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.

37.) Cosette on Shop IR

My small dog who thinks she is a big dog got in a fight with another dog who thinks she is a big dog because she is, in fact, a big dog.  Cosette was the uncontest loser of the scrap and actually lucky to be spared her neck.  Cosette was bruised, both physically and emotionally.  She's been spending extra time at home in recovery time.  I am sure the absence of Cosette's steadying influence on me is what sabotaged the first vacuum bag.  She is a vital member of the team.

36.) Everything is Different, the Second Time Around

Now that's what a proper vacuum bag is supposed to look like. Hooray!

I bravely (or stupidly) attached six planks again this time. But to help slow things down and allow me to be more careful I used West System's extra slow epoxy hardener instead of just the normal slow hardener. The extra slow stuff is made for boatyards in tropical climates, but lately that's just the sort of weather we've been having in New York. It provides a substantially longer "pot life" (when the epoxy is thick in the mixing cup) and takes 24 hours to cure at a constant 72 degrees.

The most important thing I did better this time, basic as it is, was to keep my plank marking system simple so I didn't accidentally apply any epoxy on the wrong side of the planks like last time.  

I also was much more careful with all the materials and about establishing a good seal around the area to be vacuum-bagged. The photos below show the tape and the way it goes on (the fourth side is hidden on the outside of the boat). I still had a few tiny leaks (which is all it takes to mess up a vacuum), but they were fairly easy to plug.

The super slow epoxy also gave ample time to line up the planks properly and staple them down. I still found it impossible to get them absolutely perfect, with no gap at all, but I came pretty close. I am guessing I will have figured out how to do it just right by the time I install the last plank (which of course will tempt me to pull them all out and start all over again—an urge I hope to vigorously resist). Stapling was all that was used to hold the planks together for gluing when the boat was first built.

I am not going to show all of the steps involved with shaping and vacuum bagging in this post because I have to repeat the process four to six more times (depending on how brave I get) to finish the hull. That will give me more opportunity to explain this process in greater detail. I also wanted to focus on avoiding a repeat vacuum bag disaster, so I also left the iPhone on the sidelines for this go around.

The vacuum pump is still running in the shop as I write this. It will need to stay on for at least 24 hours to maintain the seal that is clamping the new planks to the hull. That's much longer than it would usually take using a faster hardener. The risk is that if a leak develops during that time, the vacuum could lose some or all of its pressure and ruin the job.

One thing I am going to do differently in the future is to get a proper suction valve to attach the vacuum hose to the bag. The way I am doing it (with multiple holes cut in the end of the hose that's inside the bag) works okay, but it's hard to get a perfect seal around the place where the hose enters the bag.

35.) How Not to Vacuum Bag

This is not the way a vacuum bagging project is supposed to look. The sandbags are the giveaway; they are a resource to turn to when trying to stave off disaster.

I began this phase of the project excited to finally have begun the process of rebuilding the boat. My shop mates quickly noticed I was up to something unusual, so I also had a curious audience.

Making a vacuum bag is the best method for installing planks on the inside of the boat. Done right, the bag provides a clamping force that distributes pressure evenly. I thought I was being conservative by confining this step to six planks. A professional would try to do the whole hull, or at least half of it, in one shot. As it turned out, though, I should have been even more cautious.

I outlined where each plank would go and I numbered and marked each one. Then I mixed a batch of epoxy and used a two-inch paint roller to spread it first on the hull and then on the underside of the planks. I mixed a second batch of epoxy thickened with a filler and spread that on the hull with a finely notched plastic trowel. (The unthickened first coat seeps into the wood; the thickened mixture provides a paste between the boards and the hull, helping to fill out any hollows and to avoid voids in the laminate.)

Mixing epoxy is a bit like firing a starting pistol. The moment you blend the resin and the hardener, a chemical reaction begins that eventually turns the liquid into a hard-as-steel solid. Heat accelerates the chemical reaction. My shop thermometer showed it was 87 degrees, so I used West System's slow hardener to give myself more time. I figured I had at least an hour, maybe 90 minutes, if I got the mixture out of the pot quickly and spread out on the wood (the curing reaction slows when the epoxy molecules are distributed at greater distances from each other).

I like to think of myself as cool under fire, but for some reason, epoxy always stresses me out more than it should. Feeling under the gun, I sometimes work too frantically. And that's how I made my first mistake.

Midway through applying epoxy to the planks, I misread the markings I had written on the boards and coated the wrong side of three planks. That meant that I had to go back, turn them over, and coat the other side, too. Now I had three super slippery planks that would be difficult to wrestle in place and staple down.

Once that was done (after going through three pairs of disposable gloves), I placed a layer of release fabric (a material that doesn't stick to epoxy) over the planks. Next came a layer of a breather cloth that would enable air to flow within the bag. Last was a thick plastic sheet that would serve as the vacuum bag. I had cut all of these materials to size beforehand. I also had already surrounded three sides of the planking area with a clay-like adhesive. The adhesive is what holds the plastic bag on top of the breather cloth, release fabric, and planks. It creates a seal when air is removed from the bag. In the best of worlds, the resulting vacuum gives you the equivalent of one atmosphere of pressure (more than 2,000 pounds per square foot) spread evenly over the bag,

I initially put down only three sides of the adhesive because the fourth side had to run on top of the planks themselves after they were in place. As soon as I started putting the fourth strip down, I recognized the makings of disaster. The clay refused to stick properly to the three planks with epoxy on the wrong side. I quickly wiped as much off as I could and did my best to try to get the adhesive to adhere.

The last step in vacuum bagging is to run a perforated hose under the plastic bag, attach it to a pump, and start removing air from inside the bag. The bag needs to be leak-free to remove all of the air. When I flipped the switch on the pump, I could hear hissing. A lot of hisssssssssssssssssing, in fact. I had a typhoon of leaks. Most were in the area where the fresh epoxy was keeping the adhesive clay from sticking properly. It's not unusual to have a few leaks at first, but this was way worse than usual.

I spent the next 20 or so minutes frantically trying to plug the holes, using more clay, tape, and plastic. But it was a losing battle. When I only had about 10 minutes left before the epoxy started to "go off" or harden, I got desperate and started running around the shop looking for a solution. At the last minute, I found four 50-pound sandbags and set them down in the area where I was getting the most leaks.  At the very least, I surmised, the sandbags would apply uniform pressure on the wood the same way the vacuum bag was supposed to, though at about a tenth of the force.

But .... I also got lucky: the sandbags greatly reduced the amount of leaking. A decent, but not great, vacuum developed inside the bag. As an added measure, I fastened wood clamps on the top of each plank.

Then I collapsed on my shop stool, exhausted, drenched in sweat, and disappointed. And that's when the ribbing started.

"What do you got going on there, Mr. Boatbuilder?", one of my fellow woodworkers asked as he passed by.

"Preparing for a flood?" remarked another.

"Oh, so that's what a vacuum bag isn't supposed to look like", said a third.

Ha. Ha. Joke's on me.

In coming posts I hope to be able to show that I regained my composure, learned from my mistakes, and executed a much better vacuum-bagging operation.

Below is a photo I took the next morning after I removed the bags and adhesive, sanded the epoxy off the top of the three planks, and did a little filling between the seams. They still need a fairly aggressive hand sanding.  But, in the end, the sandbags did their job. It wasn't a complete disaster.

Note: the red Bessey clamps are holding the hull in the mold. The new planks should help the boat regain some of its designed shape.