Thursday, September 29, 2011

Inner Stem



The inner stem is laminated from six 5mm x 35mm strips of Douglas Fir.

First the curve is drawn onto a piece of wood, in this case a flat sheet of MDF. The strips are bent around the curve and clamped onto blocks of wood placed along the curve. Naturally the MDF has to be covered in a plastic bin liner and the blocks have to be covered to prevent the inner stem from sticking to the template.



Even 5mm strips can break when bent around a tight curve, so I heated them over some boiling water (in that old Le Creuset we bought when we got married - knew it would eventually come in useful) to allow them to bend more easily. They say you should steam the wood one hour for every inch of thickness. I only got 15 minutes before herself wanted the hob for lunch but it was enough.





All the wood was wetted out with neat epoxy and allowed to soak for a couple of hours. Then the strips were glued together lying flat with thickened epoxy before being presented to the template. I clamped the upper end together first and then went around the curve as shown. A lot of clamps are needed. The laminated wood has to be banged flat to the MDF as well to keep the pieces flush.






Given the tight curve in the wood I left it for two days before I took off the clamps otherwise the wood might spring out of the correct curve while the epoxy was only partially cured. When the clamps are removed the edges of the piece are covered in epoxy which has to be shaved off.



Finaly the stem is shaved down into a triangular profile to fit into the front of the boat where is is sat into a bed of thickened epoxy. The planks are then screwed to the stem before the epoxy cures to hold them firmly to the stem. Each plank was fixed with two 25x5 stainless steel screws.


Monday, September 26, 2011

Construction timber



The internal structure of the boat, gunwales, runners, mast and spars will be made from Douglas Fir. The wood was cut from a log in Clonmore sawmills near Tullamore, Co Offaly. The picture above shows the automated bandsaw which can take the massive log and churn it out in the form of 5 meter matchsticks if you want. The picture below shows some of the wood getting spat out at the other end of the machine.




This rough sawn timber was then taken to a joiner in Toomevara and cut up further, to specifics given in the plans and planed smooth. When I put it on the car in Clonmore I thought the roof rack would break with the weight of it. By the time the guy in Toomevara got finished it weighed a bit less.





















Tuesday, June 14, 2011

Scraping smooth and taping outer seams.





All longitudional seams on the boat are now filled and scraped smooth. However, around here, anything left lying around for more than 10 minutes is likely to be converted into a house of some sort.


Seams were scraped smooth and sanded lightly. Then the entire outside was painted with epoxy and 50mm tape was laid along the seams as below.