Twinkle twinkle

My preferred method of fastening gunwales to a boat, for a few years now, is using a machine crew with a finishing washer on the inside of the boat, into a sex nut (a sort of sunken barrel bolt kind of thing). It's clean and pretty, quick and easy, and it is a cinch to take off the gunwales when somebody wrecks the boat. Here's an example of how they look, on last year's Rio Rojo. Machine screws and finish washers on the inside (orange arrows) and sex nuts on the outside (green arrows). 

Here are currently available finish washers in silicon bronze and brass.

But something has been bugging me about the finish washers. They are made of stamped sheet metal, so the edges dig into the gunwale when they are sufficiently tightened. It cuts the grain of the wood a bit sometimes. And I have looked the world over (well, on the internet) and have yet to find any solid finish washers. They just don't make 'em.

So the solution, I decided, was to make my own. And why make them round when I could have more fun? Step one was to carve a little star out of wood, with a countersunk hole in the middle, and glue a wee nail into it.

Step two was to make eleven more.

Step three: trim the little nails and glue them into a central stick.

There. A stick with twelve stars.

Sand it oh-so-smooth, shellac it a few coats, and get out the foundry materials. I was too busy to photograph pounding my star-stick into a sand mold, but here is the aftermath.

It's been eight months since I took my bronze-casting course and rushed home to build my own foundry. I fired it up at that time and it worked. Now it's time to see if I remembered all the things one has to do to make it work. I guess it's time to wait for the bronze to melt. 

   Check out the cool Nomex suit my friend Day gave me. It might not stop flying 2000° bronze, but at least it won't burst into flame.

 

Wait 'til the bronze has melted into a nice bright yellow pool, clean off the slag, and pour it into the mold.

So far, so good. But did I make the mold right?

It bursts into flame when I open it up. This is actually a good sign. It means there is a bunch of hot bronze in there where it is supposed to be.

To the quenching bucket.

By god it worked perfect.

A bit of cutting, grinding, and polishing and voila. Aren't they adorable?

They look kinda cool in a gunwale scrap. Note the bad case of foundryman's hand.

Only four more pours and I'll have sixty of them, enough for the rehabilitation of my forty-three-year-old dory Cataract. Tuesday afternoon is the plan. Come by and play if you like. Leather shoes, nonflammable clothes, safety glasses. It's the law.

Really Rapid Roberts

We finished up the second of the twin Rapid Roberts on our next day of work. Alan, Lora and I did the gunwale bolts first thing in the morning. Then I worked on trim pieces while Alan routed sanded and oiled her down. And out the door she goes, down the street to Alan's house for paint and interior fittings.

Hating to see a good shop go idle, we immediately began laying up Roy's side panels for his new Betty Boop clone, to be named in honor of the first dory on the Colorado back in 1889, a pine ocean dory named Brown Betty. We are hoping the new Brown Betty fares better than the original, which sank in its very first rapid upon entering Cataract Canyon. The rapid bears her name.

We pulled the lines off the original Betty Boop on Valentines Day 2012, just after I had finished a full restoration of her rotting 1967 hull.

Then a year ago, Jim Mackenzie and I lofted the lines and built the hull for his replica, Olo.  She came out beautifully.

But when Jim and I were laying out the side panels, we struggled to make the panel corner angles of Olo match those on the Betty Boop until smoke started coming out our ears. We got very close, but in the end, just gave it our best shot. This time we encountered the same problem and may have solved it by adding 1-3/8 inches to the sheer line length and shifting the position of the rib stations a bit. I doubt anyone will be able to tell the difference between the hull shapes of Olo and Brown Betty, but at least Roy and I will know we got the damned angles to agree this time.

In an unusual fit of caution, we clamped the entire boat together before drilling our screw holes to make sure our brainstorm was not going to backfire. It didn't so we went ahead and screwed her together.

Amy and Roy: proud parents of their second wooden boat. It is so fun to infect others with such impractical ideas.

Twins

Roger Fletcher's book, Drift Boats and River Dories, presents the results of his obsessive search for the evolution of Oregon drift boats. Their history and design are recorded here for posterity. One of the designs he saved from oblivion is a fourteen-foot, wide-tailed, hybrid drift boat/ motorboat called a Rapid Robert. With the help of Doug Bridges he documented the sixteen-foot version as well. The design has intrigued me ever since I saw one in Ray Heater's Portland boatshop around 2001.

My two friends Connie and Alan were both looking for something they could row or motor, and we agreed to make a pair of the sixteen-footers. Making two is pretty efficient. One learning curve, two boats. My part of the deal was to be boat-midwife, and help them create these boats and deliver them into the world. We planned to do the hulls in my shop, then send the boats home for outfitting the interiors. In as much as no one seems to have a lot of time, or a lot of money, and time is money, we planned to build them quickly. So quickly I have been too exhausted at night to blog the progress. True Rapid Roberts.  Here is what I think just happened.

Day 1
We lofted the boat lines from the information in Roger's book. Lofting is a wonderful thing, as you encounter nearly all the discrepancies, typos, and misinformation with a pencil and eraser, rather than with expensive wood. A drift boat is about the simplest boat in the world to loft. By noon we were milling Port Orford cedar for the ribs, cutting out the ribs, and scarf-jointing the plywood for floors and sides. We shut down early--around midnight.

