One of the joys of the past month has been the restoration of a personal favourite, a little 10 inch bandsaw made in South Australia. Dad had purchased it to build a boat in the 1960s and on the arrival of children (us), it was handed to my grandfather for safe keeping. Pop always referred to it with caution, obviously afraid we would switch it on.
New bearings, new tires, new motor ($100 off ebay) and it seems to work….the blade wanders slightly (check our the guides), and it runs a little fast, but it cuts and most importantly; the blade stays on the tires.
Well done Bote-Cote for your new product E-Glue. It is epoxy with fortifier already included. All you need to do is mix it 50:50 and apply. No more mixing and sprinkling in that fine power and masking up to avoid inhaling.
I am using it on the Sharpie to attach the cleats to the bulkheads. The cleats form the attachment surface that will allow the hull sides to join to the bulkheads as strongly as possible. The cleats effectively replace the epoxy fillets. It is nice using more solid timber on the build, particularly when it replaces thickened epoxy!
To clamp the cleats whilst the E-Glue cures, I am using screws with plywood washers, a very effective device that is cheap and you can have as many as you want!
Actually before I begin on this topic, I need to apologise for the innuendoes you will read in my posts, I was raised on a heavy diet of “Carry On Gang” and “Benny Hill”, more a gift of my father’s father than anyone else.
A butt join is a method of fastening two pieces of timber together by ‘butting’ them up against one another and then securing the union with an identically thicknessed piece that overlaps the joint significantly (see the photo). The main problems with butt joints are that they can induce flat spots when the timber is bent and can be ugly.
My personal preference is a ‘scarf’ join (see wikipedi link), this is where the two pieces are given mirrored, feathered bevels of a ratio greater than 9:1. Meaning the bevel or scarf is at least 9 times the thickness of the timber. Commonly 12:1 and 14:1 is used. The scarf join is very elegant and demonstrates considerable skill to get it to work. My success with scarf joining is about 1 in 4…..(look closely at my Whilly Boat).
I used to be very picky about my woodworking. I steadfastly refused to use power driven screws for many years….then I woke up and smelled the ozone.
Knowing my scarfing success rate…and that the butts can be hidden…and they are not supporting tight curves, I will embrace the butt.
Sorry for the silence friends, I have been away in QLD with my little family. Sadly the boats are lacking in style up there, too many reversed sheers and smokey glass…bah humbug.
I have this friend whom I have known from kindy, Michael Jansen is his name. he lives in the next state over (8 hours drive) but we have this relationship that does not account for the distance. We may have a two word conversation and add more words a month later, often a seemingly random text message such as ‘funemnx” will result in a belly laughing from the recipient. There is so much understanding that often a year goes by with nothing being said.
So we are all 40 this year. My year is being enhanced by this boat project, Michael’s has been scarred by the loss of his Mum and all the trauma this is likely to bring. Add to this: Mike’s work (upper management) in a multi national is in a mess because a new project was derailed while he was literally at his Mum’s funeral….you get the picture.
So we cannot get together to mark the 40th for either of us, we skyped last night for the unboxing of my gift from Michael and his worship-worthy wife Carol, and shared a glass of the best over the internet.
The gift: a Lie Neilsen low angle smoothing plane. Fantastic, just what I need to work the plywood. The real trump with this piece of heirloom is the adjustable mouth allowing for it to plane endgrain without ripping out chunks. That Jansen is a thinker!
After a drink or two, I made this video for Michael. Thanks cobber for the great gift, wish you were here to play with it (I would even loan you the ‘happy sock’ it came in).
L.Francis Herresshoff, a cunning boat designer and master of the compromise, as well personal hero of mine, described epoxy as “congealed snot”. He was not far from the truth. It is not the most pleasant of beasts to work with.
Firstly you need to suit up, (I have developed a sensitivity to the stuff from years of not suiting up), then you need to add barrier cream, gloves, mask etc. Then you get to mix the stuff: pump, stir, pump stir, never being allowed to lose count….blah. The stir stir stir, wait wait wait, pour pour pour, oops getting hot in the hand: new mix time.
Then comes the laying out of the “disco” cloth (fibreglass) – it shines like a metallic rayon skirt from the ’70s. This feels lovely and soft, but you know when it hardens with that epoxy: it will cut you, make you itch, even give you cancer if you sand it unprotected! Holy moses!
The bigger the boat, the more you need.
Aside from the beastly nature of firbreglass, this little gift of modern technology makes the end product so much easier to live with, your boat will be strong, light, durable, easy to maintain and if you have done it correctly, the fibreglass is invisible showing the wood which it protects.
If life was all beer and skittles, we’d be drunk bowlers!
Wetted-out fibreglass cloth for the inside of the centerboard case.
One of my true joys is to use the tools my grandfather’s father owned, (I really enjoy just looking at them). These are not top shelf, rolls-royce tools, but due to the reality of hand tools, they last and they work, they really work.
I unscrewed the plane iron after knocking out the blade, passed it quickly over the oil stone for good measure, tuned the iron, replaced the parts and reset the blade.
A tap on the back of the jack plane backs out the blade, and a tap on the nose (right on the leather spot) moves the blade down. How elegant.
At some stage, and I believe it was my paint-happy grandfather, these tools got some serious paint, the blue of the jack plane stands out well against the red of the mallet. The mallet red is a the red paint he strongly favoured, actually I have a great quantity of red handled tools. He told me it was to clearly identify his tools, perhaps it was a very large tin of red paint. Who knows. It is part of his legacy, and a big part of my happiness.
So after setting the jack plane just right, I could take off a third of a millimetre per pass, just what was needed to adjust the head ledges to match the ledges for the body of my centreboard case.
I am pleased to post that I started the NIS26 by making the gudgeon hole for the centerboard case.
Wife’s comment: did you use up one the thousands of yogurt containers?
Answer: duh, of course.
One of the joys of the past month has been the restoration of a personal favourite, a little 10 inch bandsaw made in South Australia. Dad had purchased it to build a boat in the 1960s and on the arrival of children (us), it was handed to my grandfather for safe keeping. Pop always referred to it with caution, obviously afraid we would switch it on.
Paul's boat blog 