44.) Making Predictions

.....is a questionable business, especially when they are about the future.  Which is why I should not have boasted in a recent post that I was going to be able to sand all the planks without burning through in any spots.  Wrong!

As it turned out, I burned through (or almost all of the way) in three different places.

So the past few days have been dedicated to repairs: removing a section of the plank with chisels, re-sanding and patching the surface, and then cutting out and epoxying a patch in place.  I've completed one, the largest of the three, with two still in progress.

I also am not fully finished sanding all of the interior planking. But I am not going to further jinx myself by saying there won't be any more instances of burn through.

43.) The Nick of Time

In my last post, I referred briefly to Wooden Boat magazine's "Launchings and Relaunchings" section. This usually runs three or four pages and is full of snapshots of completed projects, with the grinning boat owner often included. Each photo is usually accompanied by a little bit of text explaining the project.

I save back issues of the magazine because I never know when I might want to refer to an article.  But to illustrate a point, I'd like to quote a few things from "Launchings and Relaunchings" in an issue I picked at random (March/April 2014).  Here goes:

"Though he began the project in 1999 and didn't launch until last year, Jay estimates he only spent about three-and-a-half years building his boat...."

"More than a dozen years ago, David Smith started building Gratitude...."

"Working mostly alone over more years than he cares to admit, John Di Dio built Ghost...."

"Jeffrey spent five years building the boat from native white oak, white ash....."

42.) Planking ComPLETE. Morale Gets Boost

One of the guys in our professional woodworking shop asked me a rather insulting question the other day: "Does your client ever complain about how long the boat project is taking?"

My response: "Yes, HE does--every night while I am lying in bed in the dark. That's because HE is me."

Undertaking a project like this can be super frustrating even without any heckling from the peanut gallery. There already have been many times when I wondered whether I was in my right mind to attempt this at all.

A lot of people who get excited about boat restoration give up midstream, when they realize after a year or two that they still have a year or two left. Hearing about these surrenders used to surprise me. Now I am surprised every time I open Wooden Boat magazine and see how many people actually hung on until the end.

For me, the only way to get through this type of marathon (while retaining what I define as sanity), is to set short-term achievable goals and to take them one at a time. For the past several weeks, my focus has been on planking the interior of the boat. And now that I have finished that part of the job, I'll take a moment to pat myself on the back of my Jackson Hole t-shirt for this small victory.  

Pause.

Whoopie! Hooray!

Pause.

This approach, along with my new Beats headphones, helps me keep up my morale.  

Now for the photographic proof:

Ok, I still have some sanding to do. And I need to fill a few small gaps between the planks with epoxy. But I am pretty pleased that I can begin to move on to a new phase of the restoration.

I'm also super glad I made the planks extra thick because they needed even more sanding than I expected. I didn't actually burn through in any spots but I came dangerously close in two small places.

When I showed my wife the middle picture above on my iPhone, she said: "Oh, what a nice wooden spoon!"  I didn't know what to think of that at first, but I choose to believe she was complimenting the beautiful mahogany, the symmetrical shape of the IC, and my fine craftsmanship. Does sort of look like a spoon, though.

Next milestones:  

1.) Completing the repair of the keelson and then strengthening it.

2.) Sheathing the interior of the boat with a transparent layer of fiberglass and epoxy.

3.) Building and installing the rails and decks

4.) Making and installing the major interior components: bulkhead, centerboard trunk, partners, and rear seat.

That order may change, but I'll be proceeding one step at a time.

41.) Planking Putters Ahead

The photo below shows the status of the planking project—about 75% of the way done (though, as you can see, there is a lot of finish sanding yet to do).

This has been a fairly laborious process and one that has increased my respect for the original builders. They had to make and attach five layers of mahogany planks compared to the measly one layer I'm installing.

In my defense, I think it's a bit harder to plank from the inside out than the other way around. The job also would go much faster with two or more sets of hands, but I've stubbornly determined to do every bit of the work on this little crate myself.

The process I've been following is to start in the center of the hull and work my way out to each side. The first plank can go in without any shaping, but each one after that has to be trimmed on at least one side to fit snuggly against its neighbor.

So, to start, I put one plank in position and temporarily clamp/staple it in place. Then I place a second plank alongside the first and scribe a line showing the shape it needs to take for a close fit. Like this:

Below is what the scribed line looks like. It may help to click on the picture to expand it because the edge of my workbench is hard to distinguish from the edge of the plank.

The next step is to bandsaw the plank close to the line. Why not all of the way? Two reasons. The first is that the saw leaves a rough finish that needs to be smoothed. The second is that the scribed line, at least the way I do it (and no matter how many variations I've tried), never ends up a perfect match but always needs fine tuning.

The only way I've discovered to get the right match is to plane the plank close to the scribe line and then hold it in place to see where there are still gaps.  I note where the planks touch and plane down those areas a bit more.  I repeat this process over and over again until all the gaps disappear.  (In some cases, when the curve to be cut on the plank isn't very extensive, I've found it fairly easy to skip the scribing step and just plane the plank by eye).

The photo above show the Lee Nielsen violin maker's plane I have been using for this process. I have it set to shave about 1/200ths inch off with each pass. It takes a lot of passes, but the fit ends up very tight which, for this project, is more a matter of cosmetics than a concern about making the boat watertight. (The reason for this will become obvious later.)

I've settled on installing only five planks at a time because there's almost no way to keep each one from shifting slightly when "gluing" it in. The more planks I install, the more each shift gets magnified from one plank to the next. 

The adhesive is epoxy, applied first to the boat and then to the underside of each plank.  Here's a picture of a section of the hull coated with epoxy and almost ready for the planks, which are laid out near the bow.  I put the epoxy on with a cheap brush with the bristles trimmed more than halfway off. This prevents the sticky epoxy from pulling out too many bristles, which all need to be removed from the surface before the planks are laid in.  I use a very slow drying epoxy to give myself plenty of time to get the job done and I change disposable gloves often to keep from smearing epoxy all over the planks and my tools, though I always seem to end up making a mess anyway. I also try not to let drips of my sweat fall into the epoxy.

The last step before fastening the planks is to mix a second batch of epoxy and stir in glass microfibers. This formula thickens the epoxy to a catsup consistency and helps create a stronger, gap-filling bond.  It must be evened out with a notched trowel like this (the same technique you'd use when laying ceramic tile).

Once all the "glue" is spread out, I lay the planks in and fasten them in place with staples fired through tongue depressors to hold them down firmly and evenly. I've covered the rest of the procedure in my earlier posts on vacuum bagging.