A Shipwright in Training

Ok ok, enough suspense.

The first thing that makes the relatively “simple” task of removing the garboard and first broad difficult is  that the screws are old and they’ve become brittle.  They break off or the heads strip out.  I’d say about a third of the screws snapped off as we tried to turn them, no matter how carefully we worked.  There’s a couple of things we did to try to minimize that. 

The first thing we did was try to make sure we had as clear a slot as possible when getting our screwdriver in there.  I used the auger bit of my swiss army knife a lot, but here’s a simpler solution.  Take an old screwdriver and grind a little hook on the blade:

That little hook fits nicely into your slot and will clear out any gunk keeping you from seating your screwdriver solidly in the slot. 

The second thing is to grind the face of your screwdriver flat.  If you look at the tip of your screwdriver, you’ll see that the sides taper down to the flat edge, almost like a wedge. 

If you hollow grind your screwdriver blade just a bit, you’ll get a flatter fit into the slot.  This will minimize the driver’s tendency to strip out the slot as you turn.

If everything goes to hell, the head breaks off, the slot completely strips, whatever, it’s time to break out the Unscrew-Ums. 

These handy things are simply rolled steel pins (you can pick them up at the hardware store as well as buying them from the inventor) with teeth ground into one end.  You chuck them into your drill and cut down on top of the broken screw.  The teeth are set to cut when the drill is in reverse.  When you do it right, the body of the screw goes up inside the hollow pin and you only cut away the little circle of wood immediately surrounding the screw.  This leaves the screw looking like a little rod stuck into the wood if you don’t go all the way down to the tip of the screw. 

We tried to only drive as deep as the plank and leave the frame alone.  This left the screw shaft sticking out of the frame.  The hope was that when we pulled the plank off of the now headless screw that we’d be able to grab the shaft with locking pliers and turn the screw out that way. 

Another problem with the garboard and broad removal was that the mahogany was Beautiful.  No kidding, over 80 years old, and it’s in pristine shape.  Not a spot of rot.  It was hard, tight grained, and highest quality.  Probably from the Philippines.  It did not go gently into that dark scrap pile.

Next up, the shellac.

What you’re looking at here is a thin layer of brown mahogany stuck to the lighter cedar planking below it with the yellow shellac.  That stuff (again, 80 years old) really holds.  Once we had all the screws out, we ended up breaking out the rabbet planes to gradually shave off the mahogany until we just got down to the cedar.  That took a while.

In many places, we could see the original builder’s pencil lines, marking where to drill the cedar for the screws that would tie the two layers of planks together.

Besides it being cool to see these original marks, it was impressive that they nailed their lines with the holes they drilled.  Dead center on the line, every time. 

So, we chopped, and drilled, and planed, and gradually the first broad came off the boat in little chunks.

Up forward, the shellac was not as big a problem, and the plank came off easily.

Not really sure what the deal was there.

Oh, by the way, take a look at that seam there.  The plank seams on this boat are almost light tight.  They’re just beautiful.  No gaps, wiggles, nothing.  They didn’t use caulking in these boats, so the seams really did have to be perfect.

They tapered the first broad down to a feather edge both fore and aft.  I was surprised to see that they put a fastener so close to the very end.  There wasn’t much wood holding that fastener in.

After the first broad was off, it was relatively easy to remove the garboard.  There were a few fasteners that we hadn’t found the first run through that slowed us down, but Scott and I had it off by noon on Friday. 

All so that we could see this:

Here’s a frame (left side) and floor landing on the keel.  You can see that the frame goes into a socket chiseled out of the keel.  This socket keeps the frame from moving fore and aft, and adds a little more support, but the problem is that it also traps the end of the frame in a small, wet place.  If there’s going to be rot, that’s the first place we look. 

Luckily, the frames were perfect.  No discernible rot at all. 

By the way, the groove at the base of the frame there at the edge of the red bottom paint is the rabbet.  You can also see a rough groove carved in the base of the frame and floor, called a limber hole.  This is designed to allow water in the bilge to run down to the lowest part of the boat where it will be pumped out. 

The problem with these limber holes is that they’re so small that they get easily clogged.

You can sort of see how this one has filled up with impacted dirt.  This renders the limber hole useless.  They really needed to either put larger limber holes in, or have the owners clean them out regularly (fat chance). 

Still, no rot, so the frames will stay.

After a few days of being under the boat, we were ready to clean out our piles of sawdust and wood scraps.  So, we delicately lifted the lady’s skirt, and gave here a thorough cleaning.

This prompted more than a few catcalls and cries of “Slut!” from the peanut gallery.  I swear, some people have no manners.  Poor thing was blushing like a schoolgirl.

And yet, from the right angle, you’d swear she was smiling as well…..

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This entry was posted on Sunday, October 28th, 2007 at 10:17 pm and is filed under Classes. 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.