54.) My First Boat Project

Here is a photo of the first boat I ever, um, assembled. It was supposed to be a battleship and I think I thought at the time that it was going to turn out a bit larger. It was never going to make it out of my grandparent's yard, so I didn't worry too much about making it watertight.  <smile>

53.) My Shipwright Hero

The Internet has given rise to some useful how-to videos (it's a whole new genre; you can learn how to do almost anything)--and some really bad ones.  I won't go into detail about the terrible ones other than to say cave inspectoris: there are a lot of numbskulls out there who may think they are being helpful but who do NOT know what they are talking about.

At the opposite end of the spectrum is a video series featuring Master Shipwright Louis Sauzedde sponsored by Jamestown Distributors.  These short clips show effective, and often highly imaginative, techniques.  Louis is eloquent in explaining his approach, though he does get a little technical at times. The only defect in them I've come across: Louis sometimes has to plug Jamestown's Total Boat line of products. At least it's a very good line of products; no one will be harmed as a result.  And if that's what it took to make this possible, I suppose it was worth it.  It's not as though the relationship between the videos and the product placement isn't fairly obvious.

52.) Repair Finished

Looks pretty good.  Note how the mahogany sanded out to a fairly uniform color compared to the photo in post #46.

Wish I could say I can now move on to the next phase, but I have found some other planks with air underneath them. I won't waste anyone's time by documenting each of these. But I have at least three more days of sanding off and installing new planks. I wish I had been much more careful about how I put them in in the first place.

51.) An Unvarnished Look at Life in the Day of a Woodworker

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AfJ7LQn8kp8

50.) Restoration Under Repair

The repair to my planking puck up is progressing. I am happy with the way this latest vacuum bag worked. The epoxy bleed out between the strips shows I am getting nice pressure and that the planks are making contact all of the way down the hull. The pressure needle on the pump is another good indication of a strong vacuum. So is the sound the pump makes: the pitch rises noticeably once the pump starts straining to remove air.

Four planks today. Four more tomorrow. The bag should stay on until the epoxy cures, so the pump will run all night. Final note: After my initial experience with a vacuum bag, I now use a stethoscope to check all of the way around for leaks. One of my shop mates asked me if I could give him a flu shot.

49.) Getting to the Point

In a recent post, I talked about the fun of learning. Sometimes it applies to things I thought I already knew...such as how to draw a pencil line.

Are you laughing?   Perhaps you're thinking: "He's been on this Earth how long? And he just learned how to draw a pencil line?"

Well, ah, yeah...true.  And I am going to tell you about it.

The first step is fairly obvious: make sure you have a nice sharp point.  I have a cool little doodad that helps me with this.  It's called, appropriately, a "Perfect Pencil" and it's made by Faber-Castell, a German company that has been making pencils since 1761.  Apparently, it took a long time to figure out how to produce a perfect one.

The best part of the Perfect Pencil is a cap that both protects the tip of the pencil as well as an enclosed sharpener.  So long as you keep it attached to your pencil, you have no excuse not to use it. (Sometimes, when you are in the middle of something, it's hard to drop what you are doing and go across the shop to sharpen a dull tip. You talk yourself into the idea that the dull point is good enough, or maybe you pick at it with a finger nail or rub it a few times on whatever's handy--like your jeans.)

The Perfect Pencil allows you to get around this sort of lazy thinking.  Here are some photos of mine:

Once you have a sharp pencil, the key to drawing a good line is to move the pencil in one direction only. Don't go back and forth or retrace the line--even if you've seen a carpenter or handyman do it this way.  Just one smooth stroke. That's it.

If the line is longer than six inches or so, you need to be a little more acrobatic. Gradually twist the pencil in your hand as you draw the line. This will allow the pencil to self sharpen and maintain a nice thin line.  (Another option for the rotationally challenged: auto pencil.)

Finally, if you are not happy with your line for some reason, remove it completely with the eraser or with sandpaper.  Don't draw a second or third line thinking you'll remember which one is correct.

This technique really helped me when I was making the planks.  Another little thing I picked up is that when you are planing to a line, it really helps to hold the piece or get into a position where you can see the bottom of the plane.  The straight sole of the plane provides a better reference than just looking at the pencil line alone, allowing you see exactly how much further you need to go. Maybe this photo will help show what I am talking about:

Finally, I acknowledge to all the woodworkers out there that a pencil line itself is far from perfect. For really fine work, you need to use a marking knife to draw your lines.  But that's another blog post.

