Being a Boat

We went to a hot sandy island for a week or so. Somewhere southeast of Texas I think. It was miserable. Sand all over the beaches.

Little to drink but beer and rum. Several of our friends made the same error.

There were beggars along the roads.

 And other hazards.

There was no Safeway.

The bathroom walls were infested.

Buildings were falling down.

The snails were heavily armed.

Plants were pokey.

We got rained on.

There were weird birds.

They followed us into the water. Creepy.

We tried being boats for a while. Boats with glass-bottom windows. But underwater things were even weirder.

And pokey.

There were a lot of little green fish.

They didn't like this sponge thing. Or maybe it was a coral.

 Some fish were blue.

Some were yellow.

Some had an attitude, like this barracuda.

Some weren't even fish. This one is a squid

 And an octopus

That turned purple for some reason.

 This thing is a spotted eagle ray. His friends are remoras.

Yikes. A big stingrayay.

 And a three-legged turtle.

And a mermaid.

The place was crawling with freaky life forms. It was exhausting. We went ashore, drank more beer, and tried to rest.

Gittin' 'er done

Well, it's about time to wrap this puppy up and move on to the next madness. I ended up flow-coating the edges of the bottom and the areas that were patched. Probably should have just done the whole bottom, but the rest of it didn't need it, so...

The new ends came out pretty snappy.

The inside of the damaged hatch doesn't look any prettier, but it's a hell of a lot tougher now. As with much of the boat, I had to stop somewhere.

But the gunwales are pretty goddam sweet.

And I really like how the grain came out on the white oak oarlocks.

A couple more bolts and she's outta here.

National Trogolodyte Day

Today centered around A) procrastinating because I didn't want to B) crawl into a hatch with a grinder and scarf out the patches I needed to put in. But once I finally finished up with A, I put on all my protective gear--respirator, safety glasses, earphones, condom--put the shop-vac hose in the hatch and turned it on, and crawled in. It wasn't really all that bad. But it is always an adventure, like rebuilding an old house. You never know what you'll find. And once you find it, you wonder just how far down the rabbit hole you want to go. 

In this case, the original builder never seemed troubled by the fact that his carpentry was not that close--in places the side falls about an inch short of the floor, and the gap is just filled with epoxy. And some of the wood he used is, um, a little odd. But we do the best we can to make the new pieces as good or better than the old, and acknowledge that we are not replacing the entire boat--just the damaged parts. 

Here is the view from inside the hatch as the right-side chine patch is going in. The left side of the hole in the boat is bordered with two different pieces of strange plywood. The right half is bordered with a newer marine plywood--likely a patch from the Tombigamy's exciting past.

Look at that--the left side of the boat has a piece of new plywood in just about the same spot. Symmetrical crashes. Alan is peering in from the outside world to make sure I am still breathing.

And by nightfall the bottom of the boat is fully patched, awaiting another grinding down and graphite-tinged flow coat. Thus ends the structural repair work on the Tombigamy. Now a day or two of details and tidying and she's out the door.

Turning Tombigbee back into a boat

The scarfed on new sides came out quite nicely if I do say so myself.

Fifty shades of gray. I tinted the flow coats of resin gray with a mix of white and black pigment, so Scott will have less trouble covering it with the next paint job. But of course every batch of resin I made was a different shade of gray. Touchy stuff, that pigment. A little goes a long way and all over the place. Oh well. 

Making wide ten-foot boards into long skinny ones. Got some nice grain matches on the scarf joints.

This pile of walnut shavings goes for about $10 a board foot.

And all I end up with is this collection of little brown blocks.

Which get screwed to the inside of the boat. In a fit of lucidity, I drilled all the bolt holes on the drill press beforehand, so those holes will act as guides to drill through the gunwales and come out relatively centered.

Test-fitting and marking the outer gunwale. The current ash stock in Flagstaff was just long enough that, with the scarf joint, I had less than an inch to spare. Whew.

Now for the money cuts. The inner gunwales have compound angle curved cuts that need to fit within a sixteenth of an inch or preferably less. My system, which I learned somewhere, I forget where, is to cut a template for each end that fits perfectly. Clamp them in place and measure the distance between them. Then transfer all those angle and measurements to the final gunwale board. It works pretty well. But something in the way wood stretches as it bends make them always come out a little long. Which is way better than being a little too short. Here is an end template.

Measuring between them.

And it's a touch long. Here are the final marks to re-cut the end to fit.

Next I drill through the gunwale blocks and the inner gunwale, sliding the bolts in to make sure nothing slips during the next process. Then I pull the center clamps and sneak the outer gunwale on, wrapping the gunwale around clamp by clamp.

Finish drilling the holes and bolt her together.

Wow. It worked again. Sand and rout the gunwales, oil 'em up, and roll the boat over the begin the bottom work. Here we are sawing out the pulverized wood.

Roy giving me the report from inside the hatch.

The bottom was beginning to delaminate next to this hole so we spooged it full of epoxy and clamped the bejeezus out of it to make it back into plywood.

The Tombigbee will float again.