A couple more shots

Friends sent in a few more shots of the Edith from yesterday. Thanks Nancy, Bruce, Ena and Steve...
Today was all about wrestling with computers and a cold, and napping. Not nearly as fun as yesterday.
Edith is resting in the shop. She gained fifteen pounds by soaking for a few hours.

She floats. She rows. She rocks and rolls. She's a boat.

Edith got wet today, and she seemed to love it. I launched with the hatches open to see where any leakage came from. There is a bit, mostly seeping through knots, so nothing to really get all worried about. She rows like a dream, at least on flat water. Really fast. We did a flip drill (we meaning Edith and me) and she is a bit reluctant to go over, but eager to come up. I didn't even have to begin to climb up onto her--just pull on a rope with my foot against her. Good to know! The hatches stayed nearly dry during the roll. Amazing.

I did a few oarstop tests, moving them up and down the oar, looking for an acceptable compromise between good, comfortable leverage and crossed grips. I think I'm settling on about four inches of cross-over, which will take a bit of getting used to. Luckily her first trip starts with 120 miles of flatwater.

About a dozen friends, observers and participants showed up for the picnic. Champagne, snacks, beer, hugs, and a whole lot of laughter. We should have more boat launching parties. Lots more.

Of course my camera battery went dead on arrival, but there were others. I'll post a few when they come my way. But I did get to try out my new waterproof movie camera, and Peter snapped a few stills with it as well. This would be Edith and me:

And this would be Dan and me, watching Edith:

And this would be a goofy action shot:

Long and short: very fun, cool, fast, kinda tippy boat. And way pretty. I need to spooge a few leaky knots, leather my oars, and build a couple sideboxes. And take a nap. First the nap.

Messing around

Oh what fun. To just mess around, with the vast majority of the boat complete. Here is this evening's big move--replicating the coolest of the Kolb modifications, the oar rests. Most of the photos of the original, and the original itself, show a much cruder arrangement that evolved after they busted things up a bit. I went with the best looking iteration:

Jessica hadn't seen Edith in weeks and came by with a bottle of red wine and her camera, so we shot artsy pictures for a few hours. Here's Edith showing off her stuff. Can you spot the piece of red oak Ed snuck into the white oak pile?

These hatches are almost as pretty as they are going to be a pain in the ass to pack on a fourteen day Grand Canyon trip. Standing on my head, hoping I don't fall in...

But at least I'll be in an interesting place if I fall in:

Okay. Say good night, Brad.

Good night, Brad.

Branded

This morning I did a bit of touch-up caulking and made the decision to burn the name into the boat. Using  a blow-up print-out of the original name, I traced it onto the boat with carbon paper. (Remember carbon paper? You're old!) Then using a combination of a dollar-store soldering iron and a propane-torch copper soldering tip, I branded her, in the original Kolb unkerned font. I took special delight in the period after the name. EDITH. Period.

Here is the original being traced onto the hull. It was remarkable to notice as I did this that the texture, color, and grain of the original boat in the photos, where the gray paint had peeled away, almost perfectly matched the replica:

And here is the burnt boat (it only caught fire a couple times):

In writing historical work there is an annoying tradition that whenever you copy an original misspelling, you put the word [sic] in brackets, to indicate that you, of course, know better than to make such a mistake, but you have to in order to be faithful to the somewhat more ignorant original author. I feel like a lot of this boat needs a [sic]. So much of the construction is inappropriate for what we now know today to be the parameters of a whitewater boat. But back then they were building for one trip, not a career of river boating and decades of cherishing the same old boat. They were just damned happy if it lasted to the end of the first voyage. So all these goofy things, like ribs that do not connect to the chine, copper exterior chine strips that protect little but will trap silt and rot, hatches that really won't keep the water out, a cockpit that will practically sink the boat when swamped--that's all part of the game, part of the grand experiment to see what those guys were really up to.

I weighed her this afternoon. The Kolbs claimed they were about five hundred pounds apiece. My Edith is 406. But the Kolbs, to be fair, had three galvanized boxes built into the boat--two that were airtight buoyancy chambers in the very ends, and one hatch liner. All in all, it's pretty close. I'll make up for that extra 94 pounds with important things. Use you imagination.

