Two book reviews

I finished reading a few books recently and thought I would post some reccomendations

Building Small Boats by Greg Rossel is a real gospel for small boat building. I was about halfway through it when I took the class at the Watercraft Center back in September. Every technique that we covered in the class was also explained in the book. The chapter on lofting alone is worth the cover price.

Lofting is one of those concepts where you have to hear the procedure several times before it finally sinks in. I finished that chapter before the class and thought maybe I had it, but then doing it with someone who knew how really drove it home.

The chapters on planking, decking, topside finishing, and spiling were great too. Really I found the chapter on tools to be a bit plain, but that's just because I've already got a full load of tools. There's no special boatbuilding equipment that you don't make yourself. If you're looking for a bible of wooden boatbuilding, Greg Rossel wrote it.

John Atkin and his father are both very prolific boat designers. There are a few chapters first about the merit of design and some concepts that are really interesting. But the main meat of this book is boat plans, about 40 of them. The book is printed small, physically, but the plans are complete enough to allow you to choose one if you wanted to build it.

They are supposed to be complete plans in the book. Really, I doubt you could build or even loft directly from what is printed here. Some plans have more information than others, but a table of offsets is a rare sight. I read this book when I was looking for plans to build and chose not to build any of these. But as a guy who likes to read over boat plans & designs, it was pretty fascinating.

There are all kinds of boats in here, sailboats, powerboats, rowboats, you name it. It's a fun read if you like reading about different types and qualities of boats. This is not a catalog of plans, there are actual plans in there. You'd need a magnifying glass to get some of the specifics. If I picked one of these boats I would seek out a higher quality printout of the plans with more details.

A Day at the Stairs

We had a problem with this kitchen remodel. With the refrigerator moved to the other wall, the cabinet on the far side needed to come down to get some walkable space there. Then we wanted to build a new cabinet between the new fridge location and the window. This wasn't going to leave much space for the desk, and this really is where Kelley and I both work when we have to work from home. So if I build a desk next to the cabinet, that could be awesome but the floor is too narrow right there.

I discovered that the floor at the top of the stairs was 22" wide, while the landing at the bottom of the stairs was 28" wide. Why? I couldn't figure out why there was so much floor space down there when I had been struggling to hang drywall around those stupid stairs for a week! It was already terrible, so I decided to change it and that made a huge difference.

This went hand in hand with widening the doorway at the bottom of the stairs. We removed the actual door years ago, but the framing was all still there. When the new fridge was moved in, that door ended up being the bottleneck width. So I was able to pull out the jamb and get about 2.5" of extra width.

Old stairs removed, but you can see where they were

New door molding

Bottom half of the door widened

From the mud room, doorway to the crawl space

Old stairs are out

I wanted to reuse as much of the old stairway as I could for the sheer inconvenience of having to purchase and cut any new treads, risers, or frames. It was only about 15* on the day I decided to do this, and with a massive hole opened up in the floor exposing the unheated crawl space, my wife didn't want any distractions.

Reinstalled the frames, risers, and treads

Now in a more appropriate location

Still hanging out in a gaping hole

It's a hole in the floor!

I moved the stairs forward, creating a gap at the back which meant I needed framing. We stole some extra insulation from the attic, but I still had to get a 2x10 and cut it up. I needed another half sheet of 3/4" plywood for the subfloor, and we already had some leftover flooring from the Fridge Nook Project.

Now with framing and insulation

Even more subfloor!

Flooring is up and the project is complete

This much floor space is invaluable

The finished product

this part of the project turned out better than I expected. Seriously surprised that I got it all done in one day, and that extra floor space at the top of the stairs is priceless. It's really integral to the next step too!

Finally some Lofting!

This sailboat is really slow getting started. I'm having at tough time finding any air dried white oak planks to build the frames, and it's taking forever just to get the frames onto a lofting board.

Well I finally got that done today. First, I finished building those tiny sawhorses and moved the strongback out to the sidewalk where I will be building this boat. I picked this location because I can get a trailer next to this spot when it's time to roll the boat from being a hull upsidedown, to go right-side up and start building the top.

I think this will work

The lofting board that I picked up was just a 3/8" thick piece of plywood. This is really too thin, so I added some stiffeners on the bottom before painting the whole thing. I have to move this thing around by myself so I didn't want it to get too heavy, and I have to move it out to the strongback every time I want to draw. So now I have the setup in place, I have my plans printed out, and I have the board ready to draw.

My first frame is drawn!

Laying out the left side

And laying out the right side

Initial drawing of the stem

These drawings are to the outside of the frame. The plans were missing one measurement, so I had to guess and measure and do some math to get a fair line. I hope I got it right, that was for frame #2, so if I'm wrong the sheer line will have a serious kink in it - so let's hope I'm not wrong.

