4 More Frames Installed

On March 8th Fritz's son, Fritz, Derick, and I installed 4 more boiled frames on the portside of the boat. That only leaves the aft-most two frames to replaced. So far we haven't kerfed any frames on the portside since our boiling system has been refined, though the shape of the hull at the stern is too sharp a curve to get without kerfing. We hope to install those frames in the next two weeks, then move onto replacing the sheer clamps. 

Frame Stock

Even though installing frames is a while away, I recently seized the opportunity to get some good quality, green, white oak. I've already milled out the frames for the SeaMew restoration and some were installed. Ideally the frames would be green when installing in the Matinicus, but the best I can hope for is to do a good job air drying. Since the rough boards are ~2" thick, 6-8" wide, and 8-9' long, I decided to re-saw and rip some rough, thinner pieces for bent frames. Hopefully the smaller stock will dry evenly with less checking. Since this also introduces more surface air to speed drying I decided to give the smaller oak pieces a few coats of raw linseed oil. This should slow drying (and checking) and will still be fairly easy on tools when shaping the stock to size. Each frame with be around 1" wide and 7/16" thick. We'll see how it goes.

Matinicus Updates (a.k.a. 'Greenbrier')

Well the Matinicus Double-Ender is still nothing but hopes, lines on paper, and money spent. But, progress has been made.

In January I re-sawed all of my thick planking stock with the help of Gordon Plume of GR Plume & Co. Gordon has a nice re-saw machine (horizontal bandsaw) which makes the task pretty painless. I now have around 20 pieces of yellow cedar which are 9/16" thick. The finished planking will be either 7/16" or 3/8" thick. The jury's still out. A nice benefit of accurate re-sawing is a small pile of 1/8"-1/4" veneers left over for a horde of projects: bent-wood boxes, skin-on-frame boats, etc.

It's premature, I realize, but I've settled on the name of Greenbrier for the boat. This will necessitate that some portion of the boat is painted green. Being from the mid-Atlantic, greenbrier is a good reminder of the Piedmont and Appalachian foothills back home.

After much internal debate and valuable feedback from other double-ender builders I'm just about certain that I will be switching to a very similar matinicus design. So far I've been planning around the Walt Simmons 16' design. I've come to realize that on the scale of "row vs. sail" the Simmons design favors being a good rowboat. However John Gardner's 15' matinicus double-ender (that he documented from a photo) is wider and has fuller-bilges which makes it a less tender/tippy and generally more stable sailing boat for its size. Another huge benefit of the John Gardner design is that it's publicly available in the "Building Small Craft" book series, and there's no additional cost for the lines or offsets. A photo of the lines is below:

15' is a bit smaller than I'd like to go, so I've been (slowly) drawing out a stretched version to scale at home to make sure I feel good about the alteration. I've simply added 1.5" between each station, which stretches the 15' design to 16' 3". Gardner's boat is a 'true' peapod as the forward and aft-halves are entirely symmetrical. Here's a photo of my slow drawing:

It's a longer side-story, but I found some old drafting ducks (odd-shaped black blobs above) and ended up sand-blasting, repainting, and installing allen-wrench hooks to make them usable for drafting. I also built a simple hinged drafting table. Side projects are an easy distraction to the core task at hand. The clear spline above I'm using to draw the sheer is a strip of polycarbonate from a local glass shop. 

As mentioned in the previous post, I also stocked up on some green & air-dried white oak while I had the chance so I now have good stock for the steam bent frames once planking is done. I also purchased a large plank of purple-heart to use as the plank-keel in the boat. I'm still searching for pieces to use in the three-piece stems used in the bow and stern of the boat. There's a chance I may switch to laminating two stems, but I'm not convinced yet. 

Sea Mew Frame Replacement

Well back in November or December we wrapped up replacing bent-oak frames on the starboard side of Sea Mew. 10 frames were replaced in total, with around 5 or so pieces broken in the process of refining our steaming/boiling setup. That wrapped up the frame replacement on the starboard side and we were ready to start in on the portside. Considering both rot from freshwater seepage and cracked frames (at the hard turn of the bilge) about 10 frames needed replacing on the portside as well. Since we'd exhausted our supply of air-dried oak I started hunting for more green or air-dried oak, either eastern white oak or oregon (garry) oak. Finding good, knot-free, non kiln-dried 'bending' oak around here can be a pain in the ass, and I ended up buying quite a good bit from Edensaw when on a trip to Port Townsend in February. Two decent pieces also came from 'Hardwoods to Get' here in Bellingham. This past weekend Derrick and I made a good push and installed 4 new boiled oak frames on the portside. Photos are below.