Now what?

Other than fiddling around with some details and building a couple side boxes. I think Edith is, ummm, pretty much done. What am I supposed to do now?

I finished screwing on the bottom battens this morning. Let's just hope, when I hit rocks, that I am able to line up on the hard oak battens rather than the soft cedar floor.

With the new iron handles all nice and rusty, I oiled them up and installed them. Of course, when I crawled inside the turpentiney stern hatch to put nuts on the stern handle and tighten them, one nut refused. Bad threads. A half hour of swearing and grinding in the hatch and  hey, no problem. The bow ring went on perfectly, and I eye-spliced the bowline to it.

The Kolb's had a cool spare oarlock system, which I was able to replicate in brass from a place on eBay.

The exterior had some bad drizzles of my favorite Linseed oil-Turpentine-Varnish (LTV), so I scrubbed the entire outside with steel wool and a new coat of LTV, let her sit awhile, then rubbed her dry. While she was soaking I planed down a pair of Port Orford Cedar oars, trying to get the outboard weight down enough that I can row them in the very narrow boat. And LTVed them three coats.

And now I guess it's time to fiddle around.

Copper

Hey, I didn't design this wacky boat. It wasn't my idea to tack copper along the chines. To be honest, I don't think it's a very good idea--kind of a silt and rot trap. But it does look cool.

I screwed the last of the deck hardware on this morning, then flipped the boat. I tacked all the copper on this afternoon, then went and picked up the bow tie and stern handle from Danny Martinez, the welder. They are going to look bad ass. This evening I gave the ironwork the rust-spray treatment for a few hours while I milled out the floor battens. I got started on installing the battens, but by 9:30 I was tired and hungry so I quit. After a bite to eat I went down to close up the shop and stoke the fire and finished the floor instead. Now it's midnight thirty again. Sheesh.

Hatching Lids

One fun part of today was trying to track down some sort of chemical to make the new steel latches look old and weathered. I finally called an outfit in Tucson that made something called EasyRust, which sounded like the ticket. The guy there talked me out of it immediately. Instead, he walked me through how to make the perfect thing myself.

First, soak the latches in diluted muriatic acid until all the coating, scale, etc. is gone. Then rinse them off, and start misting them every time they dry out. After about a dozen times, they'll get pretty rusty. Once they've rusted up good, make a mix of 1/2 tung oil, 1/2 boiled linseed oil. "That's the original recipe for Rustoleum," the fellow informed me. Rub that on and bingo, you've got 100-year old latches.

Here is the patina factory, on a board over the wood stove:

During the hours of mistification, I oiled and assembled the lids–oak rim, cedar planks. Then I trimmed the canvas inside the hatches, folded it back on itself, and tacked it to the rims:

After about twenty or so mistings, the latches did just what the guy said they would, and the tung/linseed mix worked beautifully on them:

It was only as I was finishing up that I figured out I had left one latch in the vise where I trimmed it yesterday. Poor thing was an hour's acid bath and twenty mistings behind it's friends. I guess I can put that one on tomorrow.

Hatch latch

How many Dewalts does it take to...

...make a little latch hasp?

Edith has sixteen little steel hatch latches. Gary Perry did the hard work of making the main body of them. Today I made the receiver plates and finished off the main latches with jam nuts and a good bit of grinding.

Here is a picture of the original Edith's latches:

And Todd Bloch's drawing of what they looked like, along with our replicas:

And here is a potlatch. Or a boxlatch:

Meanwhile, a couple loose knots in the cedar for the hatch lids are getting epoxied overnight before I assemble them.

The original leaky hatch lids, which the Kolbs bitched about at length, have a whole mess of tacks on the bottom rim, as if they were trying to tack on some sort of weatherstripping. I wonder what they were using? I may try and use some of my heavy deck canvas rolled into a tube. I've got plenty of extra, and a big box of copper tacks. Why not? When squashed by the latches, it should at least slow the water down.

Oh my

Easily the most rewarding day yet. With the edge paint finally dry, I affixed the oar blocks to the gunwale caps and installed them. Then the splashboards. Then the hatch coamings. But first I got to slash!