After I got it this far in the process, I can start to really see the size of the boat. They all say it's important to build your boat, not just stick to the plans because that's what that designer wants you to do. So now I can sit with these drawings and decide how I want to build it. Is this really the frameset that I want to use for my boat?

I made a few changes today and finalized the frame layout. First, the boat seemed a bit shallow for the bench seating I wanted to put in the inside of the hull. So I extended the top of the frames by 5" to make the sides a bit taller. That should help get me the seating I need. Also I decided that instead of a hard chine I wanted rounded corners, so I drew those onto the frames as well. I had to grade the corners in a way that would allow the plywood to bend that way, so it also affects the type of plywood application that I use to build the hull. When it's all said and done I used a sharpie to bring the lines home.

That's my boat!

Frames are number (L to R) 3, 1, 5, 4, 2

The stem also got extended 5"

That's my boat! I think I'm going to use 3mm okume plywood to handle that curve, and take up to 3 layers of it to make it durable. That's called cold molding. I might be able to get 4mm plywood to bend like that and use 2 layers, not sure yet. But I'm ready to start building frames now!!

In Living Color

After the drywall is all hung, the hard work begins. Mud, tape, sand, mud, sand, mud, sand into the abyss. I am not the best at this part of the process and I'll spare you the details of my flawed mud jobs. It's pretty bad. Plus here we have a situation where the thickness of the drywall was not always the same as the thickness of the plaster and they had to join up sometimes. The corners between the wall and the ceiling had huge gaps that had to be filled in with dope and taped up. It was all a mess.

So much mud!

joining the drywall (right) to the plaster (left) is a nightmare

Mud is not my friend

All that dust!! Kelley is cleaning up back there

That green on the left is plaster

All cleaned up and primer is on!

Next up we added paint. Once we thought there was enough dope and sanding done we put on a coat of primer, then had to debate about the color. In the end, we settled on a light blueish purple. Our youngest kid was quite distraught that we didn't choose her shade of pink, but a pink kitchen? no. come on, child. no.

I'm still jazzed about the electrical here

An eggshell finish hides all flaws

my kid is goofy

Having a finished color on there is the first time we're getting to a real finishing step. There is still a ton left to do here, but it's all finish work. Well, almost all. There is still one pretty serious piece of construction that we have to take care of.

Drywall Sucks

And I'm not very good at it. I can usually find a decent way to hang sheetrock on the wall, but mudding, taping, and sanding is so frustrating. I did it, but it did not turn out very smooth.

Setup: now we've got all of the plaster down, insulation is up in the exterior walls, the interior kitchen wall is opened up into a new header and the flooring has been repaired in the fridge nook.

Cover the exterior walls

New electrical and plumbing for the new refrigerator location

Still has the old fridge in there

Who hates hanging drywall?

This guy

going back to the kitchen

Hallway walls are all covered up

I still have to deal with these new cabinets too. That last pic shows where we had an electrician come in and hang a light bulb on the left, and move the outlet & switch (for that bulb) down to the middle of the wall. I need to get the cabinet walls & face frames built before I can hang drywall there.

melamine going in!

Got a couple of boxes and face frames covering the melamine edges

Drywall, and I got the right side box & face frame in place

Replaced the bulb with a recessed light and added the drywall top & right

That recessed light makes all the difference. Also might notice 2 refrigerators

The new Fridge Nook!

Those cabinets took 2 sheets of 3/4" melamine from Lowe's at $31 each plus some scrap 1x3 for the face frames that I had lying around. They are just boxes right now. The left cabinet on the left side is getting a door, it's only 13" deep. The right cabinet on the left is 26" deep, so it's getting a pull out drawer behind the door to make more stuff available. The right cabinet is a full 38" deep, so it is also getting a pull out drawer box. I cut the doors out of 1/2" plywood but haven't painted or installed them yet. Still have to make the boxes.

Added the butcher block and finished wrapping the header

I love the way the header & recessed light are the same height

From the hallway side

the back wall

Looking through the hallway

The butcher block cabinet

I built this butcher block cabinet back in 2001. Kelley worked at a furniture store that got the top & the drawer in for a damaged piece of furniture. The vendor sent replacements and told the store to give away two of the damaged pieces. So I got one and built this cabinet and our friends got the other one and just put legs on there. It's on caster wheels, and we've never had a kitchen that could hold this cabinet. Even 17 years later it's still one of my favorite pieces of furniture that I've ever built, and now quite handy in the kitchen! Kelley loves having it as extra counter space.

So now that the drywall is all hung, it's time for the dusty, filthy, suck-ass chore of putting on joint compound, taping the seams flat, putting on more dope, then sanding most of it off.