Setting up the molds

First I made the cut in the front and aft of the strongback to be able in a further stage to remove these parts because it will block the seatrisers.

Next I finalized the last two molds by adding the cleats. To be sure I checked all the molds against the drawings and found one minor discrepancy. By moving a cleat a little bit out of the mold the problem was solved. (I hope)

Then the magic bit: putting the molds on the strongback. Even without the stringers it now begins to look like a boat!

In this stage I should be able to get the strongbak + molds out through the door. As soon as the stringers are on I will do the real acid test.

In the mean time I had mail contact with a well known supplier of specialty woods in Arnhem, the Netherlands. One of their staff is building a boat himself so I plan to go there tomorrow to get the wood for at least stems, stringers and keel.  Due to (non) availability of sizes my choice will probably be Western Red Cedar.  Bit expensive but it is for a good cause...

Finishing the molds

Arch gave a very prompt reply on my nesting question. (see yesterdays post)
And of course, it was no problem at all. With one of the molds upside down it did fit on the remaining ply sheet. 

These molds 2, 4 and 10 were cut out.  Next I have ripped a bit more wood to get extra cleats for the molds.   After putting the cleats on the first mold I realized that I forgot to bring the mark for the stringers and risers from the top to the side of the mold. So now the cleats are hiding the marks. Will do the marking later based on the fullsize drawings of this mold.  Two others were done right. Learning by doing.

Still two molds to be cleated.  There will be no progress the coming days as I have other things to attend to. Beginning next week the remaining molds will be finished and I will start my search for the right wood for stems, keel and stringers.  Primarily I will look for White Pine (Weymouth in Europe) but I haven't found yet the right width and length.

Finishing the strongback

First I ripped some leftovers from the base and vertical to get the cleats.  These cleats were put on the base and subsequently I fastened the vertical to the base. After adding the remaining cleats the job was finished.

The next thing is to mark the molds and cut them out.  Again an excercise in patience and accuracy.

For the molds I use 12 mm plywood.  The 244 x 122 sheet (6' x 4') was cut through the middle at the hardware store for transport reasons. So I have now 2 sheets 244 x 61.  On the first sheet I could prick out station 6 and 8. 

In his building notes Arch Davis indicates one 6' x 4' sheet for all the molds.  Apparently my nesting is not optimal as I use half the plywood for only 2 molds.
I will check by mail with Arch what I did do wrong.  After the fact of course.   I am a male  :-)

The first two molds are now cut with my nice DeWalt jigsaw.

Tomorrow I will try to finish the other molds.  Perhaps I will also put the cleats on but I don't want to haste.  My haste mode is often followed by my mistake mode.

Back home

Yesterday I came home from my South Africa trip. Enjoyed both the wildlife and the wine of this impressive country.  This evening I was an hour back in the shed to think about how to continue with the strongback. After remeasuring I decided to continue with the present setup. Redoing it would not make much sense.
Before I put on the molds I will again check everything for a final go / no-go decision.

Hopefully tomorrow I can put on the cleats and do the assembly of the strongback. After that I will start making the molds. 

Corrective action

Yesterday I apparently took the length of the vertical to calculate the length of the extension to the base. Stupid is the middle name. As corrective action I butted an additional piece to the base. In the picture the base is upside down.

I now have 10 days during my trip to reflect whether I wil use the base this way or make another one.  Test of character?   (see my blog  entry on the Lawrence Creek book)

First wood cut

Although I had limited time I started with preparing the parts for the strongback. For someone from the metric civilization converting all those different feet and inches to mm is a pain in the you know what.  Especially if you are butting to get the right length of base and vertical without interfering with station positions.

In the end I must have made an conversion / calculus error because my base is not long enough. That is the right moment to stop as we having dinner tonight with my youngest daughter in Amsterdam for her coming birthday.  Tomorrow I will sort out the cause and the corrective action to be able to go to South Africa Friday with a clear consience......

Buying first batch of wood

As I could not easily source the required 12' x 11'' pieces of pine for the strongback I came up with a plan B.  In the local DIY megastore I bought a few 18 mm thick pine panels with a length of 250 cm. and a width of 250 mm and 40o mm.  The DIY store did cut the wood into the right width of 235 and 280 mm.  The off-cuts can be used for cleats and butt-blocks. As the design of the strongbacks already show two butt-blocks I thought that a few more wouldn't be a disaster. By the way the pine panels I use are glued together from 45 mm wide pieces so I think they will not warp. The other good thing is that now I could transport it in my own car.  I also bought a 1220 x 2440 x 12 mm sheet of plywood for the molds and the DIY store cut that in two pieces with a width of 60 cm.  Again making it transportable. The 60 cm width is enough for making the molds.

Coming friday I will travel to South Africa for a week so there will not be much progress the coming days.

Books

As I cannot show progress on the Peapod now some thoughts and opinions about books.  Wooden Boat Building books to be more precise.

Both my Bootbouwschool courses (Ness Yawl and Galloway Faering)  were on Iain Oughtred designs. So it's a no-brainer that my first book on wooden boat bulding is Iain's Clinker Plywood Boatbuilding Manual.  This book very clearly illustrates his design and build philiosophy.

Also good reading is Iain Oughtred's biography by Nic Compton.  You now much better understand the man.              

To broaden my scope I bought the classic  Building small Boats by Greg Rossel.

From that book I learned there is more than doing it the Oughtred way.

