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Name Boards for Canoes – conclusion

September 10, 2011 by Bob Easton Leave a Comment

Not that I’m a slow worker or anything like that… The name boards, carved nearly a month ago are on the canoes. They are finished to match the canoes. Two coats of Cetol Marine went on first. That prevented paint, applied to the incisions, from running in end grain. A third coat of Cetol sealed them.

Placement varies from what the Brits use, smack in the middle of the sides, because those are spots where these boats ride against each other when being transported. Instead, I found relatively flat spots away from the middles. I also used some Dolfinite bedding compound on the green boat because those boards were being placed with attachment holes drilled into the flotation chamber.

The best thing about them is that they will usually be seen while the boat is bobbing around, and one can’t see both sides of a boat at the same time.

photo of bedding compound being applied photo of the green canoe with name board photo of the red canoe with name board

Filed Under: Boatbuilding, Eva Too, Eva Won, Lettercarving

Name Boards for Canoes

August 14, 2011 by Bob Easton 2 Comments

Learning Lettercarving – parts 2 to 376 have been cancelled. It’s not that I’ve quit Chris Pye’s course. I’m just continuing over in a dark corner of the shop and won’t bore you with details.

Needing to break out of the Practice, Practice, Practice regimen, I decided to actually make something. Long ago, I gave up on making name plates for the two canoes, not wanting to resort to die-cut plastic letters or something else equally dull. Now, I have a better alternative, carved “Name Boards.” On larger craft they might also be called “Quarterboards.”

(As always, click on the pictures to see the full / larger views.)

photo collage - sawing, planing, etcI always resort to the scrap pile for first of a kind projects … erm, prototypes. That way, if they turn out poorly, they’re still scrap! The scrap pile is fresh out of old growth mahogany (the preferred material for name boards), or any growth mahogany for that matter. The pile did include off-cuts from the cedar planking used on Eva Won. Voila! Light weight material that might actually finish up nicely. These were pieces already dimensioned to about 5/16″ thick, and there were enough of them to easily make 4 boards, two for Eva Won and two for Eva Too.

Prep is easy. Rough cut the length. Rip to desired widths. Plane the long edges smooth. Cut the curvy parts with the curvy saw. Cleanup the broad curves with the dreaded sanding block.

photo collage - layed out boards and carving with mallet and chiselLayout took a lot more time than wood prep, not unusual I guess. A double course of borders, each about 1/4″ defined the space remaining for lettering. I drew up paper patterns for the lettering, primarily so I could fold them in half lengthwise to find the center of the text. Not being as clever as Kari about making a transfer tool, I just used dividers to pick measures off the paper and then drew the letters directly on the wood. A small shop made straightedge, shop made square and a bevel gauge made this work easy despite being tedious.

The lettercarving is done with chisels and mallet in the classic incised style. With cedar being very soft, there were many areas where the mallet wasn’t really needed. However, here’s where extremely sharp photo of completed name boardsedges really matter. The cedar’s texture runs from imminently carvable to imminently crushable. In places it is soft and stringy and only a slicing cut will work. So, cedar has become the new test bed for my chisels and gouges. After sharpening, I always test the sharpness with a couple of plunge cuts and a couple of cross grain slices. If those cuts can be made smoothly in this cedar, the tools are sharp enough for self-apendectomies.

Once the letters are carved, some pinwheel ornaments are placed around the future screw holes. Then, the borders are lowered in two steps.

photo of helicopter toysNext, finishing. Just checked; there’s no gold leaf in the paint locker.
Finishing and mounting on the boats in another entry.

P.S. Also made good use of the off-cuts from these pieces. We’ll be visiting a swarm of grandkids soon. Some low-tech “helicopters” might entertain them a few minutes.

Filed Under: Boatbuilding, Eva Too, Eva Won, Lettercarving

Secondary Stability

August 5, 2010 by Bob Easton 3 Comments

picture of a meter showing "Very Stable"One of the factors for selecting the Mill Creek 13 for the Eva Too build was stability. The CLC Boats site had this confidence inspiring meter showing the boat to be very stable. That really appealed to Eva.

We’ve had both boats out several times recently and have gotten used to their rolling nature. Yesterday, I had no water sensitive electronics aboard, so I tested “secondary stability.” That’s the kind of stability that a hull exhibits (or doesn’t) when rolled off of its normal keel. My tests were simple and didn’t go all the way to a complete capsize. I simply leaned over until it felt as though I was about to fall out of the boat. Each boat behaved very nicely. They rolled over onto one of their planks and remained stable. I was able to roll to the point of having a rub rail submerged.

In the end, we need another notch on that meter. It was harder to get the Fiddlehead over to rub rail submersion than it was the Mill Creek. I think one would literally fall out of the boat before either one rolls enough to capsize.

Filed Under: Boatbuilding, Eva Too, Eva Won, Fiddlehead

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