Sometimes You Just Gotta Jump

I visited Chris yesterday and spent some time with his boat, Chucky B. I like that boat: fair lines, practical, and sound. It's already been through the wringer (this is the boat that tipped off its trailer during a tight turn). It's all patched up and got a facelift in the cabin. My wife came along and saw PocketShip for the first time. She's a picky one but gave the boat an enthusiastic thumbs up. Good thing, because I still have all that plywood in the garage and would need to find a new home for it if she made me choose between living with the boat or with her.

I brought my tiller and wanted to see if it would fit. It didn't, but I didn't expect it to because I left the end slightly thicker than the required 3/4". I'll have to take it down a bit and maybe even keep it a bit loose to compensate for the epoxy/varnish and natural expansion. I was also curious about how the full length tiller would work in the cockpit. Unfortunately, the tiller at full length would definitely interfere with crew movements during tacking, or even simple steering. I'm almost certainly going to take it down 8".

I also got a primer on a tiller extension. Apparently, it's not to steer from the bowsprit, but to steer while heeling. You know, when you're hanging off the side hoping that the head you have stored below has a good latch on it.

This guy could use a tiller extension.

But now I'm not sure the laminated stick, leftover from the original tiller cut, is going to work as an extension, as it needs to be a bit telescopic. Just another in a long series of decisions I still need to make.

As mentioned above, I haven't epoxy'd my tiller because I want to get the rudder done first. Make the tiller fit the rudder, is the idea. That's what I worked on today. The rudder blocking proved simple to cut but difficult to feather. There's a taper that goes to 1/4" on the trailing edge from a full 3/4". The curved part had to be laminated from 3 bits of scrap (I wasn't going to cut a full board of Menard's finest select pine) and then sanded down. All this sounds easy but is really tricky (I think) to pull off well.

6 bits of pine = one pine in the ass!!

First, the manual is unclear. It speaks to tapering and provides some photos but because they're b&w without depth, it's not easy to tell what's going on. If you look carefully at one of the photos, you can see Geoff marked a taper on the curved blocking. The plans kinda make it a little more clear. But the photo that got me on my way is the one from Jon's rudder blocking where you can see the taper on both ends. Still, I spent the better part of an hour aligning the blocking just so and marking the tapers.

For example, the trailing edge of the 'triangle' finishes to 1/4" where it's straight. It tapers down from the full 3/4" at the top of the curve. It also tapers from 3/4" from where it's against the 5" blocking. And then, it meets up with the long trailing edge blocking which starts at 3/8" and finishes at 1/4". After all this math, finally, I just had to jump. I fired up the random orbital with 60 grit and let it fly. Lots of sanding then checking then sanding again. Once satisfied, I dry fit for the glue up, then epoxy'd the inside faces, switched to thickened stuff, and laid the blocking down for good.

Blocking fit well. Finally.

Wife and I signed our names in here.

I knew I'd need a good bit of thickened epoxy for this. It was a furious 20 minutes as the first layer just began to thicken up before I was ready to enclose the box. It took some readjustments to get everything to sit well. In hindsight, it was OK that the epoxy hardened a bit because it kept things from moving around much. In the manual, you can see where the trailing edge is actually wired to prevent slippage. I didn't have that problem.

The whole rudder structure got clamped together for about 30 minutes before getting a good wipe down to clear the squeeze out, especially in the tiller slot. Using a technique I picked up from gluing the centerboard trunk, two clamps get removed, the area gets wiped, the clamps get replaced, and the next two clamps get the same treatment. Keen readers will also see that I left the blocking a little proud - maybe 1/16 an inch. This is to be sure there's firm glue contact while making it much easier to sand later. I'd rather sand down 1/16 of blocking, for example, than 1/16 of plywood to get a smooth finish. One thing I didn't do which I should have was put a weight in the middle where the blocking cuts across the entire span.

One can't have too many clamps.

Not all good news today. I cut the rabbet for the centerboard's epoxy deposit, basically breaking every table saw rule while removing every safety feature in order to do it. Somewhere up there, my shop teacher is cringing. I remember reading where someone cut the rabbet before glue up with a router. I forgot about that until I was holding onto the centerboard for dear life. And then of course, I didn't hold it completely against the fence so I cut through to the outside like a canal. Not that big a deal in the scheme of things, especially when compared to putting your foot through the hull, having your boat fall of the trailer, or taking out half the companionway due to a router mishap. The centerboard will be tapered and the epoxy will actually be exposed around the leading and trailing edges so this is (somewhat) easily fixed.

Down the rabbet hole.

