Filling and Fairing

Another three months, another batch of blog entries ...

After placing the bottom planking, the next step in the process is to fill all the screw holes, correct any high or low spots, and generally fair the surface so that it'll look smooth once it's painted. Before starting that conversation, though, here's a good picture illustrating all the screw holes that needed attention:



All those screw holes needed to be filled - by hand. I used Famowood wood filler. It was a pretty easy product to use, though it releases acetic acid when you use it, so you have to have good ventilation. Also, you have to keep the lid on the bottle, lest the filler should dry out. It took a couple days for the filler to cure, at which point the excess was sanded off. I began sanding by hand, using a sanding block, until Kelly came over and asked what the hell I was doing. He suggested that I use a random orbit sander to smooth everything out. I was hesitant to do that, for fear that I would sand a bunch of dips into the surface. In fact, once I started using the sander, I did run into that problem for the first several screws. After that, I learned to use the sander correctly, and didn't have much trouble with dips anymore. Also, I did continue to do some of the sanding by hand, just to make sure I didn't create any problems for myself.

After the screw holes are filled and faired, the larger process of fairing the hull begins. It might seem logical to think there wouldn't be much work to do, but trust me, there's plenty of work. I had several hot spots that had to be tended to: the crack of which I wrote previously, the area around the centerboard trunk, the butt joints in the side and bottom planking, the stem, the junction of the bottom planking and transom on port side, and several smaller areas. The best way to handle most of these is to use epoxy filler - if you use it carefully, there's not a ton of cleanup to do. Here's a picture of the application process:



Here's a good picture that illustrates several of the areas that received attention in this process. Much of the filler for the screw holes has been sanded down, and is difficult to see because its tone is similar to the wood itself:



The hull looks really rough based on the picture, but trust me, it's smooth. There's A LOT OF sanding to make it smooth, but it gets smooth. And anyway, it gets painted, so looks don't matter much at this juncture.

The thing about fairing is that you have to do a good job, or your boat might look like junk. It's a real pain to sand and sand and sand for hours at a time (not to mention it's dusty and dirty and all that). But time spent at this step will lead to a nicer looking hull later on. This is especially true once you 'glass the hull, but it's important at this step as well.

CRACK!

Boat building is a contact sport. So, with the forward port bottom planking in place, I started working on the starboard side, and figured it to be quick work. After touching up the edge along the keel, as well as the transition point, I began dry fitting it. Placing a few screws here and there, I secured the planking to the boat, moving aft to fore. Things were great until I got just past the stem transition point. Having failed to properly fair the stem just forward of the transition point, the wood had no place to bend. As I bent it, it bent back. Well, not really bent so much as cracked. Here's a picture of it, after it's in place, though the crack is still apparent:

After it cracked, I freaked out, took a timeout, and then went back to figure out where the problem was. After identifying the problem, I went back and did some more fairing. Although the picture doesn't look like it, the planking now sits essentially flat at that point. I filled it with epoxy as much as possible, and it will be strong enough to withstand any problems, especially after it gets the fiberglass treatment. There will be plenty of fairing to be done on the boat before fiberglassing, and this will be an obvious point needing attention.

Notwithstanding that faux pas, Jen and I were able to secure the starboard piece yesterday. There are a few gaps that will have to be filled, especially along the keel and a bit at the stem. Here's a picture of it at this point - it's nearly a boat!



Following are a couple other points of interest -

Here's a picture of the transition point on the chine - the aft material will be planed down this weekend:



Here's a picture of the transition point on the stem - this will also be planed down:



So that's where things are at this point. The next step is to prepare the boat for fiberglassing. Then I'll fiberglass it and paint it, and then (finally) it can be flipped over.

Bottom Planking

I just went searching for some pictures to summarize the bottom planking process, and realize that I basically don't have any at all. Mom and dad came down at the end of July to help out with things, and mom took a few pictures of things. To those interested in building the boat, and the process itself, I'm really sorry that I didn't take more pictures. I just don't tend to think about that until it's too late.

Here's one picture that's not really illustrative of the bottom planking process:



The bottom planking process is only as successful as the fairing of the keel, chine, battens and frames. As described in the instructions and plywood boat building book, you can most easily accomplish the fairing by using strips of plywood ran from the keel to the chine, using this as a guide to determine where material needs to be removed. This is a somewhat slow process, but it becomes easier over time, because you can fair at the frames and then adjust things as necessary between the frames. I can't stress this enough - spend a good amount of time and get the fairing right before you ever touch the plywood planking. The work became somewhat meditative, especially as I got better and better with planes.

