Moe

When Sandy Nevills Reiff, Moe Nevills's granddaughter, stopped in a couple days ago, she gave me some pictures of Moe herself. There are a million pictures of Moe's only child Norman, the famous fast water man, but Moe stayed well out of the limelight. Anyhow, here she be: Mary Davies Nevills, aka Mae, transformed by her grandchildren to Moe, born around 1875, died May 2, 1959. I'd guess we are on a San Juan River trip here.

 

According to Gaylord Staveley's fastidious research, Moe married William E. "Billy" Nevills in northern California in 1903 or 4 at the age of 28. Billy was 38. When Norman was born in 1908, Mary Mae Moe was so sick with peritonitis the doctor urged her to give the baby away. She didn't, and later recovered.

In the 1920s the Nevills family moved to Mexican Hat to work in the oil fields. They built a lodge and trading post, opening in 1933. Norm soon found his way onto the river, married Doris Drown (what a dreadful maiden name for a boatman's wife), and had two daughters, Joan and Sandra. Here is the lovely Doris with Joan and Moe:

Here are Norm, Billy and Moe in front of the WEN, named for Billy's initials. Moe is a lot more interested in the dog than the photographer.

Lastly, a dreadfully sad shot gazing at a small model of one of Norm's boats, shortly after Norman and Doris died in their plane just after taking off from Mexican Hat. 

Anyhow, here's to you, Moe. 

Batten a thousand

Well, we got the battens cut out and scarfed together so we can fair the ribcage. But the big pain today was trying to figure out how to extract the triangular chines from my oak 2x4s. They are isosceles triangles, with the angles being 38°, 38°, and 104°. How to get more than one out of a 2x4? Here is what I came up with:

The scary thing was trying to make these giant angular cuts through solid oak on my table saw and actually making cuts one and two meet in the middle. Somehow it worked. Cuts three and four were not quite as scary, but still, I kissed my table saw afterward. Oh brave and mighty machine. If anyone has a use for 36 feet of the very odd-shaped scrap material that came out of this cut, let me know. It's still a lot of oak.

Scarfing the two nine-foot chines together was an epic as well but somehow that worked as well.

Gaylord Staveley, Norm Nevills's son-in-law, stopped in this afternoon. What a treat. He has spent a lot of his life digging around river history, Nevills in particular. We had a good bull session on the various mysteries of how Nevills actually figured out how to build these things. Here are Gaylord and nephew Greg in Moe's cockpit.

A preliminary glance at the batten curves tonight convinced me that we are really pretty close. Tomorrow we'll see just how close.

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.