I switched tactics and simply lowered the centerboard onto the blade while maintaining a good grip instead of trying to run the centerboard along the fence. Lower, cut, move, lower, cut, move. Much safer and easier. Still, I don't want to subject my limbs to that fear again. I then carved out the rabbet with a small chisel. Messy work, heart-racing work, but it's done. Next time I'll try a slotting bit on the router.

All dressed up and nowhere to go.

Even with the issues, it's nice to make progress. I have a finished boom gallows (which now sits on my fireplace mantle), a nearly finished tiller, a keel waiting for nice weather for a lead pour, a rudder that will be done by the weekend, and a centerboard structure which I'm hoping is not completely ruined. A business trip was cancelled next week so I'll have a few unexpected nights to continue working. I'm thinking bowsprit and/or the companionway hatch next? Or the floorboards.. yea that's the stuff.

Tiller Carving

I bought a Craftsman 10" band saw last year on the recommendation of many posts. Given it was on sale for under $100 at Sears and the fact I really wanted one (but not for $300) I pulled the trigger on it. But all the reviews said to upgrade the blade. So the first thing I did was order a couple new Timber Wolf blades, which of course sat in the box they came in for the last few months while I used the OEM blade on the boom gallows, among other projects. Suffice to say, the OEM blade cuts about as well as a hammer through butter. But the new blade works great. I tested it on a few scraps and was able to pull off these cool patterns.

When tools work right, you can do this with them. The lamination is for a tiller extension.

Satisfied, I then tested it on the tiller blank, on an area that if I totally screwed up, it wouldn't matter much. That passed, too. So then I started cutting a bit wide of the pattern I traced, and it held true. I got closer and closer until finally I was cutting like a band saw  should cut. Just south of the line, maybe a blade width's off. This is one of my favorite power tools so it's nice to finally have a legitimate band saw again. It will come in handy when I do some of the more intricate blocking, like on the rudder. Thumbs up for the Craftsman but get a real blade. The Timber Wolf 3/8" is the way to go. I finished up with a 1/4" roundover, then sanded up to 120 with the orbital then freehanded with sandpaper. I sanded the length of the tiller for far too long. I'm reminded of the immortal words of my Boy Scout Scoutmaster: If you shake it more than three times, you're playing with it!

The nose knows. It took some work to get this to balance visually.

I decided not to apply a veneer to the bottom length as the alternating white-orange of the ash-padauk looks terrific underneath. I left a little bit of the ash in front like a fingernail. I find more and more though that the padauk has a finicky grain. Some strips are solid, some are more open. The open grain shows up as little rough patches, maybe an inch or two long. They epoxy/varnish as darker areas compared to the rest of piece and are difficult, if not impossible, to sand to marble. It also means I have to try to cut and trim in ways I wouldn't normally in order to get the most out of the grain presentation. Not terrible, just different, and I've decided I like it as part of the "character" of the wood. It's tough, though, because the perfectionist in me wants to bust out another 10' board and mill it down just for a one inch strip. No, can't do that. I'll stick with the character.

Speaking of which, a note about ash. I chose ash for its strength and for its grain. When epoxy'd and varnished, the grain lifts out like caramel on vanilla ice cream. It's subtle, like maple or basswood, but obvious, unlike maple or basswood, especially the end and side grain. Nothing wrong with maple or basswood, just different. Ash is a really pretty wood that deserves center stage. Hopefully the tiller and boom gallows do the ash gods justice.

Money shot: Cut, sanded, and ready for epoxy.

One thing to note on the tiller is I kept it the full length rather than trimming it down 6" - 8" as many others have done. I haven't sailed PocketShip yet, so I'm not sure how long I want my tiller to be. Taller fellas (not me) can get away with a shorter tiller. I have enough laminated scrap to make an extension but the tiller length is already almost halfway through the cockpit so unless I want to steer from the bowsprit, I'm not sure I even need an extension. That said, it's much easier to cut wood than to grow it. If I need to lop off half a foot, I can do so easily. If all goes well, I'll get to sail PocketShip, hopefully at the helm, at Okoumefest in a few weeks. That will be the highlight of a pretty good sailing year so far.

Padook, Padawk, Whatever

When I was sourcing wood for the cabin sole, I went through a very involved process involving spreadsheets, calipers, forecasting tools, and leprechauns. In the end, I wound up with padauk. But when I called Hardware Supply for the wood, I pronounced it "pad-owk". The guy on the other end said what? I said, pad-owk, it's a reddish hardwood? He goes, you mean padook? I said, yeah, sure padook. Now, maybe that doesn't matter, and they've made songs about different pronunciations of the same thing, though I find it highly pretentious and silly to say "to-mah-to" vs. "to-may-to". The padauk was one the best choices I made but is a bit of a fussy, messy wood.

Elephants add to the aura.

