The Oldest boat builder joke in the world
Ask a boat builder any question involving the word ‘fair,” (e.g., “Is that line fair?” “Are you going to fair the hull now?” “That spot doesn’t feel fair.”) and you will inevitably get the response: “Life isn’t fair.” Ha ha, oh you’re killing me with that. Just like the guy who said it 5 minutes ago. Oh my, that’s pretty good.
So, the work this week has been fairing the hull. (you can practice saying the boat builder joke here if you like.)
Before I get to that, want to see that nifty little shim I put into the extra wide caulking bevel? It came out nicely I think. You see the thin dark line just below the caulking bevel? That’s the lower edge of the shim. The bevel is now a reasonable size.
Ok, fairing the hull. What? Life isn’t fair? Ha ha, that’s a good one! Nice.
I started talking about fairing in the last entry, but here it is again in more detail.
After you’ve countersunk your screws and all your planks are screwed down, it’s time to get on with the business of fairing the hull. This starts with planing and moves to sanding. What you’re trying to do is to make your hull into a smooth, pleasing curved surface. This is a somewhat tricky thing to do, and it involves a lot of trust, particularly trusting your tactile senses and your ability to sense when to take light and heavy cuts with the plane to get the curve you desire. Oh, and patience. Buckets of patience.
So, you take your plane, usually a #4 or #5, and start by planing along the length of the boat, following the caulking bevels, until you’re sure that the plank joints are at the same height. You can put a pencil mark across the joints and plane until the pencil mark is just removed on both sides of the joint with a single plane pass. This will even up the planks where they touch.
Next, start planing in a diagonal, cross hatch pattern. For instance, start up near the garboard and plane down and to the right until you get to the sheer. The plane will skip along across the high spots, like a rock skipping along the top of the waves. It won’t be a nice smooth cut… it’ll be a chattering, bouncing cut. Take a bunch of those passes, working your way slowly to the right. Then move back to where you started, angle the plane up, and starting from the sheer, go up to the right until you get to the keel, again moving slowly to the right. You can see how this process will make a kind of X pattern along the hull. Then, plane a few strokes fore and aft.
Here’s what you’re trying to do: you’re trying to take off all the high spots along the hull. And you can’t just do that by planing fore and aft, or in any one direction for that matter, because that will just take off the high spots along that line of travel. Think about it. Say, you just planed fore and aft. You would take off the high spots as you looked fore and aft, but you might have major hills and valleys you could feel if you ran your hand down along the sides of the boat. It might feel like someone wrapped a washboard along your boat. Plane from a variety of directions and you increase the number of angles that you’re nipping off high spots. Eventually you’ll get a surface that is evenly fair from all angles. Now that’s a fair hull.
Here’s what a planed hull looks like when you’re getting pretty far along.
You can see how the plane is making all kinds of little skipping cuts along the surface of the hull. Eventually what you’ll get is almost like an alligator skin texture… slightly bumpy, but even.
This process requires a lot of feel. You can sense the angle of your plane, the way it catches or doesn’t catch as you’re planing. You can feel the way the grain of the wood catches or doesn’t depending on the direction of your cut. You can feel high spots in the way your plane rocks over a hump, and you can feel low spots because your plane will pass right over them without taking a shaving. You can do this part with your eyes closed.
And then you hit the goddamn screw.
If you’re particularly unlucky, you skip right across 2 or 3 of them because you were in a little planing zone-out world and you scratch the base of your plane. And that nice sharp plane blade that you had honed to a mirror finish with a 16,000 grit stone now has a honkin’ nick or dent in it. You can keep going without re-sharpening your blade if you want to (after re-countersinking the screw to get it out of the way), but you’ll now leave little grooves along the surface of your hull where the blade either digs in or is nicked. These grooves will fill you with anger and despair, so you might as well take a break now and sharpen your blade again.
At this point you go over your entire boat looking for any more screws that are now close to the surface (you’ve been planing, remember? Planing removes wood.). Countersink those puppies again.
This works your arms like crazy. If you’re using a #4 or #5, you’ll really get a good work out. I switched off between my #4, the fairing plane I made earlier (nice and light), a #140 skew plane, and my small #103 to get into the tight areas near the bow.
The #4 It’s a decent size and has good heft.
The fairing plane. It’s light and a touch longer than the #4.
The #140 low angle skew block plane. The medium length and skewed blade work well for going cross grain. The open side allows you to plane right up next to the keel.
