Full rack of ribs

Josh, Greg, and I got the last of the ribs up this afternoon. It really looks boaty now.

Josh is fastening the final rib set to the strong back. I have pointed out to him that it will likely be he that crawls in under the boat in a week or two to un-screw all the ribs (he being four decades more flexible than I), so it's best to initiate a convenient angle for that latter process now. (I am sure I am not the only boatbuilder who has screwed a boat to a form such that, once the sides and bottom are on, the screw can no longer be removed.)(A few such snapped-off screws are imbedded in awkward spots in a few of my earlier boats.)

The next step is to get all eight ribs, the bowpost, and the transom perfectly fair--that is, to have them describe the same perfect smooth curves we drew out on the lofting table and (tried to) faithfully reproduce in three dimensions. So we will be making a few sixteen-foot battens tomorrow to arc across the ribcage and see where the glitches are. And more importantly, to see why they are there and how best to rectify them.

River Rat's comment on yesterday's blog regarding my use of plumber's tape makes me want to explain the coolest feature of that system--one of many tricks I picked up from Greg Rössel at WoodenBoat School:

Use two opposing steel tapes to make tight guy lines to the frames. Then add another screw about an inch or so up the tape to put an ungodly amount of torque on the frame. Using a few of these tightening screws, you can adjust the plumbness and placement of the frames incredibly precisely. And with all the tapes humming at high-C, the frames become immovable. Very cool trick indeed. Cheap, quick, easy. And very musical when you pluck them. And also quite sharp, Josh discovered, when you whack a knuckle alongside them.

Ganging up on Moe

Josh and and his dad Joel came by for the day again, as did Greg Reiff--Moe Nevills's great-grandson. And his son Tanner, Moe's great-great grandson. Sandy Nevills-Reiff, Greg's mom and Moe's granddaughter, stopped in this morning as well, with a wonderful gift--a booklet with a collection of photos of Moe herself. I'll post some of those before long.

Here is where we started at around eleven this morning:

Today was all about ribs. We got three more sets built and up in place, with two teams working the various tasks. Josh's friend Dylan came by and pitched in in the afternoon and is threatening to join the swelling crew. Late in the afternoon we discovered that somehow the three rib stations we had built did not line up properly with the bow post. After a lot of head-scratching and muttering we realized that we (I) neglected to subtract the thickness of the boat's side from the width of the bow post, making it 1-1/4" too wide. That's a lot.

After a long day we were just shutting down when Roy showed up ready to build boats, with Teddy and Emma in tow. So we ran a second shift. Roy got the bowpost trimmed down its proper width, and we got one more rib station done and in place. Three more rib sets to go, then we start fine tuning, making all the lines as fair as we can before installing the chines and fastening on the sides and bottom.

Moe is shaping up. I gotta say--it is kind of a silly boat. Very flat and hard to get a decent store of gear into. But hey, it is the boat that dominated the Colorado River for nearly three decades. As Greg and I were discussing, Nevills may never have seen a real river boat--the dominant Galloway style boat was an odd boat as well, and Norman had little to go on other than the boats he had seen on the San Juan. So he invented something he thought might work. And it did. Although I am not entirely sure how. But as Roy and I agreed tonight, if you really want to understand the lines and design of a boat--go ahead and build it. Besides, I need one in my collection.

Weak mind, strong back

As predicted, a healthy dump greeted Flagstaff this morning. Of snow, that is. By noon I finished procrastinating, revived the snowblower from hibernation, screwed up its transmission, but got the driveway cleared.

We finished the transom and got it upright and perfectly placed in space, with high tension strapping to make sure it doesn't move.

Likewise the bow post is now where it should remain relative to the vessel. We dared challenge fate and measure the actual distance between the bowpost and transom once all was firmly locked in place. Amazing--it was within a sixteenth of an inch. We got one more set of ribs assembled and in place, though I seem to have forgotten to take that one last picture.
By using the precision of the lofting, we are able to fully frame out the boat. Once we get her sides and floor on and roll her up, she will be nearly done. Pretty cool.
More ribwork tomorrow. A few folks are coming by to help so we may get a couple teams in action and get a mess of stuff done. Fingers crossed.

Slow day

Well, with both of my helpers down or out today, I puttered along and got distracted a lot. I got a bit more work done on the bow post, and lofted out and mostly finished the transom.