11 pieces of frame stock milled out and ready. 1 5/8" x 1 3/8" x ~6'. We only need 10 but...

Derrick enjoying the sunny February day.

4 alternating frames were fully removed to make installation go quickly. This photo also shows how close some of the butt-blocks are in the planking. The (squarish) blocks support the ends of two planks where the ends 'butt' up against the next. In an ideal world a butt block should be three-away: across frames and/or up-down planks. We we selectively replace some planks we'll try to distribute some of the blocks more evenly. Most of the butt blocks in the upper-left of the photo are also rotten from freshwater seeping and sitting on the frame. A good reason to leave a nice channel on each side of the butt blocks and give the topside a good bevel to shed water and schmeg. 

After frames are done we'll move on to replacing the sheer-clamps, which are the orange-painted pieces in the top-left of the photo above. On each side of the boat there are two pieces (clamp & shelf) that run the full length of the boat. We'll probably use douglas-fir. 

How to pretty-up a wax toilet-ring for only $22. 

4 frames after installation. The 'hairy' ends of the frames show how much force we had to use to get the frames to slide into place from above. It's hard to see in this photo but we ended up breaking out a questionable plank at the turn of the bilge to make seating the frames against the planking easier. Without clamps against the planking and frames it is nearly impossible to get the steam-bent frames to sit flush. Or it is at least easier than an elaborate scaffolding to brace and wedge against and get in the way.

Hopefully we'll get the next 6 frames in soon. As mentioned above we'll likely move on to replacing sheer clamps next and then installing bilge-stringers that run the full length of the boat. The boat previously had a partial ceiling (short planks lining the inside of the hull) but we'll probably do away with that and use bilge stringers to add strength around the flat run of the frames from stem-to-stern.

Winter Hiatus

I haven't posted any recent updates during the Winter, though the boat projects and life have been trudging along fairly well. Distractions since December include (but are not limited to): holiday traveling, whitewater paddling, dayhikes, hangovers, work, woodworking classes, first aid training, kidney stones, lazy Sundays, plant harvesting, rifles, potlucks, and road trips. I also recently snagged some green Elm wood that was felled here in town and rived out some potential bow staves (photo below) that will hopefully get turned into a bow or two some day. Plenty of distractions when working part-time, but there will be plenty of updates coming soon on the SeaMew and Matinicus projects!

Planing

With the help of my friend Josh, the entire lot of yellow cedar lumber has been run through the big stationary planer to a near-finished surface. From here The lumber now will be re-sawn to around 5/8" thick as the finished planks will tentatively be 7/16".

Lofting Begins

The lofting process of the Matinicus has begun. Three sheets of plywood with lap-joints between make up the 4'x24' lofting floor. My friend Jeff, who arranged the workshop space, had some extra rigid foam insulation which I used to keep the floor off the cement and away from any water or moisture. Both sides were painted with a gallon of flat white interior paint. The lap joints have some shallow screws holding them together so the whole thing can be disassembled if need be.

Most boat loftings involve three views:

• Profile - Just like a police profile, looking at the boat from the side. No bail required. 
• Half-Breadth - The boat from a fish-eye view, cut in half length-wise. 
• Body Plan - Looking at the boat from bow or stern, with half cross-sections drawn at regular intervals. 

An example of the three views below (not a Matinicus)

These three views allow for one to accurately draw a three-dimensional shape on a two-dimensional surface. Setting up the lofting surface is similar to creating a big, accurate, piece of graph paper. It involves making axis where points will be plotted. So far I'm just drawing the "graph paper" with no more than 1/16 of error. So no rushing or drinking allowed.

Below you can see the intersection of the baseline in the profile view, and the "AP" or aft perpendicular which will line up with the aft-end or stern of the boat. There will be many other vertical lines that intersect this horizontal line at 90deg. Pretty exciting.

The tools required aren't complicated: A string, nails to stretch the string across, sharp pencils, sharpener, good erasers, a straightedge, and some paper to keep track o' things.

Lofting and working from plans is a good review of middle/high-school math. Long division and geometry is handy. Drawing the lines with a square is a good start but checking them by measuring out a right triangle can ensure great accuracy. A 3:4:5 triangle is easiest, so measuring sides of 30 and 40 inches should result in a 50 hypotenuse. If not, time to erase and try again.

Now that I have the grid laid out I'll soon be able to start plotting points, bending wooden battens, and drawing the curves of the hull.