Lashing strakes and such

 

Survived what, that's the question? Certainly this t-shirt didn't survive. Someone-or-other sent it off to GIRO (Gabriola Island Recycling) and then it met its fate -- doomed to become an oily rag, and thus spend some considerable amount of time hanging on the garden fence in splendid isolation. (Spontaneous combustion. It's a real thing. Oily rags do not get to stay in the boat shop!)

The oiling in question was for the lashing strakes. They are rubbed with boiled linseed oil -- five coats of boiled linseed oil, applied hot with rags.

We found a most excellent way to keep the oil hot while we were working on the last hull -- a small rice cooker. It works really well, and holds the oil at a good temperature. No need to be overly-hasty, since the oils stays a constant temperature, and no need to worry about oil and open flame. (I would worry if we were heating it on the barbeque, and heating it in the house -- yuck.)

Oiled purpleheart looks amazing. Here are the lashing strakes and the pads that go under them awaiting installation.

Robbie added japan drier to the last couple of coats of oil to hasten the drying process. Who names these things? According to Wikipedia:

"Japan drier is a common lay term and generic product name for any oil drying agent that can be mixed with drying oils such as boiled linseed oil and alkyd resin paints to speed up "drying". The name refers to "japanning", a term for the use of drying oils as an imitation or substitution for urushiol based Japanese lacquer."

So there you go. Who said blogs aren't educational.

 

They're installed now. Here you can see the first one in the background. In the foreground you can see me getting the camera in position. (Glasses from Gabriola Optical!)

Not everyone seems as happy about the process as I am. Perhaps he does not appreciate having his view obscured by oily rags.

Raphael supervising.

 

So much progress, so few posts!

I know, I know. 

But we are moving onward ever onward with the boat. Beams are now painted, lights (aka windows!) are about to be added to the galley hull, lashing strake is mostly attached which means many coats of oil have been added... 

Progress is definitely happening. At least a couple of days' progress each week, which is actually a lot.

And this summer we had visitors! 

Any Wharramites recognize these smiling faces? Robbie and I are on the right.

Another day...

Another colour!
 
No more white hull! Trevor used the roller, Robbie did the brushed bits and took the pictures, and from today we have two blue hulls.

My role: staring admiringly at the results.
Breathing and this kind of paint don't, I find, go well together.

 

Yes, the other side is painted too. 

And it's all really that shiny.

Friday's errand list includes
flattening agent.

Call me Ishmael

Because really, why not? I haven't posted for so long, you've likely entirely forgotten my name if you ever knew it. 

And, well, I do see a slight resemblance ...

And while "obsessed" seems like a rather strong word, we are extremely determined. And very glad to be back to boat work once again.

Why the long silence? 

Sometimes things just seem to happen.

But we're back now.

Painting bulwarks. Getting ready to see the hull turn blue.

See? Just fine now.

Gak!

Isn't it alarming and disheartening when blogs just go dormant? 

"They've stopped," I imagine readers thinking gloomily. "They're just going to sit there with a half-finished boat project for the next decade."

But no! It is not so! There has been a good amount of progress since April, when I last posted. The galley is not only installed, it has the perfect shelf to hold our four travel mugs. And there has been a lot of painting, all of it white so far. And the appropriate chimney-cap has been discovered and purchased for the Dickinson Marine wood heater. (For the first one at least; we are imagining that we'll have one per hull.)

There are pictures, too, but, being an up-to-date individual, I haven't freed them from my phone. 

This weekend. Promise.

Bulwark

noun bul·wark \ˈbu̇l-(ˌ)wərk, -ˌwȯrk; ˈbəl-(ˌ)wərk; sense 3 also ˈbə-ˌläk\

Or is it bulwarks? One rarely hears of a single, lonely bulwark, yet it does appear to exist as a singular noun.

Plural or singular, it (or they) are now attached to the hull. The port hull. The bulwark (or bulwarks) run full-length on the outboard side, and cover only a small section forward and aft on the inboard side.

 
 
Here it is dry-fit, with none of the notching for the beams cut.

And here it is glued and clamped. It's a relatively large glue job. We're into the reasonable weather again, so we don't have to worry much about temperature.

 

 

 

 

 

Forward inboard section

 The most amazing thing about all of this is realizing that it's the last time we'll be doing it. The project felt endless at the beginning -- all very exciting, because we were seeing things for the first time -- but really endless, since we knew there was another hull to go. Now it's getting much more real. It's becoming easier to believe that at a point in the reasonably near future, we will stop having a boat project and start having a boat.

Mind you, there are many, many layers of paint to apply first. And there's a deck to build. And the rigging. And the masts to finish. And the sails. And and.

Boatbuilding. It's like the tides.

Yesterday, the galley was complete. We sat at the table (about which more later), ate pancakes, drank coffee, and ignored the dishes in the sink.

Today the table is but a memory.