Then I made the stern rail trim, installed that. And finally, the two side rails, which pull the lines for the whole boat together once and for all.

By 5 p.m. it was ready to paint, so I did. Wheee!

There's still plenty to do over the next week, but other than the hatch covers, this is pretty much what she is going to look like. A bowpost cap, oak skid-battens on the bottom, and the copper chine. A couple pieces of hardware. The lights in the shop are odd--the main decks are exactly the color of grey poupon mustard.

I am very, very, very, very pleased.

Dry, dammit!

Got an early start this morning and painted all the edges where the trim boards will touch the paint. The thought was that as soon as that dried this afternoon, I could install all the deck wood, then finish the deck painting this evening. Well, the goddam paint decided not to dry today. Frustrating, especially since that meant I had no excuse not to go in the house and do the taxes.

Late this evening the paint seemed almost dry. So I set some of the trim in place for an interim picture:

 Everything that appears white in these pictures will be the color of Grey Poupon tomorrow night.

Canvassing

I fiddled around this morning finishing off the splashboards and doing a few last details to the hull. But by early afternoon I could not procrastinate any longer. I got the canvas out and began figuring out just how to stretch it across the decks. 

Way back in high school art class we learned how to stretch canvas on a wooden frame to paint. Same thing, really: start with the center in both directions and keep halving it. Pulling it as tight as you can, tacking it with adorable little copper tacks. Corners last, pulling out diagonally. The canvas is amazing stuff: #4 natural cotton duck. It makes Carharrt pants look like tissue paper. I think it may be bullet-proof.

The hatch opening sounds like a tympani when I drum on it. Tight!

Huh. That was pretty easy. Now the primer goes on. Wow. It's really white. I mean, like, white.

And that canvas was really thirsty. It took a quart and a half of primer to cover it.

Edith has been looking radically different every day. Like a teenage girl who changes her appearance with each mood swing.

I'll let that dry until tomorrow, then paint the final coat on the decks. Once that dries, I'll fasten the coamings on, cut out the hatch canvas and tack it to the inside of the rims. But just to see what it looks like, I have to set the coaming and spraydecks in place.

Yeah, that's mighty white. What a crazy looking boat. Tonight she reminds me of some classic racing schooner from New England, back in the twenties.

Looking frighteningly like a boat.

Oh my oh me. This thing is really shaping up. Today I built the coamings for the hatches. I will fasten them on once the canvas is stretched on and painted. Then I'll cut the canvas and tack it up against the inside of the coamings. Here are the coamings set in place:

This evening I made plywood patterns for the splash guards. They are a pretty wacky cut, so I figured I was better off trying it with disposable wood first. Here they are set in place:

I traced the patterns onto the cedar and cut them out. They needed a few knots filled, so are curing for the night. 

Canvas tomorrow. Bye bye woody decks.

Detailing

A slow day. Trimmed off all the edges of the decking, fair to the hull, and sanded them down smooth. Built a second oarlock block and sat in the seat with the oars. Came to the realization that even though eight-foot oars are pretty short, they are pretty long when your oarlocks are only 45 inches apart. This may prove annoying on the water. Looking at the photos of the Kolbs, it looks like they had the same issue. According to the tried and true oar to beam ratio, the oars should be closer to six feet. Egad.

Oiled down the decks and floorboards and am ready to drop the latter in tomorrow. Then it's time to figure out just how to deal with the canvas decks. Wet it first? Not? Hmmm.

Decked

Well, she's decked. It went surprisingly well—just a few high spots that quickly succumbed to the belt sander.  And much as I regretted covering the wild architecture, the decking looks kind of cool too. At least I think it does. But part of that is how curious I have been to see how they conformed to those wacky deck arches. The stern deck went on in the afternoon.

And the foredeck went on after dinner.

The decks get sanded down and oiled, probably tomorrow, and I get to figure out how to stretch the bomber canvas over them and tack it on. My current thought is to varnish the canvas, since I have not yet thought of a sweet color to paint it. If that goes south, I can always paint over the varnish.

Meanwhile, there's a bit of cockpit outfitting to do. Oarlocks, floorboards, splash guards. And the hatch coamings and lids.