11/30/05

Wade Smith has a new steam box and steamer already to go and is planking from the garboard to just above the water line.  All planks are about 8" X 1 5/8" Long Leaf Yellow Pine (old factory beams).  Two planks butted to accepted butt distances will make up each "plank".  Wade lined off with a neat technique; he made a scale ruler (i.e.. fisherman's ruler, etc) based on the number of planks above the the garboard and the distance between the two points.  By taking this distance and the average plank width, he set an workable scale (in our case 7 inches), and expanded that to the seven planks gap to be re-planked.  using this ruler we then marked of the same "1"  inch from the garboard for each frame---thus giving up the lining off for the planks.  Each subsequent plank is then just scribed to the plank below and kept to the same scale.  After seven planks the plank will be scribed again and a new scale will be established for next set of planks.  Fast and easy and keeps things looking "right" to the eye.

12/28/05 -1/10/06

After removing all the covering boards and the old stanchions the next step was to design and build the new bulwarks.  I wanted a bit taller (12 inch from 7 inch) bulwarks to hide the house a bit.  I also wanted a bit of a tumble home stern and vertical at the max beam.  I thought this would improve her lines and make her less boxy.  In addition her cockpit has nowhere to rest your back, a bit of a tumble home is comforting and comfortable.  Basic trail and error and asking people's opinions got me to a certain point in the design.  (thanks Wooden Boat Forum people, Wade Smith, boats at Mystic, John Leathers Books and the Smack site in the UK (http://www.alberta-ck318.freeserve.co.uk/)).

Nellie Mystic	Emma C Berry	Emma	Interior	Emma
Emma	Nellie	Bawley	Ezra--Luke Powell's boat for Sail Ezrahttp://www.sailezra.co.uk/ Copyright Sail Ezra 2006

Next, I set up false bulwarks and just messed around until it looked right.  I took the angle off the false bulwark by using an extended bevel gauge set off the sheer plank and transferring this to a bevel board to keep the anglers for later ( thanks again Walt!).  By doing this I then put in the stanchion attaching temporarily with a vice and transferred the bevel  in-situ.  After transferring all the bevels and removing them to the shop, I then cut them on a table saw to keep things straight.  The most important thing was to keep the distance from the outside base of the stanchion touching the deck (in the future) and the outer edge of the sheer plank.  This is the only reliable and constant bench mark that cannot changes as the stanchion angle changes.  By keeping this constant and the stanchion dimensions constant along with their relative heights, the thing show look right.    In the end the aft 6 stanchions have a lot of angle coming off the sheer plank and had to be cut from black locust with a good angled grain.  The middle five stanchions were straight 2" x 2" beveled to give a vertical off the sheer.  The forward stanchions remaining were also straight 2"x2" treated with the a common bevel.  The result is a nice smooth tumble to flair transition that can be adjusted a bit with wedges before final fastening with bronze bolts to the planks only.  All the stanchions (a few exceptions for butt blocks, etc)  have at least three planks of meat below decks (about 18" - 23") and stand proud 13"-22" above deck.  These will all be cut to length at the very last moment to allow for little adjustments.  The deck-stanchion interface will be caulked with cedar shims and the ply/epoxy/Xynel deck will go on to of this.

1/18/06

Up next---covering boards and bulwark planks---I have ordered about 300 bf of 8/4 X 10" and 6/4 X 4" Atlantic White Cedar from Wood, Steel and Glas in  Madison,CT (great people 203 24 5 1781or http://www.whitecedar.com/)...should be ready next week!

1/22/06

Fitted and bolted (Stainless Steel thread rod 3/8") the cabin side today! Cabin side boards had a check in upper portion, so we glued it with epoxy (with high density filler).  The first application of epoxy was without the filler, this allows the epoxy to soak a bit into the wood first, then the filler mix is applied and it binds to the first epoxy layer.  We let the epoxy flow into he checks until they would take no more--at 48F in the shop that took a few hours. We fastened the cabin with two (first and last) of the five bolts and bedded it with plenty of Marine bedding compound.  The bottom of the cabin side has no bevel because we will be covering the deck with ply and epoxy.

Sheer strake is off starboard side and it was almost impossible to remove--like new! Would not have taken it off it the deck had not been nailed to it with oversized galvanized ring nails---kinda split much of the upper 1/4 of the plank---rest is in such good shape that it seems 10 years old, not almost 80!

All stanchions and stern timbers to be red lead painted .