After I did as much fairing as was reasonably possible, I got out the plywood. Because I am using 8' plywood sheets to plank a 14' boat, I would need four pieces of planking: two each fore and aft, on either side of the keel. The two aft pieces each required one sheet of 4' x 8' plywood; the two fore pieces were taken from one sheet of the same.

When my folks came down, my main goal was to get the planking pieces rough cut. A full sheet of plywood is too much for one person to work with for any amount of time, and since I do a lot of this work by myself, I wanted to make it manageable. So dad and I rough cut the aft pieces - the picture above is during part of that process. After rough cutting them, we spent a good deal of time getting them fit for length, as well as working on the fit around the centerboard case. We worked the plywood a little bit at a time, which was the only way we could ensure a tight fit. Yes it's slow work, but there was really no other option. Because of the way the bottom angles down toward the transom, it has to be sprung into place - this springing means that the planking will actually be a bit proud if you were to lay it on top of the transom. That's why you have to go slow and remove material in small amounts. As it turns out, we got the port side piece almost perfectly fitted, and the starboard piece was pretty close. (It just needed a little additional work, which I did after my folks left.)

Compared to the aft planking, which lies somewhat flat on the boat, the fore planking requires a lot of working before it's fit. The main reason for this is that there are two transition points - one point is on the chine, where the planking moves from a lap joint (aft) to a butt joint (forward), and the other is at the stem, where the planking moves from a butt joint (aft) to a lap joint (forward). Here's what I'll say about these joints - I chose these points somewhat arbitrarily, based on the instructions and the book. I placed the chine transition point halfway between frames # 3 and # 4, and placed the stem transition point just forward of the transition point between the keel and stem. I spent a lot of time thinking about the placement of these points, only to realize that I should just pick them and move forward. I suppose you could get philosophical about these choices, but it's a boat, not a painting. Get it done.

For the forward bottom planking, I first fit the port piece in place and glued it in. I used the chalk method of transferring the line of the side planking onto the bottom planking. (I used sidewalk chalk - you can get a box of this for $1 at a craft or office supply store.) I was first afraid that the plywood wouldn't bend sufficiently, but it took the curves with no problem. When I glued and screwed the port side forward bottom planking in place, I made a mistake. I started at the bow and placed a screw at the 'point' of the planking (e.g. the most forward point of the planking), and then moved back, placing screws alternately in the stem and chine. When I got to the end of the piece of planking, it turned out that I had a gap of 1/16" along the chine. The reason this gap appeared, I think, is that I didn't properly secure the forward part of the planking before moving back. In addition to the screw at the very forward end, I should have also placed a screw in both the stem and chine, 8 inches or so aft of the point. (I had already drilled out these screw holes when I was dry fitting the piece, and could have simply driven the screws at that point. Turns out, I should have done that. I think I ended up 'crumpling' the piece of planking much like you might crumple a piece of wrapping paper. The distortion wasn't huge, but it was enough to leave a sizable gap along the chine which will now have to be filled with epoxy filler.)

Bottom Battens

I'll start off by acknowledging that I'm not a good blogger, in the sense that it takes three months between updates. My apologies, and thanks for continuing to read.

Now that that's out of the way, I'll move on to the next step in the building process, which is the bottom battens. As mentioned in the last post, when Mike was here, we did some work pre-fairing the battens, especially toward the bow. There's a lot of extra material in that area of the battens, and we removed it to save some time later. I suppose it doesn't really matter when you remove the material - before or after installation - but you'd probably end up re-countersinking the screw holes if you were to do all the fairing after gluing them in place.

Here is a picture of the battens during the process of fitting them. I've got a couple clamped in and am checking spacing, bending and their general fit:



The idea with the battens is that they support the bottom planking and also (obviously) help determine the general shape of the hull. It's important to have contact between the battens and the planking at all points. This is generally true with this boat, though there are a couple of points where I had to rely heavily on epoxy to make things secure.

Here's a great picture of the battens as they are being glued into place. In case you didn't believe previous posts, I do in fact have a ridiculous number of clamps:



The hardest part of this process was finding a good place to clamp to, especially considering the wax paper I had to use at the wood-clamp interface to prevent the clamps from becoming a part of the boat. For those of you building this boat, let me tell you this - after you glue and screw the battens in place, you'll have to fair them. At some points, you may end up removing a lot of material, and may need to resink your screws so that the screw heads remain below the surface of the batten (and thus remain out of the way of your plane blade). So, when you first glue these in place, make sure you have a strategy for being able to remove the screws once the glue is dry. I suppose there are two ways to do this: 1. don't use any screws until the glue is cured, or 2. make sure you countersink the screws deeply if you use them while the glue is still wet.