My first idea was to build the Ellen 12 by John Brooks. See www.brooksboatdesigns.com.  To better understand the designer I bought his book How to Build Glued-Lapstrake Wooden Boats. This book almost made me decide to build the Ellen.  Until I read the article in Wooden Boat magazine on the Arch Davis boat and I was hooked.  I thought the construction method with stringers was appealing.

Recently I found a book that very much illustrates my own feelings about woodenboat building. The titel is  The year of the Boat and it is written by Lawrence Creek, a Seattle resident, who at the age of 55+ decides to bult a wooden boat. As a novice he encouters a lot of problems and learns more about himself.

The text on the back of the book illustrates ...

The project began with a vision of perfect beauty, but as the flaws compounded, Cheek had to come to terms with his limitations as an amateur. The boat finally, became a vehicle for teaching how to navigate life's course between complacent mediocrity and destructive perfgectionism. Along the way, he learned how not to build his own character defects into the boat. In the end. he had a  boat and a more satisfying life.

Need I say more.  A lot of parallels with my favourite book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig.

Never thought I would write something about motorcycles in a boatbuilding blog
Enough food for thought.

Meet the blogger

As I am not able to do anything on the project at the moment I will give you some of my background for better understanding. Three years ago I stepped out of the corporate rat race. It was no fun anymore for a lot of reasons. Luckily this enabled me to go into a kind of early retirement.

I had for sometime a vague and romantic plan to build a woodenboat in the future.  Now very sudden the future became today.   What to do?
So I went to the Bootbouwschool (Boatbuilding school) of Bert van Baar in the Netherlands for a course to build a Ness Yawl with a group of 6 people.

In 9 days we completed the hull, rudder and centreboard.  One of my collegue builders acquired the hull to complete it. The course infected me with the "woodenboatbuildingbug". (nice word for Scrabble)  

During such a project you do a lot of tasks but of course as a novice you totally lack the total oversight. Luckily one of my (3) daughters announced that we would become grandparents for the first time.  I had my new project! 
I ordered the plans for the "Baby Tender"  from Warren Jordan in the USA.
(www.jordanwoodboats.net )  

Building that small 45'' boat out of real wood (no ply) and to rivet in stead of using epoxy was a steep learning curve.  My theory is that for building a boat you should have patience, accuracy and sufficient manual skills.  On a scale from 1 - 10 my score on all aspects is 3 according to my daughters trying to be positive. But the end product was ready on time for my first grandson Taeke.

To complete my training I went back to Bert van Baar.  Now for a course to build the Galloway Faering.  This is a Iain Oughtred design in mahogany and again riveted. As  had now some experience I would understand better what I was doing. After 9 days I was the lucky bastard who could acquire the hull.

It took me quite some time to finish the boat. We launched it May 1st 2011.
Just in time to participate in the Iain OughtRaid where during a weekend a lot of Oughtred designed boats came together with the Maestro present. Fun!

The missus baptizing the boat with a glass of Beerenburg. (kind of Dutch nautical herb brandy)

These projects look impressive but I only did part of the job myself. It is quite different to start with a set of drawings and to set up the whole project on your own. We will see in the coming months if I progress on the learning curve.

The Shed

One of the reasons to build the Maine Peapod is it's size. My shed is located in my backgarden.  On the inside it measures only 4,85 x 3,35 meter (16' x 11'). We have to see whether it is really feasible to build the boat in this limited space.

Although my workbench takes up some width, the length will be the critical factor I assume. How to get from one side to the other of the building jig. Maybe a good idea to slim a little bit.  I don't want to think yet how to get the finished boat out of the door.

In preparation of the project I concluded that I need a new saw.
My old B&D mini bandsaw had a short circuit somewhere in the motor so in the end it had to be scrapped. Not worthwile to repair. I dropped my jigsaw (also B&D) on the floor sometime ago and now it is only very good in making random curves  :-)

Luckily I found a shop in my neigbourhood that had a DeWalt jigsaw for a reduced price so I went to the shop this morning.  Always nice to acquire a new "toy".   My assumption is that this jigsaw will do for the project. 

The only problem will be that now my wife who is into textiles will want to acquire some additional fabric or yarn to compensate for my extravaganza.

Studying drawings

Today I started to study the plans and the booklet Arch has made on Building the Maine Peapod. Although the booklet gives a materials list I want to understand what I need for what. Also I don't intend to buy everything upfront.  Furthermore
I look at dimensions of individual parts to see what I can transport in my car and what should be delivered. Still lot of variables.

The actual buying will be done later as I am travelling for a week to South Africa later this month. So thinking, rethinking etc will be done the coming days.
Major decision point will be the choice of wood for the stems, stringers etc.

In the Wooden Boat  no. 222  article Arch Davis uses White Pine.  I think the official name is Pinus Strobus.  In  Europe that is called Weymouth Pine. Next thing is do is to check availability and pricing with a good woodmerchant. I know good ones in the Netherlands in Amsterdam and Arnhem. The Arnhem one has Weymouth on their website so I think I will pay them a visit in the near future.

But now first to the copyshop to get copies of all drawings. My workstyle can be a bit messy sometimes. Always good to have a fallback on these copies  :-) 

On the next blog entry I will tell something more about myself and my shed.

The plans arrived!

After seeing the article on the new Arch Davis design in Wooden Boat I was hooked and ordered the plans.  Of course I hoped that shipping plans from Maine to the Netherlands would take a second but more realistically it took three weeks including more than a week Customs clearance. When the plans came it was an early Xmas for me. Nice clear drawings, full size molds drawings on mylar, instruction manual and a nice DVD with Arch showing the building process.
Now taking time to study the package and to establish what is needed to start.