Day 2
We finished cutting out all the rib work, then assembled and oiled eighteen rib stations--nine for each boat. Meanwhile we glued up one set of side-panels and one floor. We only made it to about eight o'clock. Sheesh.

Day 3
We laminated two one-inch thick transoms--a bit heavier than called for in the plans, but we felt we wanted them to hold up to abuse. We also milled out a bunch of rough ash. Or at least we thought it was ash. Jim told me it was ash. Rob assures me it is actually willow. Hmmm. Anyhow, we made up all the wood for the inner and outer chines. We also glued up the second set of sides and floor. This being the evening of a big annual boatman's bash, we had to leave the shop at five. How can you build a boat like that?

Day 4

We trimmed the transoms and cut them to size. We glued on the inner transom frames. Rob milled out two bow posts. And we cut all the chine logs into inner and outer chines. Since fitting an inner chine (or gunwale) is a tricky step necessitating making compound angles at both ends EXACTLY the right distance apart, then forcing it into the boat against its will, we decided to steam-bend the boards before we glued them up into their full length.

Day 5
Connie finished cutting the chine notches in all the frames while Alan ground down the scarf glue joints on the sides and floors. We also cleaned up and sanded the chines.

We laid out the side panels using a technique that Roy and I cooked up. This is a bit technical but a few boatbuilders may want to know so here goes. Skip the next paragraph if you're not wanting to try this step.

Note: this only works on boats like McKenzies, where all four sides of the side panel are straight cuts.
When building a boat without building a strong back form to wrap it around, you have to know the exact placement of the bowpost, transom, and most importantly, every rib. And the shape of the side panels have to be perfect. Since the side panel will bend around in a flaring arc, the ribs, if they are to be plumb to mother earth, will only be square to the chine at the very center. How to figure the angles for the rest of them? They aren't in the plans. We took long wooden battens and bent them out on our lofting, one along the sheer line, one along the chine. We marked bow post, transom, and every rib station on each batten. Then we laid the chine batten on our giant wood side-panel and marked the base of each rib, as well as the transom an bow post. The center rib, #6, was perfectly plumb to the chine on the lofting, so we drew that on our panel. Then, by putting the sheer batten with its #6 mark on our #6 line, all we had to do was measure the bow post and transom distances, push that sheer batten up until they bow and stern were in the right place, and voila, the tops of all the rib stations were indicated by the sheer batten. And a few of them go as much as a half inch out of square to the chine. Pretty cool. (Spoiler alert: this worked perfectly.) Once we had drawn the rib lines, we measured out where every screw would go, pre-drilled and countersunk every one.

By four o'clock all the parts were ready. We commenced. This is the funnest part of boatbuilding: Screw both sides to the bow post. Screw on rib #1. Rib #2. Rib#3. Etc. Though to the transom. Repeat on boat two. By 8p.m. we had two hulls on the floor.

Day 6
We began with the delicate job of cutting and fitting the inner chines into the boats. Then we planed them down flush with the plywood edges. This took most of the day, as Alan has this thing he calls a "job", so it was just Connie and I. Late in the afternoon several other folks arrived and things really took off.

We marked, cut, and drilled Connie's floor and screwed it on.

While one team was grinding the chine smooth, and putting on the outer chines, we started in on Alan's floor. Since we wanted to put gunwales on the next morning, and we had not cut them out or glued them into full length yet, we had to get this going too. Roy and I milled them out of Eastern ash and cut the scarf joints into them.

We took half of the gunwales outside and put them in the steam box. While they cooked we finished off Connie's outer chines and rolled the boat right-side up. Just in time for us to bring in the steamed gunwale sections and clamp them to Connie's boat so they would have the perfect curves. 11p.m. We started cooking the second set of gunwales and took a break for whiskey and boat stories.

A little before midnight we pulled the now-bent gunwale sections off Connie's boat and glued them up. Then we bent the second set of freshly steamed gunwales onto the boat and had a wee celebration.

Day 7
We ran into a glitch bending Alan's outer chines on and snapped one. Fortunately we had a spare section so we steamed that, bent it on, and scarfed it in place. Meanwhile we cleaned up the scarf glue on Connie's gunwales and routed, sanded, and oiled them. Roy cut and chiseled the gunwale notches and we began ciphering the inner gunwale cuts.

We set Connie's inner gunwales, clamped on the outer gunwales, and bolted them in place.

 

Alan got off work and arrived in time for the final grinding, routing, and sanding of the gunwales.

Day 8
Connie had to leave town in the afternoon, so we focussed on getting her boat finished: bow cap, transom trim, and a full oiling of the gunwales and boat interior.

Meanwhile I set Alan's gunwales, ready for bolting when he got off work. Connie headed out of town around four, and I cut Alan's bow-cap and trim by dark. I was trying to conjure the energy to do the last sprint of gunwale bolting, grinding, sanding and oiling and finish the bugger off. But Alan got off work late exhausted and we had a rare flash of sanity and put the project on hold. We'll do that last blast on Saturday.

Day 9

I took the day off today. Kinda tired.