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. 

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.

40.) It's Not Art, It's an Ark (A Small One, Anyway)

The photo in my last post was a closeup of the hull ready for more planking.  The way I can tell that I'm finally finished with fairing is when the scratches left by 80 grit paper look even and uniform across the surface, with no shiny spots remaining (which would signify a low spot where the sandpaper hasn't touched the surface.) It took four layers of epoxy mixed with fairing filter and a lot of hand sanding to get to this point. The area up near the port bow still needs more work.

Here's a view from farther away.

This only works if you use a sanding block so that you don't accidentally press the sandpaper into the low spots.  Next is a photo of my new favorite way of hand sanding--using a roll of 3M sticky back sandpaper on each side of a strip of wood.  I peeled back the paper for the photo so it's easier to see what I am talking about.

The picture below shows dry-fitting planks to the port side. (No glue/epoxy yet.) Each plank has to be tapered to fit its neighbor.  I'll show how I do that in the next blog post.  Now, that I've had some practice, I am getting pretty good at it. The seems between the planks are going to be much tighter on the port side than I was able to get them when I started on the starboard side.

39.) Is this Art?

If so, I may need to do this instead of restore boats.  I'll tell you what it is tomorrow.

38.) Fall Back, Regroup and Reorg, Prepare for Battle

Before any of my legions of readers (slight exaggeration intended) send any more sympathy cards to my wife mourning/celebrating my passing, I should probably explain the lack of any recent updates on this blog.

One of the things about boat restoration, at least the way I am doing it, is that it requires a lot of equipment. You need an array of tools for woodworking, for mixing and applying composite materials, and for painting and finishing. You also need supplies of the raw materials for all these activities. And then there's the boat itself, hogging up the prime real estate in the center of the shop.

It's very important to keep all this stuff organized, put away, clean, and fully functional. I am a big believer of the idea of a place for everything and everything in its place.

But around the time of my last post, you would have never guessed that if you happened to stumble upon my shop, which I had unwittingly turned into a stirring monument to either A) Entropy or B) Sheer Sloven Laziness.  I prefer option A but I am sure my mom would have picked B had she seen the place.

So I got to work becoming Mr. Clean (without the earring).  Among other things, I made a nice white oak cabinet for my hand planes and some mahogany dividers for my tool chest.  See photos below.

I also cleaned and sharpened all of my tools so they would be ready to go. I even went so far as to reorganize my sandpaper! It's surprising how much of the stuff you can accumulate working on boats. I have the usual sandpaper box with individual full-size sheets in both regular and wet/dry, in all the standard grits ranging from 40-2,000. I also possess an arsenal of different papers for each of nine different electric or air powered sanders plus a bunch of hand sanders, including one three feet long.  In addition to different grits, these come with different backings like Velcro or adhesive and different hole patterns for different methods of dust extraction.  The grit can also be made of different materials for specific jobs; you don't use the same one to sand wood that you use to sand epoxy and the epoxy type is different still from the one you use on paint. I have a wall chart that helps keep me from losing my mind over this.

One of the reasons I have so many sanders is that I really don't enjoy sanding very much and am always looking for ways to make it easier. To speed things up, I change paper often and try to move fairly quickly from one grit to the next highest one.  If I get really impatient, I can quickly find myself surrounded in a pile of sandpaper boxes, discarded used sandpaper discs, plus two or three or four different sanders, their power cords, and the vacuums I hook them up to.

It was in the middle of one of these Pig-Pen (yes, there's a hyphen in Pig-Pen) episodes that I finally decided that enough was enough and that I needed to stop working on the boat and clean things up before I either injured myself, broke a favorite tool by sitting on it, or accidentally burned the whole shop down.  And just as I made this resolution I stood up and stepped on something and snapped it in half. It was a part for the boat that I had spent days making. Ay Carumba.

So that's what I have been doing. That, and well, um, uh, I also got kind of distracted by the idea of making a "Krenov style" hand plane. It's not finished yet, but here's a picture of mine sitting in front of one made by a guy named Scott Meek, who is probably the best wooden hand plane maker in the U.S.  Yes, I am copying his work for the most part and, yes, mine isn't nearly as good. But, hey, it's my first one! Ya' gotta start somewhere, and if I am going to imitate someone it might as well be Scott who, as he'll be the first to admit, got his start by copying Krenov's planes.  I am guessing my first crack at imitating Shakespeare would fare similarly.

These side journeys are now just about over. I like, totally, promise that my next blog will be about something I did on the IC. It will not be another blog post about why I am not writing more blog posts.

Oh, one last thing, Cosette is now doing very well.  It's been too hot to bring her into the shop as my assistant, but she'll be returning soon in the fall when I expect to back working full throttle on the boat.