Fiddlehead

Slow and deliberate are good adjectives for my boat building methods. The “deliberate” is because I’m new to this, learning as I go, and approach unpracticed tasks with a little trepidation. The “slow” is just, well, slow. Since the last posting, I’ve removed and plugged 17 knots in each of the garboard planks, trimmed the upper edge of the planks to land precisely on the knuckles of the frames, and steamed the planks into place.

The garboard planks on this boat have a lot of twist (maybe I said that before). Harry Bryan, the designer, suggests that Northern cedar probably won’t have problems with the twist, but that other cedars might, and suggests steaming the planks.  People who build lots of boats have steam boxes for such work. If I were building a Whitehall with 48 sets of frame, I’d probably build a steam box. Yet, for only two planks, I used an alternative method.

Wrap an end of the plank in a couple of old towels. Wrap the towels with plastic. Then, saturate the towels with boiling water. Draw up the plastic wrap to hold moisture and heat in. Repeat several times, to keep the plank hot, over a half-hour period. The wood becomes more pliable and is easily clamped or fixed in place. Sounds easy. Actually, it is. My only complication was having the 4 gallons of boiling water in big kettles on a stove one floor away from the shop. So, there were many trips with a small pan of water down and up the stairs. That actually worked out well, causing the dousing to be spread out over time. Of course, there’s spill over and water on the floor. That’s OK. The shop is a converted garage with a concrete floor. I used a 30 gallon trash can at the end of a plank to catch runoff. That seemed to work OK, until I went to empty it and found only about 1/2 inch of water in it. A “hole in my bucket” had transformed the can into a funnel. Oh well, the shop floor needed a good cleaning.

Two planks, four plank ends, four separate steaming sessions, about four gallons of water each. The shop, and the kitchen upstairs, were saunas for a while.

There aren’t many clamping spots, only the mid-frame and the two bulkheads. I used drywall screws along the runs between the clamps. The drywall screws will be removed after the planks are permanently fixed and their holes will be patched. I probably used more than I needed, adding yet one more reason for the slow part of my boat building.

Next step: The planks come off, an adhesive bed gets applied and the planks go back on with permanent fasteners.

The first planks to be fitted to the boat are the garboard planks, the ones at the very bottom. They are also the planks that have the most curvature in outline and in the way they lay upon the boat. They are nearly vertical at the stems and splay out to about 30 degrees in the middle of the boat.

Finding their shape can be an adventure. The principle methods are two: (1) Use the shape documented in the drawings (if available), or (2) find the shape from the boat itself. The designer provided plank shapes in the drawings. Not all designers do this, but these look to be quite useful. One would imagine that using the shape from the drawings would be OK. Yet, success with that method depends on the framework being constructed as precisely as the drawings. That’s not always the case, and while my measurements appear to be right on, I don’t know how much tolerance is built into the drawings. Taking the shape from the boat itself is called “spiling” and is an art form of its own.   Spiling is two parts black magic and one part semi-Euclidiean geometry. The particular variant I used is the one that Greg Rössel uses.

Being of the belt AND suspenders persuasion, I used both methods. It turns out that my spiled shape fits within the shape defined on the drawings. Erring on the side of cutting the plank too large, I ended up using the shape from the drawings and sawed to that shape. Sawing was easy with the bow saw. There is a “lesson learned” with the first cut. I was focusing on staying near the line and didn’t appreciate the fact that the waste piece was hanging free going “whipity whipity” as I sawed. As the cut got longer the waste piece increased it whipity whipity whipity until it went “whipity whipity CRACK.”  Oooops!  Hey dummy, support the material and don’t let anything whip around. Fortunately, the splitting was on the waste side of the line, not into the plank.

Then it came to test fitting, trimming, and repeating until the plank fit the boat well. All of the attention was for the edge of the plank that will meet the next plank up. There’s little need to fuss with the part that extends beyond the bottom, as it will be simply planed off when the time comes. Test fitting is challenging because of the extreme bends in this plank. The dry boards cannot be completely bent into place. They will need steaming to be bent to final placement. So, test fitting is “best estimate” at this stage. Set three clamps and then gingerly “muscle” the ends toward the stems. Caution is advised since this species of cedar is known to be somewhat brittle.

These garboard planks turn out to be quite the bananas. Here is a fitted one atop the board that will become its partner. Now we see why we need a very wide board to start with.

Getting the planks attached to the boat is the next adventure. That job needs screws, clinch nails, goop, big cauldrons of boiling water, towels, plastic bags, time suspension, and maybe a helper.

One last picture of lumber preparation. This shows one half of “the big one” that was resawn in the recent tutorial. Here, it has been reduced to the planking thickness of 5/16 inch.  Five other planks need the same treatment, as do some covering boards and decks. The tools used were:

• a #5  jack plane with aggressive rounded blade (middle plane in the picture). It is quick at removing the rough saw marks from the outside faces of the board, and bring the thickness down.
• the long  #7 jointer plane for flattening the board after rough thicknessing.
• the little #4 for smoothing.

Very sharp tools ease the job and keep my right rotator cuff from complaining too much.

No bench is ever long enough. See how the 16 foot board overhangs the 12 foot workbench.