Building a skiff

[Maple Syrup Actual]

Well, I'm off to my cabin for a bit so there won't be any progress for a week or so, but here's the current state of things: I think I'm happy with the paint, I just need to wet sand it to get it nice and glossy.



Colour is nice and even and I think I have enough on there that I won't lose anything by hitting it with 1000/1500/2000 to clean it up. If I do start to see through the topcoat, I'll throw some more blue on, but I think it'll be fine.



Then I have a little bit of transom work to do, and a few miscellaneous little tasks, but I expect to flip her pretty quick now.

[Maple Syrup Actual]

I've been off the boat for a bit, between spending time on the water in my other boat, time at my cabin, time hiking in the hills around here, and time on getting the garden prepped for this year's growing season. We bought our house here about 18 months ago and it needs a fair bit of work to get the yard under control, and I'm not very interested in that so progress is slow.

But today I finally got back to work on the boat, wet sanding one side. Needs buffing but it's just about there. Until the first time I dock it, of course.

[Maple Syrup Actual]

Big update today!

Let's start with the rear view. If you're one of the people who's gone and had a look at my instagram feed, which is also partly run by my wife because neither one of us is individually interested enough to sustain it on our own, you will already have gathered that I'm of the opinion that if it doesn't look good from behind, I'm not interested. Boats are no exception to this rule, so let's get to work.



I think it was Wednesday that the courier showed up with my order of boards. I figured I'd get onto that right away, but if you read the post about how last week can go fuck itself, well, you know I ended up occupied with other tasks. At any rate I didn't get much done for a few days there. But once everyone was home and fine, I went back to it.



This looks about right:



So I mixed up around 15 oz of fairly wet peanut butter, put two thirds of it on the transom and the remaining third on one side of the boards, and on they went.

Some flooring off-cuts that were left in the basement by the previous owner of the house made a useful clamping array:



I put a few C-clamps on the keel and ran strings from the tops of the boards to the clamps, with a waco hitch to snug them down good and hard.







I figured that was about enough for one day, so we made plans to head to the beach to enjoy the spectacular weather we're currently having. I was working on the transom so I told my wife to come get me when she was about ready to leave. She dropped in on the boat and was suitably impressed by the one section I test-buffed.





And then it was off to the beach for the rest of the day.

[Maple Syrup Actual]

But wait, there's more! We got up this morning and headed down for coffee at our favourite local place, took the kid to the amazing local park that overlooks the beach, and got home around 11 am. I grabbed about fifty feet of rope from the basement and got to work.

First things first, let's remove yesterday's crazy complicated transom clamping stuff.



Little tiny bits of epoxy oozed out at the seams but it's so minor. The surface is very uniform. It'll get sanded, saturated in epoxy, and varnished to hell and back. The rear view will indeed be memorable.

Then I started setting up to suspend the boat from the rafters. I initially began to tie a bunch of waco hitches - I have no idea if this is a common name but that's what we called then when I was a kid - which are basically simple rope pulleys.



They work really well, but then when I was taking this picture I realized that hanging on the wall are a bunch of sheaves that came off a commercial salmon troller. Why am I screwing around with improvised pulleys? I hung three sheaves, tensioned up the rope cradle, and started disassembling the framing under the boat.





I spent a little bit of time cranking up the ropes one at a time, but it was pretty easy. Around an hour of work, and over she went. Wife stopped by just in time to see the flip.



"I'll get a picture of you with it," she said. "Smile, like you're celebrating."

"One barbarian celebration, coming up."



With the rolling cradle out of the way, it was easy to bolt a couple of spare trailer bunks to it, so I popped those on, rolled it back into the garage, and lowered the boat down onto the bunks.



Most of the rest of the afternoon was just sitting in the boat making motor sounds.

Kid extremely wary of the newly inverted boat...



But I am ready to start the next phase.

[Lex Luthier]

Nice work!
Did the sacrificial beer can make a sound anything like the collapse of an enemy's cranium? I think we ought to market such a thing.

That open hull is a big empty canvas full of promise.

[Cory]

That's I think the second picture of you I've ever seen. The first was on TPI where you posted about a long bike adventure. I didn't realize you looked like, as my wife put it, a cave man. I had a great laugh about it, because your really articulate in your writing. Seemed like a funny juxtaposition.

Boat looks great! Congrats on the flip, that's a big moment in the build right? What are your plans for inside the boat? Can't wait to see more. It's satisfying to see your progress.

[peterb]

FYI —- The issue of WoodenBoat that just arrived includes the first of a series of construction articles on building a Tolman skiff.

[Lex Luthier]

I absolutely love the fact that multiple members here also get copies of WoodenBoat. i wonder how many also receive The Fretboard Journal?

[Maple Syrup Actual]

Was a little to beat to even type this up last night but a step forward over the weekend for sure.

