Hard things about wood
Boat builders love wood. We see a nice, long, clear board of 1 3/4″ thick pine and we get all dreamy eyed thinking of the great things we can make with it. That’s why ribbands are just painful, pure and simple.
Ribbands (pronounced Rib Ands) are long boards, roughly 1 1/2″ x 1 1/2″ square that go from the stem to the transom. They form a graceful, sweeping, twisting curve from bow to stern. They’re strong as hell, and without steaming, impossible to bend around the somewhat awkward sharp curves of the Beetle cat. We put them on over the planking to support the relatively fragile cedar planks when we’re bending in new oak frames. We drive bunches of screws into them, and when we’re done and all the frames are in, we take these beautiful things off our boat and throw them away. It’s enough to break your heart… 10″ wide, 1 3/4″ thick, perfect clear pine, sawed into strips and then thrown away. This stuff is begging to be flooring, a table, a beautiful chair seat. But nothing else will suffice for the job that the ribband has to do, so we suck it up and saw away.
Here’s the first 3 ribbands on our boat. 2 near the top, one near the bottom.
We’ll also cut off the long bits sticking out over the transom… these were 14′ long boards. Sniff.
It’s a little hard to see in these photos, but the top ribbands twist from near vertical at the stem to horizontal at the transom, and most of this twist takes place in the first 4′ of the boat. It’s a wicked twist coupled with following the curve of the boat. Even with steaming, we had to taper the first 5′ of the ribband from 3/4″ thick at the tip to the full width of 1 1/4″ so it could make the bend. They’re screwed in place using square wooden washers to keep them from pulling out of the screws. The bottom ribband on the right wasn’t so bad. There’s very little twist to it, just the curve of the boat. We didn’t need to steam that one at all.
Sometimes we have other wood woes at the shop. The dust collector, for instance, is prone to clogging when there’s lots of planing going on. This means you have to climb up on a ladder and poke at the clog with a long stick (yes, after the machinery is off… jeez) until a mountain of sawdust falls on you.
Adam demonstrates proper unclogging technique. This is just too much fun for words.
Meanwhile, the 2nd years are moving along nicely with their 12 1/2’s. The molds are just about finished, and they’re fairing them out now.
You can really see how the boat will look here. They’ll bend new frames over each mold station once everything is faired. By faired, I mean that they take long battens and stretch them along the stations to see if the batten has a pleasing curve and touches each mold. A mold that’s slightly out of shape or improperly beveled will cause there to be lump or dip in the batten.
We love battens. They show us nice smooth curves. They show us where to make changes.
I remain flu-ridden. Bleh. At least I didn’t have to clean out the friggen dust collector.
November 3rd, 2006 at 6:19 am
That was very clear and interesting. I still don’t quite understand why the screws don’t pull out of that rotten beetle cat wood when you screw the ribbands in to it. I see the square wooden washers and all but it still seems like the whole thing would pull out.
Mom
November 3rd, 2006 at 4:47 pm
The screws go through the planking wood and into the new molds that the boat is built on top of. You’re right, the planking wood would never be strong enough to hold the screws against the force of the ribbands wanting to pull free.