Here's the 3332 shop's best and most beautiful assistant:

More Progress

We've been making a bunch of progress at the 3332 Boat Shop of late. Last weekend, Jen and I finally got the aft side planking applied. Jen is a lot of help around the shop, even though a lot of it is just being patient while I try to figure out what the hell I'm supposed to be doing. Here's a picture of the aft side planking after it was glued and cured:



Here's a detail of the butt block. This is glued and screwed to one of the two pieces being joined (e.g. the aft port planking in this instance), and then that second piece (e.g. the forward port planking) is glued and screwed to the butt block.



Then Mike showed up this past weekend. Friday evening, we became acquainted with a fantastic (and I mean fantastic) sipping rum - Prichards - which you should try on crushed ice with a squeeze of lime. The first thing we did on Saturday was to finish up the side planking. This ended up taking a lot longer than I had anticipated, mostly because I hadn't done as much prep work as I thought I had. Here's what it looks like with the planking applied and the clamps removed:



It's really starting to look like a boat. Here's a detail of the side planking joint:



I really like the industrial look of the rows of screws, and kinda wish I could keep them exposed. The plan is to fill them with putty and paint the hull, so no one will see them once the hull is finished. That's probably a good thing. Realistically, with the inherent strength of epoxy holding this thing together, the screws are more of a liability than a benefit. In fact, the only thing they really did in this instance was to hold everything together while the epoxy cures. Oh well. I can be a purist on the next boat. (That won't happen, but at least I have that option on the next one.)

After installing the side planking, Mike and I started working on the bottom battens. Turns out that the notches in the transom frame members required a lot of working to accept the bottom battens, so we spent a couple hours working on those on Saturday before we pulled the plug. On Sunday, we finished up the transom notches and did some shaping/fairing of the battens themselves. I think we did enough to allow me to continue on by myself, and then Jen can hopefully give me a hand when it's time to get them installed. We also spent some time on Sunday doing various other tasks, including removing the screws holding the boat to the jig. Unfortunately there were a few screws in the breasthook that I should have removed before applying the side planking. Here I am removing those screws, about as happy as I could be given the quarters:

Fairing and whatnot

I haven't made a post in a while, for two main reasons: 1.) since the middle of March, I've been busy with school and work, and 2.) fairing is a slow, iterative process that defies exciting description in most cases. It's enjoyable work, and I've learned a lot about using planes and working with mahogany and the importance of sharp blades, but all that effort is only noticeable once you apply the planking and see the hopefully graceful lines of the boat.

Having said that, I've been fairing when I've had the time, and was lucky enough to get some nice pictures (thanks to Vince) of the boat mid-fairing. So here are some pictures preceded by relevant descriptions.

Here's a picture illustrating what the chine looks like while being faired. To determine the profile of the chine, you project the angle of the frame down "through" the chine by creating a notch with a file and chisel(s). Once you do that for the transom and each frame, you simply fair between the notches until the chine is faired. In this picture, I haven't faired forward of this specific notch (I think this is frame # 3, port side).



Fairing involves a lot of this:



Note the frame overhang that will need to be faired:



Compare this unfaired chine (starboard) to the first picture (port):



Due to being new to boatbuilding, I cut the chine too short, and the result is that the chine meets the stem further aft than is desirable. Not a big deal, but not ideal:



Here at the transom, you can see that the port chine was especially short, and needed a block to extend it sufficiently:



It's a dirty job:



And finally, why god made clamps:

Chine and Sheer - Installed

More details will follow soon, but here are a couple pictures of the chine and sheer - glued and screwed.

Official Beer of the 3332 Boat Shop

Thanks to Tom for the refill.

Clamps

Sharp

Early on in cooking school (or perhaps even before), I was told and came to accept as fact that a sharp knife is a safe knife. This ran counter to my thinking, but the least bit of work with a dull knife makes the point with conviction. (Try peeling a butternut squash with a dull chef's knife if you don't believe me.) The same, I've found, is true with shop tools.

As mentioned previously, I had never bothered to sharpen a chisel (or plane iron) until about 6 weeks ago. It never occurred to me that my three chisel set (~$10 retail value) wouldn't be ready for high-level woodworking action the moment I cracked the plastic packaging. I could see this being the case in Canada. But in America, land of the pickup truck? Please.