Then a bit of shopping in order to procure the requisite supplies for a ladder-strongback. A good deal of head-scratching went into its actual construction and placement, and it is now anchored to the shop floor. The bowpost and transom risers are cut and tentatively placed. These will hold the boat ends in their perfect spot in space, and seven more pairs of risers will hold the central rib sections that I hope to be building tomorrow.

Snow is in the forecast, though, so I may spend more time shoveling and snowblowing and less time in the shop.

Parts

Not much to report today other than laying up the bowpost and transom of Moe. The bowpost is solid white oak and weighs a lot. Ribwork tomorrow.

Oak timbers

With the shipment of white oak several days overdue, I spent a lot of time tacking its pilgrimage on the computer. From Indiana it went to St. Louis, Kansas City, and on to Denver. That made sense. It was due here the following day, last Friday. Then it got a wild hair and went up to Salt Lake City, then south to Cedar City for the weekend. I guess it wanted to check out Utah. Yesterday it found its way to Phoenix and shortly after midnight, headed up to Flagstaff. It arrived looking a lot like you or I would if we'd traveled that route:

Kind of like it loosened its tie and belt, ruffled up its hair, and decided to make itself comfortable in the corner. Christopher, the freight guy, dragged it out in pieces and I loaded on my trailer. To my amazement, it was all there and in fine shape. Josh and I spent a few hours this afternoon building a mighty new rack and stickering the oak up near the ceiling where it will get plenty of warm air circulating in amongst it. Some folks like the trick of putting a bucket of water or a raw egg above the door to fall on visitors. We thought we'd one-up that and go with 1077 pounds of oak timbers. The other 350 pounds. are ready to tumble on you when you turn on the stereo.

With all the wood now on the premises, and the floors and sides all scarfed, it is time to finish lofting up the detail work. Which does not come out well in photos.

For the rest of the week we'll be building the transom, bow post, and cross-frames. If all goes well we could pull the hull together this weekend. That's a mighty big if.

Four more on the floor

I won the scarfing lottery today. My router jig, which has been problematic in the past, worked flawlessly. Bingo, eight sheets scarfed at once in about half an hour. I must be living right.

It's just a matter of stacking the boards at the precise scarfing angle, affixing them in place, then setting a melamine ramp on them that has a slot for the router. Here we are about two-thirds of the way through.

Once the routing has removed the overburden, it only takes a minute or two with a belt sander to smooth out the bevel. Then glue them up.

Here are the two 3/8" layers of Moe's floor: five feet wide, sixteen feet long. I wonder where I will put these while I get the rest of the boat ready? They are mighty awkward.

These are the two layers for the sides of the boat--a 1/4" and a 3/8" ply. Each of these will supply the wood for both sides of the boat, the sides being only eighteen inches tall.

Four on the floor

Today brought another two wretched forays into the quest for the slick and quick way to scarf sheets of plywood. Scarfing, for those new to the term, means cutting an 8:1 bevel along the edges of two boards, then glueing them together along that overlap to make a larger board. This was especially challenging, as the Moe has a sixteen-foot floor that is a full five feet wide. And three-quarters of an inch thick. I thought that might be a pretty stiff floor to bend onto the curved hull, so I decided to do it in two layers of 3/8" plywood. So each layer is composed of two full sheets scarfed end-to-end, plus two third-sheets scarfed on along the side. That makes 42 feet of scarf joint, for a full 84 feet of scarf cutting. 

Today's first invention was a clamp-on edge-cutting device, where a beveled Skilsaw runs down the jig and makes the perfect bevel. Well, it worked sort of okay but not great. The Skilsaw made one of those bad burning cat hair smells, and the cuts were less than ideal.

So for the third-sheets, each eight feet long and sixteen inches wide, we made a goofy vertical jig on the table saw and shot them through. This actually worked brilliantly. Unfortunately, all the rest of my scarfs will be on the ends of eight-foot sheets of plywood, and this system will not work. Back to the drawing board.

Anyhow, by quitting time we had all four of the big panels laid out and glued up. Next we scarf the ends of these and make the two 5'1" x 15'9" floor panels.

The last alumiwoodie done; Moe aloft

We finished up the last of three alumiwoodies this week. They took about a week each to convert from pure metal beasts to hybrid woodies. There was the occasional glitch--damn those hard-bends along the gunwale cheeks:

 Wood grabrails to make:

 Nonskid deck paint to apply:

 Umbrella holders of course:

 Adjustable foot braces:

And movable seats:

 And oarlocks. So any boatman has the option of moving the center of gravity forward or back, and making the rowing configuration smaller of larger:

And away we go to AzRA to await springtime.

