A Shipwright in Training

The changes in the boat these days alternate between obvious progress and subtle things that you’d probably never know about if you weren’t watching carefully. Here’s an obvious one:

Woah, deck’s on! We’re fairing it here, hence the longboard and shavings all over the place.

Woah! Fairing is done, and the deck’s primed white. Looks pretty spiffy this way, but this is the last record of how the deck actually looks. Next comes the deck canvas to cover everything up.

It looks like we’re almost done here, and there’s nothing like putting the mast in (just to test for fit, mind you) to make it seem like we’re almost ready to go.

Trust me, it’s a total illusion. There’s a ton of stuff yet to do. Here’s a short list:

• cut and install the coaming
• cut and install the rub rail
• install all the deck hardware
• put 7 coats of varnish on all bright finished surfaces (the spars, the coaming, etc.)
• fair the hull where the planks were replaced
• fair the entire hull
• paint the boat

Oh yes, miles to go before we sleep. Launch day is June 2nd, that’s less than 3 weeks away.

I don’t know if Beetle goes to this kind of trouble, but the oak that we got for the coamings was book matched. Nice… for those of you who don’t know what that means, it means that the 2 boards we use to make the coaming were cut from the same log so that the grain of each board mirrors the other. Put your hands together in prayer position, and imagine that they’ve been sawn down the seam where they meet. Open your hands outwards like you’re making the Charades sign for “book” and you’ve got yourself 2 book matched hands. It’s just like that with the planks.

The coaming is made of 2 boards that sweep forward from the back of the cockpit and meet in the middle. You can see them here:

Since they’re book matched, the place where they meet in the center looks extra cool.

Nice, eh? We steamed these boards to make the curve. The gap between them wasn’t always this even. I kerfed the boards (remember, it’s when you run a handsaw down a joint to even it up) to get that nice even gap. To close the gap, you give the boards a smart little rap on the aft end (they deserved it, but still, it hurt me more than them).

Rap!

Closed up seam. Sweet… Looks good, but it’s not obvious that it took some effort to get it that way.

Kev’s been working on the gaff jaws and they’re all done now.

The gaff jaws are at the end of the gaff (the spar that runs along the top of the sail) and they more or less cradle the mast.

Nice job, eh? The little angled block in the center can rotate a bit, and will ride up against the mast. The two prongs ride on either side of the mast and keep the gaff from sliding off the mast. All the contact surfaces will eventually be padded with leather. This is another one of those things that has lots of less than obvious effort put into it. For instance, there’s a lot of peening that went on to make the bronze rods that go through these parts stay in place. Peening is mushrooming over the end of something metal to secure it in a hole. \

On the home front, it’s been beautiful here. Tons of sun, more or less warm weather, lots of reasons to sit out on the front porch and read. I was also invited up to the New York Yacht Club’s commissioning ceremony… a very much highbrow event featuring the top .01% wealthiest people in Newport, and probably the country. It’s a long story, but the main thing I learned is that to make it in Newport Society, a gentleman needs a navy blue blazer. A tie with sailboats on it is pretty much expected as well, but there’s more leeway in that department.

Oh, and don’t drink more than one Dark & Stormy if you know what’s good for you.

This entry was posted on Monday, May 14th, 2007 at 4:54 pm and is filed under Classes, Newport Life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.