Boot Etage komplett

I’ve finished laying the boat’s floorboard. I went ahead and put a coat of primer on the forward section — although that won’t be the final color. It is distinctive, though.

Next will be the dashboard — easier to do that before finishing the deck on the bow. I need to buy a steering wheel. I like some of these on ebay.

I’m traveling with the family to North Carolina this week followed by a trip next weekend to Memphis for the Liberty Bowl. My East Carolina Pirates will be facing the Razorbacks of Arkansas. Argghhh!!!

Das Boot Updaten

I’ve been working on the boat for the past few months off and on. Here’s the progress so far:

I’ve laid the floorboard on the bow. This will be storage space under the top decking, so I didn’t worry about it looking that pretty. Just need to putty up some holes and paint it before I top off the bow.

With the help of a good friend, I’ve laid the floorboard supports from the back of the boat to the dashboard (well, where the dash will be.) This took a little while because the instructions weren’t really that clear on how to do it. I even called the boat plan designer and he told me that much of the cabin construction was “up to the individual builder.”

And, I’ve added those strips that go down the sides to form the walls.

So, I’ve made some reasonable progress. Before I leave for my post-Christmas excursions, I plan to finish the floorboards. I’ll need go to Home Depot to buy some more plywood. Not sure about the thickness — thick enough that it won’t sag when people stand on it, but thin enough that it won’t unnecessarily weigh down the boat. Any suggestions?

Success! Here’s the video — skip ahead to about 4 minutes to see the real action.

Das Boot Ausflippen

I’ll be flipping the boat over tomorrow morning at 11 a.m. I’ve invited most of my friends to come over to help out. I figure I need about a dozen strapping helpers to flip the 750-pound boat over. How will I entice these people? A perfect combination of Cheerwine and Pabst Blue Ribbon. If you’re in the neighborhood, feel free to stop by. We’ll be enjoying some pulled-pork barbecue afterward.

I’ve built a simple cradle for the boat to sit on when it’s ride-side up. I didn’t build anything for the sides, so we’ll need to make sure we don’t put too much weight on the side as we tumble her over. I have used tires standing by — to soften the roll.

Hopefully, all will go well. I’ll post pictures later and mayhaps even a little video.

Das Boot

As I mentioned earlier, I got quite a bit accomplished on the boat-building project in June. Here’s a run-down of the progress.

I started with this:
The bottom was just missing the two front sections of wood. Unfortunately, this area requires quite a bit of work to complete. I would have to cut and bend the plywood so that it matched up perfectly with the already attached side panels.

That task was easier said that done:

Oops — I cut a little too much wood out of this panel and had to start over. These sheets of marine-grade plywood cost about $50 each. Mistakes like this could prove rather costly. I made a similar mistake later and just decided to use a little extra wood putty and call it even.

Here’s how the panels looked when I cut them correctly:

I’d usually start with a sheet like this — with a whole lot of extra wood hanging over:

Then I would cut it down and bend it in to place. I held it into place with giant screws with big washers in em. Then I would cut the wood down to size. After I got it just right, I screwed the wood into the frames. Then I applied wood putty in the cracks and over the screws to make it smooth. Note the extra wood putty at the bottom — that’s covering a little over-zealous wood cut:

Here’s what it looked like almost finished. Note the giant washers holding down the right side — actually those aren’t all washers, I used anything large enough that wouldn’t pop through the wood due to the force of the bend. I think those are L-brackets:
The toughest part was making the transition from an overlapping joint to a butting-together joint as it approached the front of the boat. No picture of that — but trust me, it was tough.

After the panels were all attached, I had to go under the boat to do a little work. First I had to take off the wires on the battens and allow them to spring up and touch the plywood at the front of the hull:

I used sticks wedged on the floor to help push the battens onto the plywood. Then, I drove in screws from above to connect to the battens. This was a little tough because I couldn’t see the battens from the top. I drove in screws from underneath that helped guide me. I also put my daughter Lydia under the boat and asked her to tell me whether I was hitting the battens. She enjoyed this — except when she got some glue in her hair. I just puttied up all those holes. I bought a lot of wood putty during this stage.

I also had to cut off the excess wood from around the bottom of the side panels. In many places I had an inch or two of wood that was extending beyond the true edge of the boat. I was trying to figure out how I would cut this extra wood off… I couldn’t get my power hand-saw down there, nor would my electric jig saw work. Finally, I realized a good ole hand saw would do the job just fine:

I can’t even imagine building a boat without using power tools — but that’s how everyone made them 100 years ago. Crazy.

