Not much done the last few days. I have the plan to make a false keel from mahogany. The original design from Arch Davis is to epoxy kevlar tape over the keel but for me that is not an appealing idea. So when you think of a mahogany keel, why not also make the stem facings from mahogany. I have some planks 150 mm wide and 20 mm thick left from my previous project so why not use them. The design uses 1/8" x 1 3/4" strips for the lamination so I ripped the planks in three equal parts that are all slightly wider than 1 3/4".
Those planks I cut through the middle on my table saw. I did it in one pass over the saw what was a bit much for the machine. The saw was getting hot as you can see from the black marks on the strips. After that I took the strips through my thickness planer to work it back to a little more than 3 mm.
I have to confess that I made the mold to bend the laminiations on a bit to quick using old parts from a previous project. So not top class. Using bad quality builds bad quality into the product.
Finally I did epoxy on the strips and bended them around the mold. Messy again with those slippery strips. Getting epoxy on the disposable gloves and then trying to turn on the clamps with those gloves on. That is not a wise procedure.
I put the mold with lamination on it in the house because of the temperature. It has started to snow a little bit here which results in a nice picture of my shed.
This morning the result of my lamination was not good enough. There was even some torsion in it. So I have to start over again from scratch and first make a better mold. Maybe I will make the stem facings from red cedar. Easier to shape.
Keep you posted.
Today I managed to get the last plank on. It was a bit more work than anticipated. First of course bevelling the stringers and making the gains. Afterwards fine tuning the planks. As the tools were getting blunt I had to sharpen chisel and plane. Finally making the scarf. With last few scarfs I use the sander to finetune the scarf. Less risk to damage the edge of the scarf. And to top it of I did some messing around with epoxy.....
Tomorrow we will see whether everything went fine.
There is a slight complication because something went wrong with my electrical screw driver. It cannot reverse anymore. So tomorrow I have to remove all screws by hand.
My brother who follows this blog phoned me on the topic of removing bad screws. He is a car afficionada who already has restored two Jensen twoseaters so mostly I follow his technical advise. He told me to use a "left turning bit" that bores in the screwhead, gets stuck and then gets the screw out. Apparently that is the way to remove rusty parker screws from cars. Keep you posted.
The coming days will be cleaning the outside of the hull, some sanding and do the preparation for making the laminated false stems.
Did some epoxy cleaning of the hull and found out that one screw was sticking a mm above the ply surface. Normally I would get out that screw but that was not possible. I have to think of a remedy to get that mm of.
I did glue on the full first sheer strake and hope to get the other side on tomorrow. That would complete the hull.
Next step will be to laminate the two false stems.
Back from the North I first glued on the second part of the last 4th plank.
So now I can state "the fourth plank is on".
I continued to glue on the long part of the first sheer strake. After I put the epoxied plank on the epoxied stringers and started to screw it on I noticed halfway that the plank was sitting to high as part of the sheer stringer was showing.
I had to unscrew most of the plank to get it right. Messy affair.
As the ambient temperature is not bad I can run my electric space heater on only 600 Watt to keep the temperature at around 14 degree C. The mid term weather forecast gives below zero around the weekend so a good incentive to finish the rest of the sheerstrakes before that.
I do not show a picture because I think everyone is fed up by basically the same sort of pic every time :-)
As I was not really in the mood and the temperature is stil around 2 degrees C so there was no gluing today.
I cut and fine tuned the first full sheerstrake and did put it on the frame with some screws.
Still scarfing to do and then also ready for gluing.
I also copied the sheerstrake on ply and rough cut it.
It starts to look like a real boat now!
Tomorrow we will be house hunting and afterwards we go for a few days to our holiday cottage / future temp home in the North.
Today I finished the preparation of the 4th plank but did not glue it yet. The temperature in the shed was + 3 degrees C and that is insufficient to cure the epoxy. I thought that heating the shed to + 13 degrees C just for that short piece of plank was not very green. As the weather forecast for the coming days indicates higher temps we will see what tomorrow brings. In the mean time I did bevel the first sheerstrake. As the sheerstrake is almost parallel to the 4th plank not much bevelling (or is it beveling ?) was needed. I marked and precut the long sheerstrake part. So tomorrow it will be fine tuned, scarfed and maybe glued. Who knows. (what's that for a cliffhanger?)
