All over the boat
I mentioned the jumpers and half beams before. Well, this is what I was talking about.
You’re looking at the starboard side of the boat here. The quarter knees are in the foreground, and the mast partner is that big hunk of oak at the top of the photo. The jumper is also white oak, and it braces the mast partner against the bronze strapping that runs from the sheer clamp to the mast step.
THere’s the strapping, right under the end of the jumper. You can also see the metal knees that brace the oak deck beams attached to the mast partner. You bet, it’s a ton of bracing all in this small area of the boat. Good thing, too. The amount of strain on the partner is huge, and this is a race boat, it’s meant to be driven hard.
But of course, Mike and I were mostly concerned with making excellent joints here. The jumper is another one of those tricky bits to build, mostly because of all the odd little bevels that need to be considered. For instance, the end you see above where it butts into the strap is a compound bevel. The strapping angles up and slightly forward, and the jumper is also angled up. Thing is, you can’t get the jumper’s angle by placing the jumper in and measuring it before you cut it. There’s no room… the jumper is only at that angle when everything is cut to length and fit in place.
Luckily we had the old jumpers that we replaced and I just copied the angles right off of them. Ha! If I hadn’t had that, it would have been just a little more trouble to template the bevels out with a piece of scrap held to the right angle.
The other end of the jumper butts up into the sloping face of the mast partner.
Here we just cut an angled slot into the partner, and then fit the jumper to the slot. Seems simple, but the problem is that you have to pivot the jumper down into the slot, with the outboard end set against the strap. As you swing the jumper down into the slot, the angle of the end changes and the length increases. So, I started the end long, and gradually adjusted the angle and length as I brought it down into the slot. Tiny tiny tiny little adjustments. After all, there are Big Forces acting against this puppy and I want the mating surface to be perfect.
Right next to the jumper is a little half beam with an interesting birds mouth fit to the partner.
Here you’re looking forward from just inside the grinder’s cockpit. This is one of those joints that people may actually see when looking inside the boat, so we wanted it to look good as well s be functional. The previous deck beam just notched into the underside of the partner and was held in with a screw. That seemed a little weak to us, so we made a birds mouth (a V-shaped cut, like when you make the peace sign with your fingers) that fit into a mating notch in the partner. It took a little more time than the original way, but since this supports the deck we wanted to give it the extra oomph of having solid wood resting on the top of the partner.
Mike had milled up tons of decking stock a while back, so we spent an afternoon thickness sanding (yes, we have an actual thickness sander… we are so spoiled) and varnishing the underside prior to installation.
Did i mention how long it was?
That’s about 30′ of noodly 1/2″ stock.
Unfortunately, once we set it up on deck to dry, we noticed that Mike had underestimated how much to make.
Back to the machine room next week to make up a lot more. It would be easier if we didn’t have to scarf so much stock together to get these lengths.
In the meantime, we’ve been growing increasingly concerned about how dry it is in the shop. The hull is clearly drying out, and we decided to work a little harder at getting moisture into her. We put the steam hoses under the plastic skirt last week to get it all jungley and tropical in there.
There’s the steam escaping from a hole in the skirt. Looking through the hole…
2 guys actually worked for a few hours bunging in this. Thanks, but no thanks.
The real solution of course is to get the hull sealed up. Notice how often that topic comes up when working with wooden boats? We’re on vacation this week, so the focus last week was getting the boat ready to be sealed before we left.
That meant we planed and sanded and generally faired the hull for 2 days. This is the exact opposite of doing the fiddly little joinery this post started with. Just long hours of running a longboard across the hull.
Hours planing and sanding out the marks left by the initial shaping of the garboard and broad. I’m progressing from left to right here…
Hours spent carefully fairing out the starboard broad because it had been made with mahogany that had a birdseye grain pattern. Absolutely beautiful to look at, and it should have been used for a veneer in fine furniture rather than as a plank that will be painted and never seen again. Oh well… you use what you have.
Unfortunately this insane grain is just a bear to plane smooth. It tears out if you look at it wrong. After a few hours, I was looking at it very very wrong. Still, lots and lots of shallow passes with a a very sharp blade, followed by lots of sanding wrestled it into shape.
Hours filling little dings and surface irregularities above the waterline with surfacing putty followed by more sanding. Finally, we were ready to seal the wood below the waterline and put white primer above…
And there we go… it almost looks like it did when it came in the shop from this angle! That should stop any annoying wood shrinking in the near future. Remember, this is just primer, thus the jagged edge at the paint / sealer boundary.
So, a week with detail work, aching shoulder work, dull repetitive work… that about covers the gamut. And in the end, we get a product that is better in ways that most people will never be able to actually see because it just looks like it all goes together the way it should.
Tags: sealinghull, jumper, decking