Needless to say, you can imagine my surprise after sharpening my first chisel (one of those cheap Harbor Freight chisels) and testing it out on a piece of scrap. It was unbelievable! I was making transparent shavings no thicker than a piece of paper! I finally felt like I knew what I was doing with a chisel. It also explained why I was never able to do any sort of fine work with chisels before. Clearly I had never used a truly sharp chisel, and did it ever made a difference. It transforms the task from one of frustration and failure to one of productivity and enjoyment. With sharp tools, I'm starting to understand how woodworking can be a craft or an art.

My setup consists of a Veritas Mk.II honing guide (I can't overemphasize how great this is), three pieces of ~ 4" x 9" polished marble that Mikey gave me (they were broken, unusable pieces from a job site, I think), and two wetstones (a 1200 grit and a combo 4000/8000 grit). Adhered to the three marble pieces are sheets of sandpaper - 100 grit (or lower if needed), 220 and 320. I've basically mimicked the setup described in the Fine Woodworking online video mentioned in the previous post. It's great, and I highly recommend it.

Shopping spree

After installing the keel, I had a break of a couple months while I waited for the time and money needed for the chine and sheer. There wasn't much boat work in November and December, but we finally took delivery of a bunch of wood right before Christmas. In the meantime, there were tools to buy. One day when Jen was out of town, I went on a shopping spree at Woodcraft. It was awesome. Here's what I picked up:

Lie-Nielsen Low Angle Smooth Plane (L-N 164)

Veritas Mk.II Honing Guide

Waterstones - a 1200 and a 4000/8000 combo

Chisel set

8" Microplane (coarse)

The honing guide and waterstones were part of my sharp chisel initiative, which will be discussed more completely in an upcoming post. The Microplane replaces/augments a basic wood rasp that I've had for some time. The wood rasp works OK, but this Microplane is great. I had used them in the kitchen before, but never in the woodshop; they're great in both places. The chisels augment a cheap set that I'd bought several years ago at Home Depot or Lowes or Harbor Freight - a cheap set that I never bothered to sharpen and which, consequently, never worked well. (In truth, I didn't know you were supposed to sharpen your chisels before you use them. I figured you just opened the package and put them to use. I suppose if I bought really nice chisels, they'd be ready to use out of the box. Not those.) The plane was obviously the big purchase among these things, and I haven't used it yet. Big Shot Bob is coming over soon to help me figure out how to use it and, hopefully, how to do some of the upcoming fairing work, regardless of the tools used.

Boat work since the last blog

So I'll try to get things up to date since the last boatbuilding post. After Mike and I steamed the keel and clamped it in place, I let it dry for a week or two, largely because I didn't have time to get to it. In mid-October, Vince came over and helped me epoxy it in place, and I added some screws about a week after that. It is at this point that I should mention one of the major headaches of boatbuilding, at least with this project.

Whenever you epoxy something, you have to hold the surfaces together until the epoxy cures. For much of this project, that "holding together" is done with clamps. In order to keep the clamps from being epoxied to the boat themselves, they have to be separated from the wood (or other material). I accomplish this with wax paper, which is great for that purpose - it's cheap, it's available in any size you care for, it's quick, and it keeps out the epoxy. Of course, it's also slippery, and this is where the trouble comes in. It's just about impossible to use a clamp in conjunction with wax paper, on account of the paper's slipperiness and the ease with which it will compromise any fleeting purchase you might obtain. And of course, while you're struggling with the clamps and the wax paper, there's glue all over the place, and if it's hot enough outside, the glue is curing and you're basically in freak-out mode. So the four-letter words flow like water, and you end up just fighting and fighting until you get things to the point where you can walk away and feel reasonably certain that as long as you don't sneeze, everything will hold. It's not quite that bad, but I'm not really exaggerating.

I mentioned in a previous post that there was a small crack along the keel, just past the forward end of the centerboard slot. It turns out there's an accompanying small crack just past the aft end of the slot as well. Here is a picture of the forward crack:



The actual size of that crack is about 1.5", and the aft crack is smaller than that. I treated both cracks with some epoxy, but to make sure nothing bad will happen, I placed a 4" x 4" plate of 1/4" plywood underneath the area of each crack, to act as a support against the crack expanding. I don't think anything would have happened without the plywood backers, but with them now in place, I feel very confident that nothing heinous will come of them.

Update

Hey there, I have clearly been lax in my postings (5 months lax - ugh!). Boat business has been picking up lately, so I hope to begin fresh and keep this document more up-to-date. There are a few separate posts I'll make in the very near future to cover the past several months of work. Although the boat doesn't look all that different, plenty of progress has been made.

My goal is to have this boat in the water by July 4th. This is a very very aggressive goal, considering the state the boat is in today, but it's not outside the realm of possibility. We'll see what happens, though I would really like to meet that goal.