Well, okay, that's a bit melodramatic. But everything's removed now, so that it can all be glued in. At which point it will be back. Coffee will return. Who knows, there might even be pancakes.

Here's an aerial view of one of the benches, and a view with bench and wet locker.

Galley dry fit

No pictures survive of yesterday's pancake breakfast. 

The pancakes were coconut, the maple syrup was genuine, and the whole thing was cooked in Tiger's galley. Sunday lunch was black bean noodles with peanut sauce on a base of salad -- likewise cooked and eaten in the galley.

Yee haw! We have been talking about this for such a long time!

For the dry fit, Trevor screwed a lot of components into position, and clamped some others. Here are some views.

Here's the sink, immediately aft of the companionway. The counter, in this picture hosting quite a few tools, will be the location for our in-use water jug. There's room for a work surface too. Thermoses are behind the rail above the sink.

Here's the opposite side, with the stove installed. It's a Primus-style stove. You heat the burner first by burning alcohol, then light the kerosene. The red hose you see in the bottom left is the bicycle pump; you have to pressurize it manually. Behind the stove there are two small compartments. We are likely going to put wide mesh across them and use one of them to store our ladle, slotted spoon and cutlery, while the other holds pot lids. Dish storage is above.

Here's the plate storage, more like it will really be.

Whenever Trevor finds a small spot
with nothing immediately planned for it,
he seems to label it "books."
"Why?" asks no one, ever, who
has seen our house.

"Hot beverage to helm attendee."
It's a port light to the cockpit.

Mysterious!

Mysterious, right?

Kind of like what happened to the time between last October (my last blog post) and now (March).

I think it looks a bit like a table prepared for some sort of odd ritual involving scissors.

But no. It's a hatch cover, newly glassed, sitting on the work bench under the empty clamp rack.

We're back, people. Galley photos coming on Wednesday.

A bicycle built for Mom

Indeed, the boat is progressing -- in a "yet another coat of white paint inside" kind of way -- and it is exciting -- in a "yet another coat of white paint inside" kind of way. 

We've had other excitement, too -- our oldest housemate (Mary's mother) celebrated her 90th birthday in September. Here's her favourite gift.

The most beautiful bicycle ever.

Why? Because a couple of years ago, Trevor heard her say that she had never had a bicycle. "Now you do," he told her when she opened it. 

The pedals turn, the "chain" drives the back wheel, the handlebars turn, and yes, that is a hand-carved seat. It's about an extended hand-span wide.

Sometimes people leave you speechless.

Framing the hatches

Every time something new is added to the boat, someone says, "Wow! Now it really looks like a boat!"

I will spare you. I do have a particular fondness for the frames around the hatches, though. It makes it look... well, you know.

Here are the pieces laid out, ready for gluing.

And here's a closeup of the way the joins work.

At first all the epoxy we purchased seemed excessive. 

Where there's glue, there's cleanup.

Hard as it is to believe that it's going to be September tomorrow, early fall has its compensations.

What's a boat without a rudder?

For the moment, at least, there's no need to answer that question. Here's the rudder temporarily installed. Yes, it will need another coat of paint, won't it.

Top this!

Once a cabin top has its sides, and its holes cut for windows, and the frames glued in, there's nowhere to go but up. And up the top went, earlier this week.

The cabin top is assembled from two pieces. Here they are, reclining on the deck awaiting installation.

Gluing in process. It's possible that the glue crew noticed the camera.

Here it is, glued in, and with lots of squeeze-out scraped off. Squeeze-out: it's a good thing. Just a huge amount of sanding and six quick coats of paint on that and you won't notice it at all.

Window frames, deadlight frames, whatever you call them

... suddenly, in a veritable bristle of clamps, they are underway.

The cabin sides have the holes cut in them. The frames are glued on inside, so the glass sits flush with the cabin sides on the exterior.

Shaped frames, ready to install inside.

And here's some of them, glued and clamped. To be continued!

Cabin top

The cabin top mockup, complete with Santa's chimney and hatch cover, looked great, at least if one squinted a bit ...

 

However, while the replacement isn't quite as complete, it will ultimately be a good bit more useful. And lasting! 

It's well underway now. No top yet, but it's definitely starting to look like a boat.

The plywood makes the shape, but there are lots of little framing pieces supporting it inside.

Every stick takes time and care to install. 

The end result will be beautiful.

In other less photogenic news, Robbie has been experimenting with a low-volume, low pressure paint sprayer, so far just in the aft hold. There is A Lot of painting on this boat -- two coats of primer and two coats of top coat for the interiors, and three of each on the exterior. That's a lot of brush and roller time, and we'd be delighted to speed things up a bit.

So far the sprayer seems quite useful. Even if we end up using it mostly for primer, or primer plus first top coat, it should save some time. I haven't included a picture of the mostly-white aft compartment -- we'll save that excitement for next time.