a TON of information on smelting lead for bullets (or "boolits" as they say) including the pros and cons of different smelters, what happens if you get zinc in the mix, and how to use sand to extract the alloys. Google told me that melting lead is srs bsns in parts of the U.S. for making fishing weights and bullet casings. If one were to draw a Venn diagram and overlap those two populations, suffice to say it's the same family from West Virginia. I'm hiding behind these guys during the coming dystopia.

Best I can figure, my guesses were correct. As a quick primer on which wheel weights are lead and which aren't: if it has raised lettering and has any of the following on it, it's lead: AL followed by anything, P, MICRO, or MC. Anything else is likely not lead, especially those labeled Fe or Z for steel and zinc, respectively. Yes, I realize Fe is actually short for iron but I didn't make up the labeling standard. The small stickies can be lead or not lead and require further testing, which is generally by cutting into it with scissors or something similar. If you can make a dent in it, it's lead.

AL-MC is OK. FE is not, so says Jim Bob from WV.

My barrel didn't turn out to be quite 300 pounds, though. I managed to extract about 120 in wheel weights which when melted down will likely yield about 100 pounds of lead. That plus my eBay cache plus Chris' bucket will yield plenty for the keel pour but alas not enough for the ballast. After this week, if I'm able to do the lead pour, I might just be ready to pay someone a buck a pound for pure lead ingots.

With that sorted out (did you see what I did there?) I turned my attention to some boatbuilding. My wife was working late so I had a little extra time. I gouged a small notch for the boom on the boom gallows and sanded it down to 220 then put on a layer of epoxy. Oh. My. It looks awesome. The pictures don't do it justice. Another layer of epoxy tomorrow and then I can varnish it. It doesn't have any holes for the struts or the tie downs but I'll do that later when I'm sure the measurements are right. The recess is about 1/4" smaller than the pattern but I didn't want to cut into the white. I think the manual has a small veneer in place there and I've seen people do leather but I figured this was the least complicated way out, plus looks the most natural. I do want to research the leather option because this little groove is destined to take quite a beating.

Made the recess with the new belt sander.

Sanded to 220 then first epoxy layer. Looks awesome.

I also managed to get the roundover done on the centerboard trunk, made the little bit of timber between the keel nose block and centerboard trunk, attached the lead containment plywood to the centerboard, and glued down the aft part of the keel. I was going to do the rest of the glue up for the keel structure but it got to be about 12:30 and if I started I was looking at a 2:00 bed time. I actually have a ton of work to do tomorrow so need to be rested; the glue up can wait a little bit since once that's done it'll be the pour and that needs good weather. Did I mention it snowed today? We didn't get the 12 inches (yes, 12 inches) expected but it's pretty miserable outside. Perfect for some spars and perhaps the tiller or rudder or any of the various other mini-projects that this build requires. But I'm really itching to start some stitching.

Once again, little bits of timber taking way too long to make. I knicked off the top 1/3 (flush with the point) to be sure I got enough lead volume in here. For anyone keeping score, this angle is 55 deg.

Roundover on centerboard trunk. This is HIGHLY visible in the cabin and in fact is the spot right up on the floorboards. This has to look good or else I'll stare at it and weep every time I'm about to go to sleep.

Screws on the lead backer.

Part of the reason I didn't finish the glue up is I wouldn't have enough clamps for it.

Update several months later: Notice a mistake. The keel blocking runs up to the edge of the keel board. This should be 1/2" from the top to allow for the cap.

An Eventful Day

Today was an eventful day, but not on the boatbuilding front. I walked into the office like any normal Monday. That is, grumpy and despondent that I didn't have a random orbital sander in my hands. That changed at about 9:30 when I received an email from our division president.

A short time later, his admin found me on Sametime and wanted to confirm I got the email and would make it to this all-important 10:00. I said sure. I won't get into any major personal / personnel issues, but suffice to say I didn't expect to hear what I heard. My boss' boss and his 3 directs (one of whom was my boss of 3 years) were walked out about an hour earlier. An admin came up for their jackets but that was the last I saw of them. Now, I have to admit a part of me wishes I was in that group, because then I could concentrate on PocketShip and other things, but the vast majority of me expressed the sentiment as, "Holy f7ck!"

There was not much work done today as a result. Half my meetings were either with my boss or the business lead. So us remaining minions just shot the shat for awhile and wondered how we avoided the same fate. I find out on Friday what my new job will be. I'm sure it will be outstanding. When I got home, my wife and I headed up to a new Chinese buffet where we gorged ourselves on every available sea critter. Our neighbors joined us and we had a good chat. It was nice not to think about work for a little bit.

