Boat Repair, Restoration, Building
At some point, if you’re going to build a boat, you’re going to have to put some holes in it. It just doesn’t seem natural at first. But it gets easier the more you do it. Best to get it right the first time though. Continue reading “Boring the Shaft Hole”
I have not failed. I have just found 10,000 ways that won’t work. — Thomas Edison
Adding a layer of fiberglass cloth to any wooden boat will add an enormous amount of toughness to it. And if you do it right, the fiberglass is invisible. That’s right — invisible. The problem is in the “doing it right” part.
Okay, let’s step back a bit. Continue reading “Fiberglass Setback”
Last time, I talked a little about cutting the flat along the keel so I could put a cap over it to keep from having exposed end grain there. My friend Steve asks, “Well, exactly how did you do that?” (or words to that effect). It did, in fact, take a little bit of doing. So I decided to explain myself a little better in a follow-up post. Continue reading “Cutting the Flat”
The twist in the bottom planks at the bow is pretty extreme. When it becomes impractical to clamp enough twist or curve into a plank to fit it properly, it helps to be able to get it closer to the final shape before you pop a blood vessel in the struggle. Continue reading “Steaming the Bottom Plank Blanks”
The final topsides plank is fit and glued in place. Huzzah! It took a long time to get here because I elected to vacuum bag each plank individually. I wanted the tightest seams I could get. And in order to do that, you need to know the plank you’re fitting against isn’t going to move, even slightly. Without locator screws, which you can use in traditional boat building, you don’t know things will go back together exactly as they did during the dry fit. The topsides gets a lot of scrutiny on any boat–perhaps not as much as the deck, but it’s what people notice first. Continue reading “Final Topsides Plank and a Patch”
Eventually all boats leak. And with a rivetted aluminum boat, a likely culprit is the rivets. The working of the hull from various stresses that happen during use eventually takes its toll and starts to “wallow out” the rivet holes that were so nice and tight when the boat was new. Continue reading “Fixing Leaky Rivets on an Aluminum Boat”
Last month, I described in detail the process of scribing, cutting, and fitting the first strake of final planking on our Palm Beach 22 mahogany runabout. If you missed it, I suggest you go back and take a look. It’s a necessary precursor to the process I’m about to discuss.
Laying up each plank and fitting it is a time consuming, although satisfying process. Refining your skill in creating light-tight seams between planks is a worthwhile pursuit. The better you are at scribing the previous plank edge onto your new blank, the quicker it goes. It’s a time-honored skill among boat builders. But let’s take a look at a more efficient method. Continue reading “Fitting the Next Planks Using the Router”
Our final layer of planking will run longitudinally to look like traditional carvel planking in this build. That’s where the longitudinal mahogany planks are laid edge to edge and screwed to the underlying frames. When it’s complete, you end up with a very smooth, fair hull with seams so tight you can’t even feel the transition from one plank to the adjacent one. Well, that’s the ideal, anyway. These boats worked because the seams tightened up after the boat was in the water a few days–tight enough to keep most of the water out. And while it’s helpful to remember we’re building a boat and not a Steinway piano, with a little know-how and patience, we can get reasonably close to that ideal. We’re going deep into the weeds in the next couple of posts so bear with me. Continue reading “Fitting the Mahogany Layer on the Palm Beach 22”
Having re-established the shape of the hull for the 1958 HiLiner, it’s time to flip the boat over so I can get to the outside of the bottom and remove the rotten spots and fix the leaks. When I was in boat school, we assembled all the students in the school and manhandled the 22 ft. boat we were building to turn it over. I think we had about 50 people to turn that boat over. This contraption I have now allowed two men to flip this boat. Continue reading “Flipping the HiLiner”
We recently got a new project in the boat shop. A 1958 HiLiner came in with the complaint that it leaks badly. I took a look and found the bottom had lost its original shape over the years. The keel had compressed up into the boat, and some of the frames had separated. It’s not unusual for this kind of thing to happen to these classic boats over the years. After all, this boat is 63 years old. That’s older than I am (not by much, but still). Continue reading “1958 HiLiner – Reshaping the bottom”