Friday, December 22, 2017

Starting off, and a quick project

Well, it looks like my next boat is starting to come together. I need to come up with a proper name. Some proper plans would be nice too. Here's how it all came together, or at least how I think it's coming together.

I want to build a 17' sloop rigged sailboat for a trailer with bench seating so I could fit 6-8 people inside comfortably. I'm going to piece this thing together from a couple of sources. First, I'm starting with the free plans for Petrel, a 16' sloop rigged sailboat. You can download the plans from that link. I like the lines of the hull, the framing and lofting looks easy enough to pull together, and I think lofting and framing is going to be a flexible operation. The first two frames (from the transom) are spaced 30" apart, I'm going to move those to 36" to get the extra foot that I'm looking for. Also it's supposed to be planked with a plywood bottom and a hard chine line, so I think I'm going to add more curve to the frames and plywood the whole thing. Might even be able to work out that hard chine line too, depending on how much fairing I can do in the lofting. This is going to be fun.

I really want the seating to be low enough so my sailors won't have to duck under the boom, so seating inside the boat, not on top of the boat. When I stumbled on the Glen-L 15 the pictures looked like what I wanted to produce. It's too small to use the hull design, but the sail dimensions are the same as the Petrel. So without buying the plans, I'm going to try and come up with similar bench seating and work that in with the Petrel front deck design. However, I will purchase the sails, rigging, and all of the hardware from Glen-L for the 15, so I'm still giving them about $1200. The entire sail rig is perfect for this boat and I don't have the desire to sew my own sails.

In the workshop, getting started

and out for painting
Since I have to do everything outside to build a boat, everything gets coated in white exterior paint. I started with a full sheet of 3/8" plywood and a handful of 2x4's cut to length. I'm going to have to build it in the front yard, but I need to put the strongback on smaller sawhorses to get the base low enough to build frames. The plywood is to loft the frames, then I will move the tiny sawhorses and stongback in place to get ready to build.

I still need to find some air-dried white oak planks for the frames. Got a supplier for this?

Kid Project
Ella, my eldest daughter, came home from school with a class project where she had to build a guillotine. I procrastinated for about a week, but eventually got into the shop. There was a scrap 1x4 pine board, about 3 feet long in there, and that was almost all that it took to build this thing. Plus a lot of time on the table saw and some scrap 1/4" plywood from my last boat.

Day 1
Day 1 I cut out all of the pieces and put a groove in the two big legs there. Lots of TiteBond III holding this thing together. After that it was mostly just assembly (with Ella) and waiting on glue to dry. She didn't want to make it dangerous, so the "blade" was just a plywood cutout in the end.

Day 2+
We added a topper, and front braces to keep it from falling forward. I cut rabbets to ride in the grooves on the tall legs, and the blade falls in front of the platform. We put a hole in the top and used twine to raise and control the fall of the blade. She got an A on the project, and we had a great time putting this little thing together.  Fun times!

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