On thursday there were twelve people at the boatshed, a new record. But we were not there to act as room decorations, but rahter and foremost to flip the boat, on which we finished the planking and decking last sunday. It really did take ten people. Eight to lift, one to record and one to keep the spirits high. We used three nylon straps to lift the hull. That occupied six people. The remaning two were busy at the front of the boat, giving directions and lifting as well. It was a good exercise in spontaneous leadership. Luckily we had a civil guard officer on spot, he intuitively took care of telling people what to do. We took a video of the messy action, the proper YouTube link will be pasted later. Now we are working on the keel. Most of the ever so harmful problem solving has been completed and we are firing away with chisels and the hand plane. Some difficulties still remain, especially regarding how to achieve a proper and strong connection to the keelson. We have ideas and we will nurture them in expertise and an opinions crossfire. The tailpost, which is more or less complete, is the most elaborate jointing work we have done so far. We hope it will be well strong. Lets have some pictures:
-
- What to boat looks like when flipped. We have done lots of sanding as well. Most of the corners have been rounded. That took at least 3 sanding belts of our sander and a whopping two sharpenings of the hand plane. Lots of screws had to be removed, but only temporarly. We will put them back later. That is the life of a boatbuilder. Put screws in, take them out later. Put epoxy fillets on the boat and then sand them later.
-
- One of the problematic spots on the boat. This the heart of our forward transom. The bolts hold the forwardmost bulkhead to the keelson. The problem is that they intervene with the shoe of the keel. We will not give it 10 out of 10 on the aesthetics chart, but a 8 out of 10 definitely. You will see the result later. It requires some additional capping.
-
- One of those moments when you get to take a blade to your boat. Uku chiselling away at the keelson. We needed a slot to fit the tailpost capping in. Turned out well.
-
- Before creating a mortice joint for the tailpost.
-
- Routing a tailpost mortice.
-
- Voila! There are four joints hidden in this piece of art. Well strong. Dry fitted without any screws and it stands solid. Just forcing it level by hand. One might wonder what is the boatbuilder doing with a headlamp as one can clearly see a perfectly well lit backdrop. The headlamp was used to illuminate the routing area, as it was shadowed by the big head of the boatbuilder.
-
- A close up of the mortice joint. On this picture there are three joints. Also, you can see that some chiselling has been done on the keelson. We need to taper it. Of course, this was to be done way before, but we have a thing for building in the wrong order.
Next, the picture of our boat flipping team (two behind the camera), thank you all!
With reference to fitting the keel. A good liberal application of epoxy glue and self tapping screws every 6 inches or so on alternate sides, screwed through the keel sides into the keelson would suffice. The curvature of the keelson shape has a lot to do with keeping the keep fitted too.
We were thinking of how to properly fasten the keel posts which are seen standing here: http://purjekas.planet.ee/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/p66ratud_1.jpg
We will likely add threaded bars to the keelson bolts. These bars will reach across the keel into the keel shoe, stopping before the capping. That ought to give some additional bracing. But in general, there is little or no information in our plans on how to fix the posts to the keelson. So we were wondering wether there is a general well accepted rule of thumb to do this, other than fastening them with two diagonally sunk screws, a plane butt joint and epoxy.
Phil Bolger was a prolific boatbuilder and designed some great small similar boats like fafnir. I built one of his Micro boats. Look at the Bolger group under yahoo.com. You will need to ask to join but it doesn’t cost anything. There is a wealth of information. I will look at my plans and send you keel framing details later today.
We put the question up on JWBuilders at Yahoo a couple days ago. We’ll see what comes of it. Thank you for the help 🙂