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.