The #103 low angle block plane. I use this plane every day. It’s short and gets into tight places.
After you get your surface planed down a little more, hit a few more screws.
Goddammit!
Search the boat, again, for screws that are now close to the surface, unscrew them, re-countersink them, re-dip them in red oxide, and screw them down again. Here’s one session of finding the shallow screws, and re-countersinking them. I probably went through this process 5 or 6 different times.
Now start running your hands across the surface of the boat, feeling for high spots. Find a high spot, give it a few plane strokes. Find flat spot? Plane around it to bring the curve through the flat. Once you get most of the high and flat spots out, it’s time to switch to sanding.
When you sand, you use a longboard. This is a flexible board with handles on one side and sandpaper on the other. You glue the sandpaper on with spray glue. When the paper gets worn out, you can pull it off and put a new strip on. Here’s one.
Gotta go for now, IYRS is having a BBQ and meet-n-greet with the folks that are doing the hiring for the Coronet restoration. They had me at the free food really.
I’ll pick up this thread tomorrow.
March 4th, 2007 at 10:59 pm
Hey! This a totally cool website: it may be the coolest website that I’ve seen in over a year! I just came in from my shop where I am getting ready to re-rib my 1953 Bristol Bay gillnetter. God I wish I could roll it over and fair the hull as you are doing w/your beetle cat! Some of the planks that have been replaced over the years are at least 1/8″ thicker than others and will be a total bear to plane overhead. If I were a brave guy I’d get a power planer…but an oops with one of those puppies could be calamitous.
The course that you are taking appears to be spectacular in all respects: I’ll have to go to their website and check the tuition rate. Again, great blog/website, please keep up w/the details. Thanks and good luck.
Glenn Hollowell
March 5th, 2007 at 6:22 am
Thanks Glen! Bummer about the overhead planing though. I think everyone needs an overhead crane and a 50′ ceiling. I agree about the power planer, at least at this stage of the game. Maybe in 20 years when I’m a really old fart with 50% sawdust for blood I’d go for it.
Tom
March 14th, 2007 at 10:54 am
Thank you for your blog. It is excellent and enjoyable.
Two questions:
There are no boll weevils in the sea so I can understand the use of cotton for caulking. However, is wool used also? A mixed wool roving can be bought at around $8.00 (plus shipping) and that is more expensive. However, wool is known for various water-shedding qualities. Cotton known for absorbion qualities. Wouldn’t the best be a layered roving of both fibers?
Do they ever give you books to read? And is there one on sails and how to better catch the wind?
Many thanks,
Sue
March 14th, 2007 at 4:52 pm
Hi Sue,
Thanks for the kind remarks. It’s nice to know that this little blog has some utility other than keeping distant friends and family in the loop about boat school.
And I think I speak for all of us when I say, “Thank god there are no boll weevels in the sea.”
I haven’t heard of using a wool/cotton mix, but my experience base is pretty limited at this stage of the game. I’ll ask around though, and see what the old hands say. My guess, though, is that we actually prefer the absorption qualities of cotton. As it swells, it seals the gap in the caulking bevel, so we like it. In fact, when you take off the planks of an older boat, it’s not unusual to see a long dent in the wood made by the pressure of the expanded cotton against the plank edge.
And while we’re on the subject of dents in wood, here’s a slick trick to make a watertight box. Cut a box with mitered sides. Take a length of soild wire, and pound it into the miter, from top to bottom, right around the center of the miter. Remove the wire, and you’ll have a dent in the wood. Plane down just to the level of that dent. Now assemble your box and put water in it. That dent will now expand out, because all you did by pounding the wire was compress the wood fibers, and the expanded dent will form a gasket. By planing down to the level of the dent, you make that gasket stand out a bit and seal better. Nifty, eh?
We’re using Steward’s book, “Boatbuilding Manual” as a reference for the building, along with a hefty collection of articles from Wooden Boat and a few other past publications. I also have Chapelle’s book, “Boatbuilding” and Larry Pardey’s excellent, but pricey “Details of Classic Boat Construction.” Pardey’s book has some excellent appendices, including Nevins’ and Herreshoff’s scantling rules, and a nice survey of wood types and adhesives. I think it’s well worth the $50 price tag.
No books on sail types, but I think what most folks end up doing is attempting to balance a variety of factors when choosing sails. For instance, a gaff rig has a lot of power and is easy to trim, but they don’t point as well as marconi rigs. If you find anything in your travels that you particularly like, drop me a note!