48.) Shop Fun

It's not all serious business in our shop.

A fallen tree in the parking lot becomes fuel for our fireplace.

Above: Satan's head visits our paint spray room.  Below: Testing a mirror frame for strength.

47.) More than 2,000 Page Views?

That's what the blog dashboard says. Holy crap. Someone out there must actually be reading this.

46.) By The Time I Get Really Good At Planking....

....It will be time to move on to something I don't know how to do very well.

That's one of the frustrations...and, frankly, joys of a project like this. At least for someone with an attention deficit order like me. (Who says it's a disorder?) The single greatest pleasure I get from this restoration effort is the chance to learn new things. In fact, if nothing else came of it (the boat plummets to the depths upon launch), it still will have been worth the trouble just because learning new stuff is so stimulating.

And one stuff I have learned is how to make and install planks. Will I ever make and install planks again? Who knows! Who cares! It was fun teaching myself how to do it...and watching myself get better and better at it as I went along--momentary setbacks notwithstanding.

Speaking of setbacks, the Big Redo is coming along nicely. Here's a photo of where things stand now:

I'm pleased.  I haven't epoxied any of the strakes in place yet, but the fit between them is getting tighter and tighter. The pieces should blend together nicely once they are all sanded.

In fact, the photo above is a good illustration of the impact of oxygen on wood. The mahogany planks were all cut from the same few boards. The difference between them has everything to do with how recently each one has been sanded or milled. The darkest one is from the top of a board and hasn't been sanded at all. The lighter ones have been sanded more recently. Some also may have had more oxygen exposure than others depending on where they sat in the pile.

This is a reason why it can be super important to apply finish coats to wood shortly after sanding. Even 24 hours of oxygen exposure can make a noticeable difference in the appearance of the wood.  A finish will also adhere better to freshly sanded wood.  See...the stuff you can learn is limitless!

45.) If It's Possible to Gain Wisdom from Stupidity, Then I'm Going to be One Wise Fellow

One principle behind this blog is transparency. I have to say, though, that I wasn't all that eager to make this particular disclosure: I messed up.  Big Time.  And it's going to take me at least a couple of weeks to undo the mistake.

If you've followed my blog to this point, you might remember the issues I had attempting to vacuum-bag new planks to the hull. The first time I tried it, there were leaks in the bag I couldn't plug. I tried to compensate for the lack of a strong vacuum by placing sandbags into the boat to hold the planks down.  I think I may have even patted myself on the back for a good recovery.

Wrong.*

While finish sanding the planks last week, I decided to test the quality of the bond throughout the hull by repeatedly pressing the handle of a wooden screw driver down hard every six inches or so. When I got to the spot where the vacuum bag failed, I heard a sound.  A snap, a crackle and a pop.  It was barely perceptible, but it was deafening nonetheless. It signified an air pocket between the top plank and the hull--and therefore, no bond.  "I'll have to fix this spot," I thought.

But then I heard the same snap, crackle and pop on the next plank....and the next one, and the next one and the next one.

DRAT! (I might have uttered a different word in real time.)

The discovery meant I would have to remove a large area of planking--mostly by sanding the planks off, but also by chiseling a lot of very precise lines so another set of planks could be added. I was bummed--partly just because I had already started looking forward to the next phase of the project.  I also felt lousy because I realized that the sandbag remedy was a mistake. What I should have done the moment I realize the vacuum was going to suck (or not suck, depending on how you look at it), was immediately removed the planking before the epoxy dried and thrown the whole mess away.  That would have cost me a lost day at most, not a lost few weeks.

But there's no other option now.  If I don't stop to fix the planks, I will cause myself even bigger problems down the road. There's no easier way to screw up something like this than piling one mistake on top another.

Oh well, at least I'll learn how to do plank repair and will further polish my chisel technique. There's going to be a lot of chiseling. The photo below shows what the disaster area looks like now that I have removed most of the the planking that wasn't adhering as well as it could.

*This word is a paragraph unto itself because I want to emphasize it.