Finally, some Oak

I finally found some air dried white oak at a farm on the north side of Durham! I got to go up there, check out what this guy had, and buy what I wanted. Turned out, this was pretty fantastic.  He used to own a portable sawmill, so the manufacturer had the farm listed as a local sawyer in NC. Tom didn't even own the sawmill anymore, but he still had plenty of lumber laying around!

12' boards in a 6' truck bed

Such a cool farm!

Lots of oak

needs to dry

My shop is too small!

This stuff was gross. The farm had a fenced off area where the lumber was off of the ground but still uncovered from the weather. And there was still horse poop everywhere so it wasn't always fenced off. Apparently it's been out there for about 2 years. So I need to let it dry indoors, then plane/sand off all of that gray stuff that got on there to get some clean boards. At least clean enough to draw frames with!

The lumber is all 12' long, except for one 8/4 board that was only 9'. The rest was 1x3, 1/6, or 5/4 x 6. Thanks to that much weather exposure, it all needed to be planed down before being usable lumber.

Tom also has some 18' and 20' boards of 8/4 that I need to go back and get. Really want to get one for the mast and one for the keel. They are also going to need some work on the planer though, and that's going to be tough.

Going through the planer, check out all of those shavings

Dirty boatbuilder on the planer

This is my first time working through white oak like this, first time using a planer, first time starting with rough stock. The stuff you get from Lowe's is already clean, straight, usually square, kiln dried and very consistent. This time I have to work up the wood to get it into the kind of shape where I can build frames, then clean it up more so I actually have a good looking sailboat. Total cost of these materials was $105, it was around $1.75 a boardfoot. That's really low, and I am lucky to get this good of a deal. These boards are totally solid on the inside, it's great stuff. A real hidden gem.

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!!

Buy 'em Books, send 'em to school

and you still can't learn 'em nothing - that's what my grandfather used to say. But this time it's the Beginning Boatbuilding class at the Harvey W Smith Watercraft Center at the Maritime Museum in Beaufort, NC. They put on the class once a month and it was the best $135 I've spent all year. The kids are in a year-round school, so they had the entire month of September off and that's when we like to take our family vacations anyway. So I took Friday and Monday off from work, and we did a long weekend on the coast.

Beaufort is a fantastic small coastal town. It's the very lower end of the southern outer banks of North Carolina. The waterfront is a marina with some amazing boats. That's my kind of beach town - no sand and lots of boats. We saw some wild horses roaming the islands across the bay! It was beautiful. A bit warm, perhaps, but overall the weekend was amazing.  We started by getting down there Friday.

The first beer of vacation! Actually got that in before leaving the office

The kids picked this room in the hotel

Awaiting the pirate adventure

Our first stop was the Pirate's Revenge - a boat tour of the bay. The kids got to fight off the attacking pirate bad guys with water cannons. It was fantastic fun. The pirates were hilarious, and I highly recommend taking the tour if you get the chance.

Water cannons capable of fending off pirates

The evil attacker

They drove him away!

Ella wants me to build a sailboat that looks like the Black Pearl. Addons like this might be the closest I can get

a 50' sailboat called the Miniskirt

The Maritime Museum

In front of the Watercraft Center

Day 1:
We started with lofting, and I finally got it! I had read through the lofting process a few times but it took an in-person explanation to finally get the finer points through my thick skull. Buttock lines, waterlines, frames, how to read the table of offsets and turn it into actual drawings. We also got to cut some molds from the drawings and get the body assembled. It's amazing how much stuff you have to build before you actually start building the boat.

Interior of the watercraft center with a restoration in progress and some show-off boats

The center is right on the water

This years volunteer built boat

Day 2
On the second day we were able to focus more on building techniques. Spiling planks, laying both Carvel and Lapstrake planks down on the frames that we built on Day 1, that kind of thing.  We went through in detail about finishing techniques & materials as well.

Overall the class was very informative and the center was amazing. Really grateful that my family was able to take this adventure with me and that it turned out so well. Here's some other pictures of stuff around the center, including the frame & techniques we built.

spiling a plank with a batten and the icepicks

carvel planking with cotton caulking

lapstrake and carvel planks over a keelson

Next years volunteer giveaway boat

and older restoration project in progress

The front end of a kayak that we used Stich & Glue to build

whale weights & half models

the finished lofting boards

that white film is caused by an epoxy condition on solid wood

cool canoe with a motor!

The 2017 volunteer built boat up for raffle at the museum

The watercraft center is a really amazing place

It Floats!

The water test on the Pirogue was a reasonable success! It floats! There was a small leak that I still have to fix, but after an hour in the water with 2 passengers there was about a centimeter of water in the back. That's not bad.

We took it out to Lake Johnson here in Raleigh for the water test. It was a warm day, but nothing unusual. They have a hand launch for small boats, it's not the kind of lake you can drive trailered boats down a ramp. It does get a bit crowded though. Kelley and I carried the boat from the parking space to the launch, and let it float around for a bit. I really expected it to just sink as soon as we put it in the water. After watching it float for a while, Ella and I got in to paddle around some. We went all over that lake! She was loving it. Then my youngest got in and cried once we got in water more than ankle deep.

Have to test these things on dry land first

Floating! We sat on pillows

 

 

 

Ella the Eldest is loving it

It's a pretty big lake

This is as far offshore as she would get. True Evil Genius.

we had some company

EG had fun playing around the lake.

So this wraps the Pirogue I named My Busted Foot. We tied the boat to the top of my wife's car to get it out to Lake Johnson, and I need a better way to transport. Thinking about trading in my convertible for something larger with a roof rack and/or trailer hitch.

Transportation issues aside, this was an incredibly fun project. I am now totally hooked on boatbuilding as a hobby and am already planning my next one. I did start with the easiest boat I could possibly find. It sits about 3" below the water surface (draft) and is easy to turn. Moves really well in the water. Ella says "we're boat people now Daddy" she loved it so much. My Busted Foot was fun to build and fun to scoot around the local lakes. Try it!

For the next one, Ella wants me to build a sailboat so she can name it "The Black Pearl". We'll have to see what I can do with that. I still have to cut out the forms for my canoe too.