My birthday was earlier in the week and I don't usually give it much thought but for whatever reason my wife went really nuts on it this year. Part of that might just have been the spectacular weather we were having, but then she ordered a bunch of stuff well before the sunny streak started, so I don't know. Anyway boatbuilding went on hold for a couple of days and I played hooky from work to just hang out with the family at the beach.



I monkeyed around with finishing up the transom - the bottom couple of inches will have antifouling on them anyway so I didn't put a ton of effort into getting them perfectly aligned like the rest of it. It also would have meant using up the spare plank, so I just used an offcut from the main part and pieced it together.



Then I just wanted to tune the shape a bit for trueness. It wasn’t far off but you know how floppy they are at this stage and I didn’t want to start glassing anything inside until I was happy with the alignment of the whole thing.







Corner to corner was within about an eighth of an inch, so I’ll take that.

I’ve never really gotten to work wet on wet on this boat because it’s always been too cold, which means I’ve had to heat everything inch by inch to get it to wet out, which means putting on a single piece of tape could take two or three hours. Friday, I prepped up the tape in the hopes that I’d be able to start laying it on wet fillets on Saturday…naturally Saturday got cold again, and I had to go back to heating the tape to get the epoxy to flow. Still, where there’s a will, there’s a way.



This reveals my overkill lamination schedule. I don’t know why I decided to go so heavy on tape, I could probably have cut it in half and been fine. But my last boat we actually had to break ice with the hull so what the hell. Two layers on the chines, three on the keel, two on the transom.

Herewe are, all set to start filleting. This is about 10 AM Saturday.



And this is about 6pm the same day.





That was a long freaking sprint. It wouldn’t have been too bad, except the garage was cold again and I didn’t have firewood set to go because it was summer around here until Friday evening. So just non-stop heat gun work to keep the glue flowing. I didn’t stop long enough to take pictures of anything, really. But you can all imagine it with one piece of tape on the keel, or two, I’m sure.

Anyway all fillets and tape in a day. I was pretty tired but overall happy with the outcome.

Sunday morning I reviewed the work, took some ibuprofen, and got back on the horse. I had to roll out my back with one of those hard foam rollers to get going; I’m not used to working at floor height in a weird awkward crouch on a slope and I definitely paid for Saturday’s take-no-prisoners approach.

So naturally I loaded up with coffee and went back to it. I rolled out the fabric and started mixing 18oz batches around 9am. It was still cold. I had to hit every inch of it with the gun to keep it flowing. It
wasn’t fun. My lats started seizing up around 1pm and I had to support myself with my elbows on my knees for a while and just work close to my body, although I got my wife to bring out muscle relaxants and a couple of shots of rye and that loosened them up. It was cold in there but I was working so hard I was sweating, so I had strip down to just my pants to stay cold enough not to drip sweat in the mix. Which, incredibly, I think I managed to do. I don’t think I got a single drop of sweat in anything. These pics are at 6pm.





So there you have it. Fillets, tape, fabric, wet on wet, two days. Unpleasant but I’m happy with the outcome.

[Maple Syrup Actual]

Nice work!
Did the sacrificial beer can make a sound anything like the collapse of an enemy's cranium? I think we ought to market such a thing.

That open hull is a big empty canvas full of promise.

On the basis of my complete lack of experience collapsing the craniums of my enemies, I would say definitely, it was exactly the same sound.

That's I think the second picture of you I've ever seen. The first was on TPI where you posted about a long bike adventure. I didn't realize you looked like, as my wife put it, a cave man. I had a great laugh about it, because your really articulate in your writing. Seemed like a funny juxtaposition.

Boat looks great! Congrats on the flip, that's a big moment in the build right? What are your plans for inside the boat? Can't wait to see more. It's satisfying to see your progress.

You know, every time I get a haircut (thursday for example, just after that picture was taken) they say, "so...do you...do you want me to trim your beard?" and I always say, "no, I like the contrast between the tight clean haircut on top, and the completely insane beard on the bottom. A full-head mullet, if you will."

But now I'm inclined to start describing myself as a "conceptual mullet." Civilized in the mind, barbarian in the body.

Other than a motorwell in the back and a seat/locker in the bow for stiffness, this thing will be pretty empty. I really want a big dance floor for fishing, or hauling supplies to the cabin. It's like the opposite of my current boat: fully enclosed, almost no walkaround space. It was great for crossing the strait in rough weather, but now I don't have to do that, so I get to play.

FYI —- The issue of WoodenBoat that just arrived includes the first of a series of construction articles on building a Tolman skiff.

Oh nice, that's a similar design and process in many ways.

I absolutely love the fact that multiple members here also get copies of WoodenBoat. i wonder how many also receive The Fretboard Journal?

Fretboard Journal I think you're on your own! Now that's niche.