13.) How I Made the Cradle

To make the cradle for the boat (and make it almost perfect), I enlarged my copies of the original S&S plans* to full scale and printed them out.  There are many measurements written directly on the plans, so it's easy to double check that the enlargement is precisely to scale. They were drawn so that two inches = one foot. Thus, to blow them up to full scale, you increase their size by 600%. (Thank you Staples.)

I attached the copies of the plans securely to pieces of plywood using a light coat of adhesive spray and then used an awl (photo above) to poke tiny holes through the center of each curve about every 1/4 of an inch. Next, I connected those pricks with a pencil and then cut the plywood just outside that line with a bandsaw. From there, I used a rasp and sandpaper (which no longer contains sand these days) to pare down each piece plywood station (there were 10 in all) until it exactly matched the S&S drawings as well as the one does in the photo below.

I did this with the starboard stations only.  To make the port side stations, I traced the lines from the finished starboard pieces onto plywood and cut those out. Then I used a router with a pattern cutting bit to trim each piece to perfectly match it's opposite.  (A pattern cutting bit [bottom photo] has a bushing that guides a router along a finished piece to carve out a twin with the blade part of the bit. Doing this meant each completed station would be symmetrical because each half would match its opposing half in the frame.

Once all of the 20 halves were complete, I carefully joined them all together on a level base to get the finished frame I showed in the last entry.  From there, I double checked measurements to ensure that each frame was in the right spot in relation to all the other frames.  I could adjust each very precisely thanks to the threaded rods I used to join them together. The Baltic Birch plywood also helps because it has 13 plies. That makes it easy to find the center of each station. It took me about two weeks to make the frame, but I am a slow craftsman and there was no margin for error. Unless every part of the structure was the right shape and in the right position relative to the other pieces, the entire thing would be useless for what I had in mind.

*The plans weren't cheap to acquire.  When I ordered copies of the originals from the Mystic Seaport Museum (to whom I was happy to contribute for their efforts in preserving maritime history) I also had to sign an agreement that required I not reproduce them or employ them for commercial use.  I also had to explain exactly what they would be used for. I plan to stick to that agreement. Consequently, while you will see traces of them on this blog, I can't show the plans in full. I do acknowledge that the drawing on the very first post comes from the S&S plans.  I noticed, however, that this particular sketch has been reproduced in advertisements and elsewhere online. So I went ahead and showed it under the principle of fair use. If you are a lawyer for Sparkman & Stephens and see this, I ask that you take both that into account and that I am not creating this blog for any financial benefit. There will be no banners or Google ads that produce even a penny of revenue. Nor will anyone be able to use anything I publish here to build the boat without buying your precious 69-year old intellectual property and signing an agreement like the one I did. I personally think your plans are little more than historical documents at this point, but it is not my agenda here to press this matter.  One last thing: I did the first enlargements of the plans at home and removed the copyright protection when I took them to Staples.  So they didn't know the documents were anything other than something I had created.  Didn't want to get them in trouble.  Isn't this all stupid?