Then, I realized that since I was about to fiberglass the bottom, I’d need to do something about the transom. Way back in 2007, when I started working on this boat, I bought a short-shaft motor to power her. Then, the motor on my little boat in Maine went out, so I took the motor up there for her. So, I’ll need to buy a new motor (probably next spring) for this boat, but it will likely be a long-shaft motor. Unfortunately, I’d already cut five inches out of the transom to accomodate the short-shaft:

So, I had to fill in that hole:

Took a few minutes to get that piece of wood cut close enough — wood putty did the rest.

Next, I was ready to begin the fiberglassing of the bottom. First I sanded the whole boat down and made all the edges curved, so that the canvas sheets wouldn’t leave any air holes. Then, I put two coats of glue over the whole boat. That made it shiny:

Here’s the kit:

It’s essentially just canvas fabric, rollers, brushes, and glue. First, I laid the canvas onto the boat and tacked it down. I covered the canvas with glue and then it turned invisible. And that’s all there was to it — that’s fiberglassing. In this pic, the top is done and the sides are ready to be glued:

The boat-building kit I bought didn’t come with enough fabric or glue — had to drive to a boat store to buy more. That cost about $150. Of course, I had to buy paint while I was there — another $200. All in all, building this boat isn’t exactly saving me a whole lot of money…

Then I had to apply the skeg — a piece of wood attached to the keel on the bottom of the boat. I think it helps with stability or something. Here’s a picture of me painting it:

And painting this rest of the boat:

I bought two coats of primer — one gray and one white. Unfortunately, it wasn’t enough to cover the whole boat. So, the first coat of primer looked like this:

Kind of like the black and white cookie — living in harmony. So, I had to go buy more paint (sigh) and finish the second primer coat in white:

I picked red for the final color, but my family insisted that would be too flashy. So, I went with blue. I returned the red during one my extra trips back to the boat store.

Here’s my son, Jake, helping paint the transom:

Now, I know it probably looks like I just gave him a job to help him feel involved. But, no kidding — my son painted the entire transom on his own. And he did quite a bit of painting on the rest of the boat too. Really helped speed up the work.

So, the project now looks like this:

Looks like a boat, eh? So, now I’ve just got to flip her over and finish the inside. That’s all. I do intend to work on her during the weekends, not just during school breaks. I need to finish this project by next summer and get it out of my garage. So, this work-once-a-semester stuff is no longer going to cut it. Of course, I am wrapping up my PhD this year, so maybe I shouldn’t be too amibitous.

I’m still debating about the flip — a task I plan to accomplish before the end of this month. Some people are telling me that I need to build a cradle for the boat to sit in once she’s turned over. Others are more forgiving — just flip it over and prop it up with a few pieces of wood. Either way, I’m going to need a lot of help. I figure it weighs about 750 lbs. Don’t be surprised if I give you a call…

Das Boot

Here’s what the boat looks like now. Just put on the final coat of paint. I’ll post a description of the work sometime next week from the beaches of Oak Island, NC. Then, I’ll be off to Maine.

Das Boot

Got a little work done on the boat this week. Plan to work on it until Mid-June when I leave for Maine. I’ll post a big update then to show you my progress — I hope to finish the bottom and flip the boat over before I leave.

People sometimes ask me why I don’t work on the boat during the semester. Well, in addition to being busy with schoolwork (both teaching and taking classes), there’s one other major impediment: my garage is typically a mess.

Here’s a picture of what my garage looks like after emerging from a typical semester:

It usually takes me a day to get it into working order. I put away all the tools that I’ve left on the workbench and blow out all the sawdust with a power blower. Here’s the finished project:

And now I’m ready to devote some serious time to the project!

Here’s what I hope to accomplish: Finish putting plywood on that front section, release those battens and attach them to the forward hull, trim all the excess wood over the whole boat, sand and putty the bottom so its flush, and then apply the fiberglass. Ah, should be fun…

Das Boot

Well, I made a strong bout of progress on the boat before Christmas. As always, I encountered a few unexpected problems, but nothing too serious.

First off, I found the plans that I’d misplaced:

They were located at the bottom of a pile of sawdust and assorted tools that had piled up since June, the month I last worked on the boat. Carelessly leaving the instructions on the floor probably speaks to my level of frustration with the laborious process of fairing the boat. That job definitely sucked. But, given my progress last week, I think the worst is definitely behind me.