Continuing the theme of total destruction, my belt sander died today when it decided to suck up the front of my work sweater. It ripped it clear off my body and fried itself before I could shut it off. It scared the crap out of me, but probably scared my sweater more. It was a nice sweater but I can't say it was a nice sander. The sanding belt kept creeping out of alignment and the thing was dang heavy. It was also the only used power tool I bought off eBay (the Rigid planer is refurbished, technically) and will be the last. I put an order in for a new Porter Cable sander that all the reviews raved about but won't break the bank. Unfortunately, that means I can't get to the real nasty squeeze out from the centerboard trunk until Wednesday when the new sander arrives.

Suicide by sweater.

More good news: I rounded over the boom gallows and discovered that I cut too deeply with the band saw so I have these gouges along one of the rounded edges. Not pretty. I'm trying the old woodworker's trick of sawdust and glue to fill the gaps but I'm resigned to the "white edge" design of so many boom gallows these days. I think the white edges looks great. I just wasn't planning on it. I'll sand that back down and see where it leaves me before the final epoxy coating.

Filling the gap with a little saw dust and glue.

Without being able to remove the hardened epoxy from the sides of the centerboard trunk (the piece with the hole in it) I dry fit the glue up and tested alignment after lightly sanding everything down one last time. Pleasantly surprised all things are a go, including that little gremlin of a timber block I made the other day. I also did a little spring cleaning in the shop and moved my tools back to their homes.

Everything lines up pretty well.

The pivot hole (not visible here) near the front of the keel aligns really well with the centerboard trunk's. It's hard to appreciate how big this is from this photo. It's about 8 feet across. I have a little table extension near the bottom of the picture and the keel blocking towards the upper right is up against the wall. My furnace is the object to the lower left. That means if I want to get from where this photo was taken, which is the entrance to the shop from the family room downstairs, I have to crawl under the aft part of the keel and shimmy on over.

I crawl under this to get out while the glue up is underway.

I envy those people who have all the space in the world to build this thing. I think they would look at my workspace and laugh all the way back to their heated barns.

Forewarned but not forgotten

Every blog and manual about building this boat warns about the endless hours sanding. I've barely begun and I completely agree with that assessment. Though some of the 3 hours I spent today with some form of grit would've happened anyway, most of it was due to the terrible epoxy lamination from yesterday. I got so used to wearing my sanding outfit that when I tried to remove a bit of loose epoxy by blowing on it, I forgot I was still wearing my mask. It was a successful day, though, because I turned this:

Messy messiness. These are literally as hard as concrete.

into this:

Smooth as butter.

while wearing this:

Insert Bane joke here.

I used as rasp, followed by 40 grit on the belt sander, then 120 on the random orbital. After planing, I'll sand it up to 220 in preparation for 2 epoxy layers then varnish. This is going to get beat up pretty good so preparing it now will save time later. I definitely don't want to rest on my laurels/belabor the point/take a double bow but I'm really, really happy with the way the boom gallows came out. I got all the epoxy crap off, reigniting the orangey tone of the padauk, and I would've cut it to spec but there's no room in the shop. That's because I finally, finally got through the keel blocking exercise and it's all curing as I write this.

It came down to making a small bit of timber to connect the aft keel blocking to the centerboard trunk. This area will undergo fairly rigorous stress as this is just a few inches from the centerboard joint and will also bear the brunt of any scrapes along the ground, say against a reef. It's a severe joint that requires severe attention, which is why I spent a few days trying to figure it out. I lathered on a good quantity of thickened epoxy to secure this joint so it should stick.

Timber added to connect the keel blocking to the centerboard trunk.

Clamping it down. The right most clamp is dedicated to that bit of timber.

What's interesting, though, is that the CLC guys apparently had the same issue! I'm not sure if this was intentional, but after looking carefully at the photo in the manual for the hundredth time, it's clear that there's a bit of timber in this exact spot:

Aliens built this.

At first I thought it was artifact or a crop circle or some weird lighting trick but it's there in a photo a couple pages later. There's nothing in the manual or the plans or the pattern that suggests this has to be done. I'd call it an error at best in an otherwise other-worldly documentation. When I asked around about this, most people said they didn't use a pattern but measured the keel and then cut it. Why didn't they use the pattern? Because they couldn't find the pattern, because it isn't labeled in the manual. Unfortunately, I found my pattern and got stuck with the short stick. So, there you have it, my friends! You've been forewarned. If you do use the pattern, just extend the thicker part another 2 inches then cut it to size when you're sure it'll fit with the centerboard in place.

