Daggerboard!

Because I want to sail this bad boy to Port Lincoln eventually it has to be able to, well, sail. That means it needs some lateral resistance. Thats what lets the boat move in a direction other than whee the wind is blowing. This can be a keel or a centreboard or, in this case, a dagger board. (A centreboard swings up into the hull whereas a daggerboard plunges straight down.

The daggerboard case has to come up it the hull a fair way so that it can be open at the top and not flood the boat. It also has to resist quite a bit of lateral force so needs to be reinforced quiet well. The photo above shows the inside of the case. It has to be epoxied on the inside before closing so it is all waterproof. The angled bit at the back allows the case to double as a support for the middle thwart (seat). The photo below shows the case in place and the thwart reinforcing it.

Gunwales

Gunwale is probably the classic example of marine terminology being just bloody odd. Its pronounced Gunnel, like tunnel.

I wanted a classic look to this little boat so I went with a spaced gunwale. This means an inwale (innel) spaced from the gunwale. It really stiffened the top of the hull when finished. I think its actually a bit stiffer than just a gunwale because of the width of the laminate. Its a bit of a work boat thing.

The spacers are cut either end using a large spade bit drill to make scalloped ends. Its notched intot he breasthook in the front and the quarter knees at the back. Its a bit unclear in this photo but you can see the completed gunwales and floors.

You can see in this photo I've also added the thwart and a cross member for the rear sear. There's probably a name for that too but I haven't got the

plans with me now.

By this time I had filleted all the lands inside and out. Thats the joins between the planks. I mixed up filler thickness epoxy and used a big syringe top squirt it into the joins. Then its just a matter of sort of squeegeeing it to a neat profile. Its a bloody lot of bending over.

Because the width of the join between the two bits of timber is increased it adds to the strength a lot. you can sort of see the finished join below.

You can also see some bubbles in the epoxy painted on the ply. Thats actually good. It means the epoxy displaced gas in the timber and soaked it. I'll sand it all with fine paper (800 grit) and give it another coat.

Half way there!

You might reasonably think once the thing looks like a boat you are almost done. How naive! When the hull is finished and you turn it over you are anywhere between 10% and 50% through the project. I'm only putting in some seats (thwarts) so I'm about halfway there. If it was a bigger boat with a cabin I would have really only just started the hard work. Oh I also have to make a mast, a boom, a yard and a couple of oars, oh also a rudder and a centreboard. But thats it. Bugger!

This picture shows the hull the right way up with some battens across it to check the sheer (top of hull) is level before starting work on the inside.

The first piece of work is the breasthook (great word!) This reinforces the bow and, as it turns out, is an incredibly fiddly piece of work. Every angle is unusual and the whole thing takes a lot of fitting, checking, adjusting and refitting. It should be a bit rounded on top. I made it out of a piece of Australian Oak wardrobe. The timber is nice so I will probably bright finish it (clear varnish).

Next piece of reinforcement is the floors. Not what you'd think. If you want to talk about the floor of a boat you say the sole. The floors are the structures running across the bottom of the boat which stiffen the hull and on which the sole sits. Again (like most pieces of the boat) these are a complete bugger to get fitting correctly. Interestingly the hull without reinforcement was very floppy and bendable but after the floors the bottom bit of the hull became totally stiff.

Turning over!

With the planking and keel done there is no reason to keep looking at the boat upside down. Firstly I did a heap of screw hole filling (I know I said I was doing it as I went along, but there were a heap I missed). Then there was the sanding. Anyone who has built a boat will tell you that 3/4 of the entire build time is spent sanding, that is if they don't die of black lung before you meet them.

The whole hull was only actually held down to the moulds in a few places. It was simply a matter of unscrewing

these fastenings and lifting the hull free of the moulds. Except it wouldn't come off. I assumed there must be a little dribble of epoxy somewhere that had attached the hull to the moulds so I gave it a really really big yank and it still wouldn't come loose. In fact the hull started to distort quite a bit.

Then I remembered the other screws holding it down. Once they were out it came away very easily. I was amazed how light the whole thing is. Obviously there are thwarts (seats) and a few other internals to make it a bit heavier, but the epoxy gluing each lap means there will be minimal need for further internal structures like ribs. It a bit wobbly though so some stiffening will be appreciated before I take it to sea.

Outer stem and keel

The keel serves a number of purposes. Obviously it has a limited structural value because I've finished the planking and it still hasn't been attached. The keel keeps the boat tracking true, a bit like being on rails. It also acts as a big rubbing strip for when the boat is dragged across surfaces. For that reason it should be made out of a carefully chosen hard wood that will wear well. I made mine out of the door of a cupboard I just demolished. It looked like handy timber at the time so I kept the useful bits. I think its Australian Oak. Its basically just stuck on top of the keelson. Sometimes screws are put through from the top of the keelson but decided to put my faith in the epoxy (plus a dirty big epoxy fillet down each side that you will see later.