After straightening up the garage a bit, I began the next phase of the boat building process — putting the plywood on the frame. First, I cut the plywood down to a smaller width using a plumbline. I always enjoy using this tool:

Then, using a oft-handy clamp, I laid the piece of plywood up along the proper section:

Then, I’d make a pencil mark on the plywood to cut it down to roughly the right size:

Then I’d screw and glue the wood to the frame. I used a bunch of 1″ brass screws for this. They’d be spaced 2″, 3″, or 4″ apart — depending on where they were placed. Luckily, I didn’t have to drill pilot holes — or put in steel screws first — for these screws. So, this job went reasonably fast compared to the chine log and the shear clamp. I attached both of the aft sides (no picture), then moved toward the front of the boat. Here, I noticed a little problem:

The boat’s stem and breasthook aren’t in the right place. As you can see, she’s tilted a little toward starboard. I hadn’t noticed this until now, but I immediately realized that the trouble developed back in June. You see, I was standing on the back of the boat doing a little fairing when one member of the boat form collapsed. Didn’t seem like a big deal at the time because I fixed it pretty quickly. Just lifted the piece of wood that came loose and drove in a few 3″ screws. However, I must’ve missed that the front of the boat had jarred loose and was now off-kilter in a rather serious way.

What to do? Well, I needed pull the stem over to the left about three inches and then nail it down. I thought about this for a while and settled on using one of my tie-down straps as a wench:

I tied one end to my garage door frame and the other to the stem. A couple of strokes of the wench, and she was lined up perfectly:

After re-aligning the stem, I drove a few nails into the brace attached to the breasthook and went back to the task at hand. This diversion probably delayed me by a couple of hours.

In a perfect world, of course, I wouldn’t be using two pieces of 8-foot plywood, but rather one piece of 16-foot plywood. In fact, this distinction was lost on me while ordering the supplies for the boat. I realized last week that I had exactly half as much plywood as I required. The reason? The bill of goods called for 4 pieces of 16-foot plywood, but I’d only order 4 pieces of 8-foot plywood. Had to drive to a lumberyard northeast of Atlanta to find the right kind of marine-grade plywood I required. Nobody had ever even heard of 16-foot sections of plywood.

Anyhoo, to attach these two pieces of wood and make them as strong as a single sheet requires something called a butt block:

The butt block is a short piece of plywood that sits behind the two other pieces. It’s attached with a boatload of screws and coated with copious amounts of epoxy glue. Here’s some glue mixed in my favorite tin can:

By the way, this boatbuilding glue can be quite useful for other projects. The legs of this chair will never be wobbly again:

After applying a ton of glue, I attached this short section of plywood to the back of the first side section, followed by about 20 small screws:

I attached the next section of the side in the same manner, creating a virtual 16′ piece of plywood:

After completing both sides, I then installed the battens. Those are the longitudinal timbers that run down the bottom of the boat on either side of the keel (pictured above). Using a handsaw and chisel, I notched out a 2″ x 1″ section out of each rib and screwed and glued them into place. (This took about a day.)

At the front of the boat, the battens don’t attach to any frame:

The battens at this section are bent down and then the attached to the curved plywood that will be placed above. I used wire and my wench to pull the battens down:

I was a little confused about this part and even called Glenn Witt, the boatbuilder who designed the plans for my boat. He explained that after I put the plywood on, I’ll crawl underneath the boat, release the battens and then attach them to the plywood. These battens will help create a strong hull up front — where a lot of stress is likely to occur.

At this point, I moved on to attaching the plywood to the bottom of the boat, a comparatively simple process. I just placed the wood on top, cut it to the rough size and then screwed and glued:

Of course, this required quite a few screws. I’d say about 250 in all. Even with a power screwdriver, my arm is still a little sore.

After the attaching the plywood, I needed to trim the excess. But, there’s no way to tell exactly where to saw from the top without cutting into the side of the boat. Luckily, my boatbuilding book featured the design for a tool for the job:

This ingenious device took me a few minutes to build and allowed me to scribe a line on the plywood that mirrored the side of the boat. Here’s the scribe in action:

After cutting off the excess, she looked like this:

And, this was as far as I got. Here’s the view from the front:

So, I just need to put that last section of the plywood on the front of the hull. Then, I’ll attach those battens. And, finally, I’ll fiberglass the bottom of the boat. I’m hoping to get all that done by the end of May. After that, I’ll flip the boat and start working on the inside.

I don’t see the light at the end of the tunnel, but I can see the tunnel from here.

Here's a picture of the boat. I'll post a lot more pictures and some commentary after Christmas.

Das Boot

I’m back at work on Das Boot today. Well, so far I’ve just been cleaning up my garage. But, soon I will be back at work on the boat. Can’t seem to find the directions — a minor inconvenience.