With the blocking set to cure, I went out to dinner with my wife and a few friends at a place called Sea Salt. It's an outdoor seafood cafe near Minnehaha Falls and one of the city's best places to eat on a summer day. Today, though, was not a summer day, and though we brave Minnesotans like to be outdoors, we also draw the line at 40 degrees.

Once dinner was over, I came back to the shop, peeled off the frog tape from the squeeze out, and laid down a layer of epoxy to both inside faces of the keel itself. This area will either be filled with lead or air so it doesn't matter much if this isn't the best epoxy work. I wanted to try to do a good job, anyway, as there will be much more visible areas down the line and this is the time to get the technique correct. One thing I'm finding is that I don't need to use as much epoxy as I was. It should 'soak' but shouldn't 'sit' .. meaning, if it pools after 'soaking', there's too much of it. The excess can be scraped off or maybe left a little proud so that the mating surfaces can pick it up, if there are any mating surfaces. I'm also always startled by how nice this plywood looks when wet. This is going to be one good looking boat.

Keen observers will note an error here. These are not the mirror-facing parts. I flipped the bottom one to do the blocking.

Though presented here a little out of order, the first thing I did today was plane down down the keel nose to spec. In fact, the small timber block described above was made from the scrap portion of the keel nose block! It was a little bit lucky that the widths were the same, else I'd have to laminate something up and I've decided I don't like laminating unless it's a cutting board or a boom gallows. Ask me in a week or so if I like my tiller.  The keel nose will be glued to the front of the keel in the next day or two.

Getting the keel nose block to spec. The cut away portion on top became the small bit of timber above!

Lastly, I did a test of the centerboard inside the centerboard trunk in anticipation of screwing down some plywood to cover the hole for the lead pour. The centerboard fits nicely except for the last few inches near the pivot hole. Turns out the centerboard itself is not flat but has a small arc of maybe 1/4" where the left side is slightly higher than the right. This won't be too much of an issue as the leading and trailing edges of the centerboard taper to a point, making the stickiness here moot. Still, it should lay flat so I maneuvered some stuff to make it so.

In the photo below, you can see the centerboard in the back of the shop with water applied to both sides, clamped to the router table, with a 10 lb weight on one edge to flatten it out. I'm not sure how it happened but this should fix the issue by the morning.

Epoxy coating

I'd call it a productive day. I should be ready for the pour by the end of the week. The weather, in turn, is expected to warm up over the next few days, which means clearing out the garage in preparation for the most boat-a-rific part of this build: stitching the hull.

PS: A moment to remember five Americans killed in Afghanistan this weekend. Among them, Anne Smedinghoff, a second-tour Foreign Service Officer on her way to deliver books to a Kabul school.

Nice Ash!

For followers of this blog, you know I've had issues with my keel blocking. Turns out it's a never ending issue. Yesterday, I realized that the pattern provided by CLC is about 1.5" short, but it's not really their fault, exactly. The pattern is actually the view from below, as if you were a dolphin looking up at the keel, wondering what that crazy music is blaring from below decks.

Missed it by that much. Just a dry fit - haven't cleared the squeeze out from the centerboard trunk yet. Note a mistake: the butt joint blocking should be 1/2" from the top of the keel to fit the cap, not flush as shown here.

The issue is that the profile view (port or starboard for those nautical types) shows an angle back to follow the cut of the aft keel part. This isn't clear anywhere but to those who cut the keel themselves, since the pattern isn't marked in the manual. The bottom line is I'll need to do some jiggering to make the keel blocking whole. It's not that big a deal. In fact, the manual calls for a small bit of timber between the centerboard trunk and the keel nose to fill the gap between those two important parts. I'll have another bit of timber between the centerboard trunk and the keel blocking with maybe a small tenon or something to encourage a better mating, cuz I'm not cutting that piece again. Per advice from Chris, I'll also pour a bit of epoxy into this area to be sure it's watertight. 92 pounds of lead goes in there so it can be a little more messy than I'd normally allow. The annoying part is it's taken me 3 days to figure out what went wrong.

With that issue solved (in my head, anyway) I did what most people do who get tired of any one thing: I turned the page. A lot of pages. All the way to the boom gallows and tiller. A boom gallows is a structure usually at the stern of the boat used as a resting place for the boom while trailering, and as protection to the crew while underway. It's at a height that will prevent the boom from falling into the cockpit, crushing the helmsman like an angry apple. Some boats have a solid piece of lumber as a gallows, while many others put some real flair into this part of the boat, including leather trim. I'll probably be somewhere in the middle.

