Boat building

Last week I bought a couple of lengths of timber, kauri and mahogany, to laminate up for a new tiller.

The small scale plans that are in LHF's book "Sensible Cruising Designs" specify the tiller butt end dimensions at 2" x 2". The broken tiller is slightly larger than that.

I spent a couple of evenings this week slicing my timber into strips and planing them down to 6mm thick - the first significant use I have made of my De Walt planer that has been sitting under the bench for a year or so. I have also laid out the shape I will form the laminations to to get a nice (I hope) curve on the new tiller. The old tiller used to be slightly too close to the top of the cockpit aft coaming so I have curved it up a bit more than the old one. Hopefully the curve will not spring back too much when I release the clamps.



Saturday - I glued up the first 5 laminations today. First I costed the side that were going to be glued with un-thickened epoxy, and then I spread on a thick mix and clamped it up. I under-estimated the quantity I would need by quite a bit and ended up making 3 batches - very quickly I might add. I managed to get the ratio on the 2nd batch wrong and put in about 20% too little hardener. Hopefully it will still be strong enough to hold it all together.



Most of my clamps are cheap bar clamps, but today I bought a better quality Urwin one with a pistol type grip. It did a much better job of pulling in the tight part of the bends than the cheap bar clamps did when I did a test assembly. I'll get more over time I think although with epoxy I don't want to overtighten the clamps as the joint depends on the epoxy in between the wood.







And thanks to my helper - good job Sam.

A lot of people just seem to fit nav lights directly onto cabin or hull sides without worrying about the requirements for correct alignment to meet the rules.I have made up a couple of angled blocks for mounting my port/starboard lights on the sides of the cabin that give a much closer approximation to the correct alignment than if I just screwed the lights on - and the new location is easier to wire than the old one.

Looking closely at the inside of the cabin top while painting some of the repaired areas I am convinced that Dovekie was built without the raised cabin top and that it was lifted at a later date. There are glue lines across the cockpit bulkhead that match the lower cabin top lines and are symmetrical side to side. They also match bright wood stripping along the sides between the cabin windows at the right height.

I saw some recycled oregon in a front yard while walking the other day that could serve to make a new mizzen boom. I knocked on the door to see if they would sell some but no-one was at home. Will have to go back again.

Made some good progress in the weekend with fixing reefing hooks on both sails, rigging the main sheet, fixing the patch in the coaming, painting the interior of the starboard bulkhead etc.

Having decided to fix a cheek block for the mizzen sail reefing line I drilled a couple of holes for the screws and found the wood coming out of the boom was sodden. Looks as though I have a bunch of rot and I am trying to decide whether to make a new boom as it's only 3 metres of 3x2 with a bit of shaping, or whether to pull the current one off and see whether it is a bad as first impressions seem - and what are the main boom and the masts like!

Anyone got a few metres of nice clean old oregon with close annual growth rings to spare?

I need a tender for Dovekie - and there isn't much room to carry one on deck.

An inflatable has some advantages from the ease to carry perspective but I am less happy with an inflatable's ability in windy conditions.

On the other hand a rigid tender is easier to row in the wind, can be towed easily but is less convenient if you want to carry it.

I have the free plans for the D4 Dink which is a 2meter stitch&glue pram dinghy. It seems well thought of from what I have found through web searches. I also like John Welsford's Tender Behind. It is similar to the D4 Dink but a bit more complicated to build I think as it has more panels and maybe stringers.

I have rowed a Tender Behind a short distance and while it wasn't going to set the world on fire it was good and stable to climb in/out of from a boat and easy to manage in and out of the water with wheels on the transom.

Not sure which way I'll go yet.