It's oil-based for one. Before glue up, it has to have a very light rub with acetone to remove the excretions after milling. The rags come out looking like they were dipped in spaghetti sauce. Much like teak, the color fades over time, especially with exposure to sunlight. But whereas teak turns grey, padauk becomes a chocolate brown. Milling itself is not a problem but it's definitely a hardwood. There's an obvious difference in running a length of padauk through the table saw vs. ash, for example. And then there's the dust. It's a fine, red dust that coats about everything. Collect enough and I'm sure it can work as a dye. It smells good to me but wearing a respirator is essential, and is good practice, anyway. I've worked with ash, maple, and walnut and they are all easier to work with than padauk, but the results are worth the effort.

At one time, padauk was the wood choice of kings. Now, it's the wood choice of wanna-be boatbuilders but still serves the same purpose. It looks crazy beautiful when varnished, with a reddish glow that is sexy and smooth all at the same time. I don't need to hang velvet in the cabin because I have my padauk. I don't recommend it for anything more than trim or floors as the strong color can detract from other highlights. The same principle applies to bathrooms done entirely in pink. Pink is not a command color but a highlight. Same with padauk.

Don't do this.

Structurally, the glue ups seem strong, but there are small voids here and there, especially on the ends. I don't think that's the wood but the way I'm milling in that the last inch or so through the table saw is tricky and I'm losing contact with the fence. While strong, I wouldn't recommend it for anything structural, though that's true of most any hardwood. The masts cannot be hardwood because it needs to be a little pliant as the wind takes the sails and bends it to and fro. A hardwood would simply snap and that's no good. I thought about doing a lamination for the boom and bowsprit, but for the structural reasons and for overkill, decided against it.

I took a break from epoxy over the last couple days, which were mostly spent back on the bagpipes as I had a concert to play last night. For many reasons, I hadn't picked up the pipes since St. Paddy's Day and to say I was rusty would be just plain understated. I was surprised, though, that the practice chanter flowed as usual. Muscle memory is an amazing thing, that after not thinking about something for awhile, it all came back without much of a hitch at all. Some of these tunes are so internalized I'll be on my deathbed running fingerwork on my IV tubes. The concert was fun and the band headed over to O'Gara's afterwards. The sight of 20 kilted folks walking into the bar turned heads, but we're pretty used to the attention by now.

The band at the concert hall.

In the green room watching.

On the boat front, I found the culprit for the crooked keel. There was a separation of about 1/8" of an inch between the aft and bow keel panels caused by too much blocking. It's not serious, but it's there. After writing my trusty comrade in arms about the best way to go about fixing this, I lathered up some thickened epoxy into the joint and waited for it to dry. I'll sand this down later today. I also applied some epoxy to the voids on the underside of the keel.

Joint separation.

Joint preparation.

Joint saturation.

I then turned my attention to the tiller. As mentioned earlier, I've always wanted a laminated tiller. After the fun (not sarcastic) of the boom gallows, I was looking forward to this even more. After milling the padauk and ash, I made a pattern block out of a leftover floor board from renovating the house next door. (I don't really throw a lot away.)

Milled padauk and ash to spec. 3/8" by 1" strips.

This pattern wasn't nearly as strong as the 8/4 lumber I used for the boom gallows but I couldn't justify getting timber just for a pattern and I had nothing thicker. It later proved a little tricky to secure the strips to the 3/4" bottom of the pattern, especially at the point, but it worked out OK in the end. The severe bend at one end of the tiller was fussy but eventually succumbed to the strength of the Irwin. Still, I was surprised I was able to pull it down enough to keep a fair curve.

Glue up with manageable squeeze out.

The pattern, lamination, and pattern block. Pretty good fit.

I also made a real effort to scrape off the squeeze out before it fully cured. When it was still in putty form, I took a straight edge from scrap wood and ran it along the side. Then I took a screwdriver along each of the strips on both sides and chiseled out more epoxy. This created bits that reminded me of popcorn. They wouldn't taste very good, even with butter. Who am I kidding? They're delicious! Avatar, anyone?

Epoxy popcorn. Yum!

I need to do better at figuring the amounts needed for this as I feel like I'm wasting perfectly good epoxy. In the scheme of things, it's probably a pump at most, maybe two, but the sign of a good builder is not only what materials are used, but how well they are used. It went better than the gallows, which had enormous amounts of squeeze out. Still, the learning curve continues.

It's my wife's 29th :) birthday today so not much boatbuilding. As before, the tiller will be sanded aggressively to remove the epoxy, then planed and cut to spec. I'm hopeful I can salvage enough to make a tiller extension from this. The area under the curve may prove just long enough to do that. I'd also like to get the keel out of the shop so I can work on the rudder next. At this point, it's just waiting for good weather for the pour, which means somewhere around August.