Today I bevelled the other side and made both gains to accept the second 4th plank. After making the first scarf I had the feeling that I would start making mistakes so I decided to glue only the longer part of the plank on the boat. Nowadays when I got that feeling I do not continue. So the shorter part still has to be cut, fine tuned and scarfed. That will be done tomorrow.
I am now two days in the north of Holland at my holiday home to prepare it for an extended stay after we move from our house that we have sold.
Major item this time is to get a good working internet connection. During holidays that is of minor importance but for "normal" life it is essential nowadays.
Yesterday someone from the phone company came to check things out and today other people come to dig and get a line in. People that look cannot dig. :-)
So yesterday afternoon I had some waiting time and decided to drive to "de Bootbouwer" (www.bootbouwer.nl). That is guy some 45 minutes driving from my holiday home living in farm country, no sailable water close, who has an excellent stock of plans, tools and other material for boatbuilding.
Besides having a broad stock of goodies he also is willing to sell ply per half sheet.
So I acquired half a sheet of 4 mm ply and some epoxy and hardener.
After a chat and a cup of coffee I drove back knowing I could continue to work on the Peapod in the weekend.
Today I could spend some time on the boat and scarfed both parts of the fourth plank. After that my usual battle with epoxy resulted in a fitted fourth plank. It did look quite well actually.
I noticed that I am almost out of epoxy and 3x16 stainless screws. Some shopping to do before I put on the other fourth plank. Would be a bit stupid to find out in the middle of the operation that I have not enough of them.
By the way I am now quite sure I need an extra sheet of ply. At first I thought of making an extra scarf to lengthen the ply but that almost feels like cheating.
We will see...
The new week started with working on the boat.
First I again sharpened my plane and chisel. It is amazing how quickly they get dull on the plywood.
Now it was possible to improve the bevel and gains. Of course the angle of this plank is easier than the garboard one.
Making the first long part of the plank was relatively easy. The second part caused a problem however.
I had cleary marked the scarf joint were the planks overlap but forgot to add the 38 mm scarf width. Consequently I cut the plank 38 mm short. I had to use a new piece of ply to get the good one.
Now I am not so sure I have enough ply in stock to finish the planking. It would be a bit silly to buy a new 122 x 244 cm ply for such a short piece of plank.
In the picture both parts are screwed on the boat but not yet scarfed.
Due to other business I hope it will be feasible that the 4th plank will be scarfed and glued on Friday next.
By the way I succeeded in getting the epoxied screw out by heating the screw bit with the heatgun. If you put it on the screwhead after heating it just makes the epoxy soft enough to get grip on the screwhead.
Maybe next time I will remove al screws after curing.
With a heatgun and a paintscraper I did remove most unwanted epoxy from the hull.
In the process I noticed that a few screws that I had covered with epoxy were at the surface.
With the thin 4mm plywood you don't want to countersink the screwhead to much in view of the risk that you pull the screw through the ply. As a consequence apparently I did not sink a few far enough.
Getting the screw out will be difficult. Too much use of the heatgun at one spot will cause delamination. Have to think how to solve that.
Tomorrow our grandson is coming. His parents are out for the weekend so not much work, if any, will be done on the boat the coming days
Today did some fine tuning on the planks and the bevels. Of course also made two scarfs.
Afterwards I smeared epoxy on both mating surfaces and also something on myself. It gets cramped in my shed. No jokes please on slimming. Heard them all....
If there is time available tomorrow it will be spend on cleaning the hull.
Still two (times two) planks to go!
The bevels and gains are cut. I also made both parts of the second 3rd plank (bit difficult way to express myself..) with the jigsaw.
The rough cut plank parts are now clamped on the boat. Next step is to fine tune the planks, cut the scarfs and glue the lot on the boat.
Something work left to be done tomorrow.
After all the New Year celebrations I picked up working on the Peapod. I did the fitting of the short part of the third plank.
The nice thing of the stringer system is that you can use the stringers to mark the outlines of the plank.
Bit easier than spiling using a compass.
Aterwards I cut the plank almost to the right size with the jigsaw.
As you can see on the picture there is hardly any banana shape anymore.
In the vise I cut the sides to measure using a spoke shave while smoothing out the lines.
I have copied both parts of the plank on a piece of plywood so fitting the parallel plank is much easier.
Next step is to make the scarf.
Followed by gluing the plank on the boat.
Messy as ever. After gluing on the other third plank hopefully tomorrow or Thursday I will put in a cleaning day to once more remove excess epoxy from the outside of the hull.
But first finishing bevelling the other side, cutting the gains and jigsawing the other plank parts.
