Building Souvenirs

May 6, 2008

Jake and I drove to Olympia and picked up the plans from Devlin. Got the opportunity to sit and chat with Sam for an hour and a half, which was very instructive. This was 4 days after ankle surgery, so we went home, hung them on the wall, and started modifying them immediately. I began building a model, while re-reading Sam’s book, studying Peter Gron’s website, and scouring the web, looking for homebuilders (especially tape & stitch) for ideas. Being off my feet for five weeks, has given me the opportunity to actually THINK about what we’re about to undertake, and to do some pre-planning. So unlike me! I started a notebook of construction notes, and questions (I need another hour with Sam), and began building a scale model. I highly recommend modeling the project before starting the actual boat, especially if you’re contemplating making even minor changes to the plans. It’s amazing what modeling will reveal. You can see the changes we’re planning here, and the reasons why.

A ‘shout out’ to Peter Gron. Peter is building a Devlin designed Arctic Tern, and not only is he doing a remarkable job of boat building, he has provided us with an incredible record of his accomplishment! You could actually use this site as a “how to” guide for building a stitch & tape boat. Peter’s website has been an inspiration to Jake and me, and a wealth of information. Treat yourself, and take a look at his Arctic Tern Project.

6/3/2008

Picked up the first batch of plywood! Damn that mahogany plywood is beautiful!

On the Glen-L site I found the plans for a router jig for plywood scarfing. When I built D’Abord I did the scarfing with my belt sander, and I was never happy with that method. Jake and I built one, and Jake gave it test run on some really bad ¾ plywood. Here we are giving it a go on the ½ sheets we’ll need. Here’s the plywood set up.

And our jig

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Jake doing the first cuts.

We decided that we made the jig too long, I guess we were planning on cutting all the boards at once when we came up with the measurements. It proved to be a bit unwieldy and awkward to use. So we modified it.

Here I am finishing up with the modified Jig.

I was a little disappointed in how the jig worked. We still had to finish up with sanders to get it right.

I had an idea last night to improve the jig. I may do a little more tweaking before we proceed.

Jake’s report: Well, the scarfing for the bottom of the hull is done.  I think we learned a lot about the do's and don'ts of scarfing with our jig.  We found out that it's best to go side to side and not push it through the wood, we also learned that you should definitely always make sure the bit is tightened as tight as it can possibly go, but the major lesson I learned is that one should never trust that the wood you buy, even plywood, is exactly square. 

As Dad and I were scarfing we kept running into the problem that the lines of the ply's that we were following were raising on the ends and we did everything imaginable to try and remedy this.  We checked and re-checked everything we did was true and square, and the plywood was flat to the table, and it didn't solve the problem.  Then as I stared perplexed at our setup dad did something that completely shocked me.  He grabbed the big roofing square that hangs on the side of our work bench and placed it on the partially scarfed plywood.  And there it was for us to see, the corners bowed outwards so there was a low point in the middle of the sheet.  Well from then on we took all of our measurements for the set up off the middle and let the corners sort themselves out.  It wasn't exactly perfect but it was better and sometimes you just can't sweat the small stuff in order to move on.  Don't get me wrong, the scarfs for the hull are very important but if it will work then you might as well go with it instead of banging your head against a wall trying to get something to look perfect with it's going to be coated in epoxy and glued to another piece of wood then fiberglassed and painted (not to mention under water). 

But that was our adventure in scarfing with our newly made jig and our beautiful plywood.  Next, the shop floor must be cleaned and cleared so that we can lay out these scarfed boards and glue them up into one 20 foot sheet.  We will do both sides of the lower chine (the bottom section of the hull) and then it's back to scarfing for the upper chine.  This will be my first real encounter with epoxy and I am very excited so stay tuned.