The keel doesn't run the length of the boat uninterrupted because the centreboard needs to drop down through the middle of the boat when sailing to further maintain direction when the wind wants to push the boat sideways. So a gap (centreboard slot) needs to be incorporated. I cut the slot in the keelson a while ago. Basically I just cut bits of the Australian Oak to go around the slot and shaped them so it will look smooth.

At the front the keel becomes the outer stem as it turns up. This is a second piece of laminated timber (I used the inner stem as the pattern). The join between the outer stem and keel is stepped to increase surface area glued. Wow its all getting a bit dry. Just look at the pics and it will make sense. Once it was all glued it was planed/sanded until it was all rounded and smooth.

This picture shows that stepped join. The Aus. Oak keel is on the left and the laminated outer stem on the right.

More Planks

So there's been a bit of a break in posts here because I've just been doing more planking. It turns into a bit of a procedure you get better and better at. I cut a template for pretty much every strake except one where I was left with a bit of marine ply the size of a blank template. The instructions say you only need to do templates for the first few planks but a sheet of 4mm Okume marine ply is a bit over $100 and as each post reiterates I'm a tight arse. If I'm going to make a mistake it'll be on el-cheapo MDF.

This is such a small boat I found I could make templates, cut two planks from the good ply and then attach them with epoxy (one either side) in a three hour burst. A bigger boat would be a much bigger procedure. My dad is finishing a 5m Thames rowing skiff and I'm stuffed if I can work out how he managed to do the planking by himself.

Epoxy is so versatile I mixed a bit of extra filling powder with any epoxy left over from each gluing and did the hole filling (where the previous planks were temporarily screwed as I went.

The instructions say each plank doesn't have to quite have to touch each mould. Apparently a deviation of up to 5mm to ensure the planks curve smoothly is fine. I may have just exceeded the 5mm but the planks are nicely curved (fair). As well as the curve from stem to stern there is the up and down curve to consider. This is much harder to predict when planking a boat you've never actually seen and doing it upside down. The second photo (below) shows how the plank widths and angles vary a bit as the reach the stem. Don't tell anyone.

Some texts say you can use almost anything powdery as filler with epoxy so I thought I'd try this using some some of the fine saw dust from the random orbital sander. Turns out you can take the tight arse thing too far. The result is OK but sort of coarse and doesn't smooth well before it sets so you have lots more sanding to do later.

When all the planks were on I bought some more meranti architrave, ripped it down and attached two rubbing strips, at the top and bottom of the sheer strake, a-la working boat.

The first plank!

This is a bit of a milestone. I put the first plank on (well a boatbuilder would call it a strake - hence lapstrake being the style of construction because the strakes overLAP). Because of the overlap you put the bottom strakes on first. The bottom strake is called the garboard - I have no idea why.

Its a bit of an involved process because the strake has to be exactly the right shape. I got some cheap 3mm MDF (medium density fibreoard, otherwise known around here as craftwood) to make a pattern first. The MDF is cut to a bit bigger than will be needed and clamped down to the moulds. Then the marks on the moulds relating to the garboard are transferred onto the pattern. The strake turns from flat to horizontal at the stem on the garboard strake which makes for quite a curve.



Once the pattern has been marked and cut out it is tried on (offerred up) again to make sure its just right. (which it usually isn't and needs a bit of modification) It pays to be patient and measure twice cut once because i the shape isn't quite right the whole thing is going to look wonky when its done.

When the pattern is finally right it is clamped to the marine ply (4mm) and marked out. Ideally you would clamp it to two pieces and cut both at the same time to make super sure they were identical (one strake for each side) but this reuires lots of room and I don't have that. I cut out one then used the pattern to cut the other. Then I clamped both together and planed the edges until they were identical (well OK I should have planed them but I used a random orbital sander beacuse it was quicker)

Anything you don't want the epoxy to stick to, such as the moulds, you cover in plastic tape which is imune to the sticky super powers of the epoxy. The epoxy is mixed up (its just industrial two part glue like araldite) and then mixed with filler powder so its the consistancy of honey.










The keelson and stem are epoxied and hen the strake clamped from middle to the ends. This is bloody fiddly. The epoxy lubricates the two pieces of timber and they want to squirm around as you clamp them. You also have to be really careful where you clamp so that the strake is still following a smooth line and not a series of bent straight lines.