An hour later my new apprentice Josh and I had our ducks in a row in the lofting room, beginning the next boat. Moe is this winter's replica project, modeled after the WEN, Norm Nevills's original 1938 Cataract Boat. Nevills's design was similar to its predecessor, the Galloway boat, in that its bottom was flat from side to side, and raised at either end. Each had large hatches at each end and a cavernous cockpit in the center. Neither had much in the way of accommodations for passengers, neither had significant rise to the decks at either end, so both had a tendency to swamp the cockpit in large waves. The two major advances Nevills made were making the boat over a foot wider--adding stability and maneuverability-- and using the new miracle material, marine plywood--making the boat quicker to build, with less shrink/swell issues and long-term maintenance. Here is the WEN on display at South Rim:

Nevills named the boat for his father, William E. Nevills. Later Cataract boats were named for his daughters Joan and Sandra, his wife Doris, but none honored Norm's mother Mary, often called Mae, but known to her granddaughters as Moe. The last moniker seemed like a perfect boat name.

When I cast these lofting ducks last month I thought 29 of them was an excessive number, but by the time we got the batten where we wanted it, fair and true, we had over two dozen of the little lead monsters pushing and pulling the perfect curve. Pretty fun.

It takes a bit of wandering back and forth, staring at the batten and pondering, in order to find a line that looks fair. But by quitting time we had the side views, top views, and all seven stations drawn out full scale. The picture does not show much, but we thought it was pretty exciting.

We'll begin scarfing up some side and bottom panels tomorrow.Yahoo. The White Oak is due in Monday.

Lofty ideas

Or: Getting Your Ducks in a Row 

Inspired by my WoodenBoat School course on boatbuilding, I decided it made sense to loft the next boats that I plan to build. Lofting is the art of drawing full-size patterns of the entire boat in several views, such that you have all the curves fair and the measurements correct before you start cutting wood. It is an arcane science at best, but Greg Rössel, my instructor, made it look pretty much insane not to do it. Here is Greg showing us how to lift lines off the lofting to make perfect forms. (Note lofting ducks in lower part of photo.)

First thing I needed was a place big enough to loft. Since my book warehouse has gotten so dusty due to the collapse of the book market, I figured I should multi-task that space. Voila, a 4' by 19' lofting table with a lifetime supply of river books beneath it. 

The next thing I needed were some lofting ducks--essentially lead weights that hold battens in place for the purpose of creating perfect fair curves. Turns out there are only a couple places in the world that sell lofting ducks and they run around $35 - $45 apiece, and I wanted a dozen or two. That would get pricey in a hurry. Further web searching brought up two things--instructions on how to cast your own ducks, which was tempting, and an outfit that paints them like ducks: boatsofwood.com which I found inspirational. (This site also has a good picture of how the ducks are used.) Thus began a week or so of part-time goofing around at the newly founded and short-lived Fretwater Duck Foundry. Here is how to make about $1200 worth of ducks for about $100 and a bunch of messing around.

Carve a pattern duck out of an old two-by-four.

Get a bucket of lead tire weights from Double-D Tire Coral.

Fire up Dan's steam-bending blaster.

As the steel and bits of rubber float to the top of the melting lead, rake it off with a slag-rake (made from finish nails and a scrap of plywood).

Meanwhile, make a box of damp sand, make some duck molds with your pattern, and get ready to pour.

Spray paint them, drill them for their brass points--made from 1/8" brass rod, and glue in the points.

This next part is key: invite a bunch of friends for Thanksgiving weekend and have a big tamale party. Meanwhile, lay in a supply of hobby paints and brushes.

The rest is magic:

Starting with Daffy Duck (at about 5:30 in the picture):

Daffy Duck

Virgin of Guadalupe

Crocodile

Pato Corto Corrientes (Chilean Torrent Duck)

Hopi Blue Corn

Bowling Pin

Toucan

Blue-footed Booby

Dory van pulling dory

White Pelican

Guinness Bottle

Belted Kingfisher

Eared Grebe

Whooping Crane

Great Blue Heron

Schizophrenic Wood Duck / Ibis

Guitarron

Flamingo

Jameson 12-year Bottle

another Great Blue Heron

Oystercatcher

Mallard

American Flamingo

Yellow-crowned Night Heron

Whale with barnacles

Corn goddess

Flat-nosed Rainbow Trout

Acorn Woodpecker

Ivory-billed Woodpecker

Many thanks to Lora, Jim, Andy, Kate, RJ and Terri for their magnificent renditions.