I've always wanted to do a laminated BG and tiller in the same motif as the highlights of the boat. My highlight wood is padauk, a truly amazing wood that's shockingly beautiful (to me) but difficult to wrangle like that girl in high school everyone wants to get to know except she spends all her time at the rodeo roping calves. For the contrast wood, I grabbed a nice piece of ash. Firm, yet supple, with character lines and just the right width. I think I'll stop there before I get into trouble.

Driving home with lumber in the convertible. It was a nice, sunny 40 degrees on the way home. Shorts weather for us in Minnesota.

Over my lunch break, I fired up the convertible and headed over to the very originally-named Hardwood Supply in NE Minneapolis. They generally do a wholesale lumber business but will also sell retail for a slight markup. I really liked working with them: I got milled, 10', surfaced-2-sided lumber cut to 3" widths, with a straight edge, alleviating myself and my table saw the effort to get the wood to spec. 40 board feet of milled padauk plus 10 bf of ash for half of what I found online is what I would call a bargain. The owner/manager has a 52' sailboat that his dad built from scratch. I'm told they need to take it out of the water every year to plug the holes, but it's a labor of love. When I visited the warehouse, there were two huge planks of Douglas fir, which was unusual for a "hardwood" supplier. These are for the boat's masts in case they need changing.

When I finally got home, I dumped the lumber in the garage and pulled out the boards I wanted to mill for the boom gallows. I figured I'd start with that as the tiller takes a little more finesse and I was in the mood for brute strength. The actual milling is pretty straightforward. The gallows measures 60" from curve-to-curve, plus 2-3 inches to allot for the bend. I cut 63" lengths for all boards then built a pattern block to bend the boards against.

Cutting 63" lengths. While not exactly rough lumber, you can see the rough edge on the ash plank.

It isn't lost on me that the pattern block I made for the gallows took me about 75% of the way to having a finished gallows, albeit without the lamination. Lamination is one of those things that delays time-to-water, but increases oohs-and-ahhs. Regardless, with the weather the way it is, I'm content knocking out these winter projects. I traced the CNC pattern onto a piece of lumber leftover from a fence I fixed last summer, used the bandsaw to cut to the line, then planed and sanded down to where I needed the curve to be. I could've drilled 1" holes on either end and called it a day but there wouldn't be much need for this blog today if I did that, would there? 

Built a pattern block for clamping.

Originally I was going to alternate padauk-ash but in the end put two ash's in the middle.

Unfortunately, all my padauk is 3" width and the plans call for 1.5" widths for the gallows. As a result, I have a decent amount of ~1 3/8" that I plan to use for the rub and toe rails. I could've cut it straight down the middle, finishing with slightly less than 1.5" but the plans call for 1" steel tubing to support the gallows, plus I wanted to be sure I had the full thickness for the boom to rest upon. These strips had to be cut again to get 1.5" x 3/8" thin planks. This is the size used in the lamination. After a light sanding with 120, all the padauk got a quick, light rub with acetone, which reminds me that I need to schedule a massage pretty soon, though I'll forgo the acetone. Padauk is a slightly oily wood and this oil can interfere with a good glue up; acetone removes the residue. They were finally ready to be fitted.

I mixed up some epoxy and added a little bit of thickener to finish the job. After this cures (about 24 hours) I'll have to sand it down, plane both sides, and round off the edges. It'll be nice to be finished with this.

Close up of lamination pattern. Shiny stuff is epoxy squeeze out. This will be sanded, planed, epoxied, and varnished when done.

A couple things to note about laminating the gallows. First, it's a pretty big piece of lumber. It's 5 feet long comprised of 10 individual stripes of just-under 3/8" pieces (why just under 3/8"? because the lumber is 3/4" which cut in half is 3/8" but allowing for the table saw blade kerf of 1/8" reduces the size another 1/16" for each half). Getting epoxy mixed up in reasonable batches and spreading it out while avoiding disaster took quite a bit of concentration. Second, I tried to use c-clamps but they didn't work very well, so I had to resort to the Irwin fast clamps. I don't like to use these for epoxy because the clamps are expensive and can stick to the work piece, which explains the plastic in the bottom photo. Third, epoxy is messy. There needs to be a good balance between lathering on enough for a good, secure bond but not so much that most of it oozes out of the sides and onto the floor. My nitrile gloves were coated fingernail to wrist with epoxy by the time I was done.

Clamping pressure. Must use plastic between tools and epoxy, and some paper on the floor to catch the drips.

We'll see how this turns out. If nicely, I'll do the tiller tomorrow and finish up the keel blocking (finally) as well. I need to still source some lead smelting equipment so that may have to wait until Monday night. In the meantime, I've got a pretty sweet gallows just about finished.