We Hate Rebar Ties With The Heat of a Thousand Suns, and other observations.
Before we get on to the rebar ties, it seems prudent to do a little catch up.
First off, the half model is now carved out and looking nifty. Here we go. It looks a lot more like a boat when you band saw the side profile in. Now you can see the rake of the transom and the sweep of the sheer. It’s still a little blocky as I haven’t smoothed out the transitions between the lifts (the layers).
Much spoke shaving later, and the lift lines are gradually disappearing and the whole thing is looking smoother.
And finally, you can see the shape coming together. The band saw marks in the top still need to be smoothed out, but it’s pretty close.
Next up, steaming frames! We like steaming frames. It’s fast and frenetic and it requires teamwork and speed to do it well. Here’s how it goes: We first mill 3/4 x 3/4 lengths of oak, hopefully following the grain. This means that we try to cut the oak along its length trying to balance avoiding grain runout and keeping a nice sweet curve. I think I put up stuff about that earlier. Then we take those nice long square rods of oak and we put a little chamfer (i.e., rounded edge) on all 4 corners to also help minimize the frame splitting when we bend the living hell out of it. Here’s the nifty little set up I made to chamfer 2 edges of each frame in one pass:
What you’re looking at is 2 routers set in a router table, but you can’t see them because they’re hidden by a series of fences and featherboards that guide our little frame accurately past their whirring 1/8″ roundover blades. You can see a frame exiting this Frankenstein contraption down and towards the lower right corner of the photo. Here’s Karl running a frame through:
There are 2 shop vacs hooked up to collect dust, but Karl’s taking no chances. He’s got the full montey of protective gear on.
Why do all this? Well, this setup allows us to round over 2 corners with one pass. Take the frame, flip it over, run it through again, and you’re done. It’s much faster than taking a router and doing each corner by hand one at a time. We did that for an afternoon and it was Boooorrrring. It took about an hour to put this rig together and it allows us to whip out frames in record time.
Ok, so framing. Here’s how it works. We’re getting to the rebar ties, I promise.
First, mark where the old frames went on your boat so you can put new frames there.
Then remove old rotten frames. Unfortunately, this usually means that you’ve got old rusty screws sticking through where the frames were. This is the underside of an old plank. These screws not only will get in the way of the new frame, but they’ll injure you in all manner of interesting ways.
If you can knock them out, you do. Otherwise you crawl under the boat and grind them out. This makes lots of pretty sparks that land all over you and create a pleasant burning sensation. Not unlike being on fire, really.
Dang, NOW can we get to the actual framing? Yes, yes we can.
First, you take your nifty frame that you’ve cut, rounded, and painted with primer, and load it in the steam box for 45 minutes (remember the rule, 1 hr steaming / inch of thickness? 3/4 inch = 3/4 hour!). Then you pull this piping hot (200 degrees) frame from the steam box. Start your timer, you’ve got about a minute before this thing loses it’s flexibility.
Give it a couple of quick bends across your knee to stretch out the fibers that will face amidships (ask if you want to know why)
and rush it over to a boat where hopefully people are waiting with a
bunch of clamps and a clue about where to put this particular length of
frame.
You then insert the frame under the boat where hopefully someone is waiting to grab it and push it up against the planks that have been reinforced with ribbands for exactly this moment. Then people move it into position, and start clamping it from the center down.
If you do this quickly enough, the frame stays pliable long enough for you to bend it to fit the inside of your boat. It basically makes a U-shape with some sharp curves around the turn of the bilge. If you don’t do it quickly enough, the frame snaps and you curse something fierce. The frame snaps for other reasons too, mostly related to grain runout.
How pliable is a hot frame? Well, you can’t quite tie it in a knot, but you could form it into a circle if you tried. It’s about as pliable as a stiff hot dog.
After the frame has cooled down, you remove the clamps one at a time and fasten the frame to your planks and ribbands using either a cable tie or rebar ties.
Here’s a cable tie. We love cable ties.
There’s a rebar tie in the upper right of that photo. Cable ties are heavy duty plastic. You thread them through a little camming device at the end of the tie, pull them tight, and you’re done. They’re wide so they don’t cut into the oak frame, and they’re strong so they rarely break.
The rebar ties on the other hand are wire with loops formed at the end.
Here’s why we hate rebar ties so much. 1) they are too short so you have to loop two together. 2) they are unwieldy and tend to poke you. 3) The loops are too fat to easily fit through the holes you drill in your plank to fasten them close to the ribbands. 4) They can cut into your wood and leave an unsightly mark. And lastly, 5) they break, over and over, when you try to tighten them, causing you to start all over. When asked how tight one should make them, Lou says “tighten them until they break, and then back off a half turn.” Ha ha Lou. Bite me.
The cable ties are far superior, and I don’t think we’ll ever use rebar ties again if we can help it. We’ve convinced Jen of the superiority of our reasoning and she came in today with 4 big bags of ties. We love Jen now.
So, here you go, lots of new frames (dark red) held in place with a combination of cable ties, rebar ties and clamps (cooling frames). Out boat looks a bit like a paramecium now with little cilia all over it.
That’s all the news that’s fit to print.