Boatbuilding Blog

I’m pretty excited - I just ordered my first real boat hardware! Everything up to now has been lumber, glass, and epoxy to build the hull and structures. Now I’ve ordered a gas tank and a bollard. I need the tank early because it gets built in below the cockpit sole. I want the bollard now because I’ve been mocking up a place to mount it in the bow and need to know how high it should be to make the line-handling work well.  I spent the weekend building the motor well, cutting, gluing, and screwing layers of 3/4 inch marine plywood. Now I need to fillet and glass the parts in and make the cockpit sole

Tank - 25 gallons:

Update Jan 7 - the parts arrived.  The bollard looks great!  The tank actually fits in the space below the sole as designed. I found installation instructions on the Moeller site (PDF). I didn’t realize the tank could expand quite a bit when it’s filled with fuel - more than an inch in length!

Bollard:

I went down to the Devlin boatbuilding shop, ostensibly to meet Joel and pick up a roll of glass, but really just to see the place. It was a great trip. Sam was in Mexico, but I met Joel Mill and two others in the crew (both of whose names I forgot - sorry guys!), all of whom were helpful and friendly. On the way out I stopped in Olympia and took a lot of detail pictures of some other Devlin boats in the water. I’ll make a page for them one of these days.

Here’s the shop in Maps.Live.com. The large red-roofed building is the main shop.

The office - very nautical.

I talked to this guy a while. He showed me around the shop and we discussed boats. He was really into boatbuilding and seemed like a real pro.

Inside the shop. They use the upper decks to get into larger boats.

They’ve got the original 16 foot Godzilli for sale. Here are some other pictures of this boat. There was some discussion of the shaggy fenders on the WoodenBoat forums. Here’s a picture of the back side of one showing the airplane tire used as a form for the baggywrinkle.

These are out of chronological order - I misplaced the pictures.

The deck framing is three layers of hemlock 1 x 4’s laminated. The diagonal parts were lapped onto the first layer of the fore-and-aft stringer and glued together so the whole frame is bonded together. It made for lots of small pieces to fit together but it feels very strong. This will be the foundation of the house sides, so I wanted a strong, rigid framework. The pilothouse deck that the stool is on is temporary, but at the correct height.

I cut away most of this bulkhead - you can see the cutout in the picture above. The foot of the pilot bed goes through here to the bow.

  This is just a cool picture of the laser level through the bulkhead WL holes as I leveled the boat.

Glassing the bulkheads. Four layers on each joint - three layers of biax and a layer of tooling cloth for protection.

Cloth-cutting station.

I went to a junkyard auto recycler on Aurora Avenue (Pick-a-Part) and got some nice seats out of an old Honda. Grabbed the steering wheel too so I can make make a steering-station mockup. Cost an hour of my time and $50.00. I like the idea of reclining seats in the boat. They also adjust 6 inches fore and aft. I’ll see if that’s enough.

I’m having a very hard time designing the seating, steering, and instrument placement. I’m going to have to build it all full-size to see what works.

Here are some shots of an outboard motor mockup I made to test the fit of the real motor. It’s a full-scale copy of the 45 HP Honda on my runabout. First, I took pictures of the real motor with a square for scale, then traced them full-sized on paper using a projector in a conference room at work.

I transferred the drawing to some old foundation insulation by poking holes through the drawing with a nail, then cut out the foam with a keyhole saw. I did this a number of times to build up the thickness, and glued it all together with construction adhesive.

I hammered in some steel rod scrap for strength. Then I formed it to shape with a Surform and covered it in epoxy. I made a motor mount with about the same dimensions as the real one and welded the parts together to make a mount that lifts and swivels about the same as the real one. I’m looking forward to seeing it mounted in the boat! Should be somewhat easier to play with than a 300 pound real motor.

I now know that a 20-inch motor means that the transom height is 20 inches, measured from the top of the mount vertically down to the bottom of the boat. The motor  will be in the water deeper or shallower depending on the distance of the waterline to the bottom of the boat. The idea is the anti-cavitation plate should line up with the bottom of the boat to ensure smooth water flow from the hull to the propeller. This is easy to lay out on my boat because the motor well mount is vertical.

My motor plans for now are to buy a new Yamaha High Thrust 50 HP motor. The High Thrust motors are designed to move displacement boats at non-planing speeds. They have oversized gearboxes made to run slower than most motors. The propellers are somewhat larger too, helping with slow-speed acceleration and reverse.  They’re supposed to be quiet and low-vibration too, which I think is very important. This boat only really needs about 20 HP to push it at hull speed, but I want extra power to drive it safely out of the most adverse conditions. I imagine going through Deception Pass against the tide and a strong wind pushing up the waves.  I’m still looking at the equivalent Mercury too - called a BigFoot. They’re both 4-stroke EFI engines with auto-tilt and trim. They cost about $6000 new - we’re going to sell the van and runabout to offset some of the cost. Anyone in the market for a nice van with a queen-size bed or a 16 foot runabout with a Honda? Runs good!

I finally got the bow and side decks installed last week. It took about 200 stainless deck screws, and lots of putty and resin. Here are the boards dry-fit in place.

I traced the supports while the panels were upside-down to act as a glue and screw guide. This picture is before sanding off all of the drips from gluing on the stringers when the hull was upside-down. All surfaces exposed to weather will be covered in at least one coat of 6-oz glass cloth.

I coated the underside of the boards with white-tinted epoxy, and coated the area below the panels also. I’ll paint the areas later, but this makes it bright enough to work under there in the meantime.

Then I pre-drilled lots of  screw holes, coated both surfaces with regular epoxy, and slathered on a layer of thickened epoxy as a bedding compound. After screwing down each panel I climbed below and cleaned up the joints with a gloved finger. This helped me tell if I’d used enough bedding on each area. 

At the bow,I glassed the fillets and covered them with peel-ply so I can cover the hull sides and the deck at the same time later, without a lot of scrubbing and sanding. This is my first attempt at peel-ply, and it seems to work well.  I seem to spend as much time washing epoxy as applying it!

Here’s the raised deck over the foot of the bed.  I made it 6 inches wider than the mattress to make it easier to make the bed. It makes a nice work surface for now. There will need to be a scupper on the lower side deck here, as this will trap water. I think it will be the only visible scupper - all other water will flow to the stern and run out of the motor well scuppers.

My next major job is to finish the sheer. I need to sand the tops and insides square, add inside and outside boards, and a 1/2 inch plywood top. Then sand and glass it all. The total width of the rails will be 5 inches, wide enough to step on to get in or to sit on for a while. They also strengthen the whole boat.

Now that I can see what the spaces look like I’m starting to think about the interior layout. I have a lot of glassing to do before I start adding anything though.  The boards that the chairs are sitting on are about 9 inches above the actual pilothouse sole. You’ll step down when entering the pilothouse. It looks like the cabin will be about 4 1/2 feet wide inside.

I added an 18 inch deep bay window behind the stern so I can work behind the boat more easily this winter. Clear plastic for the window lets in more light.

I dragged a big 20′ by 30′ tarp over the whole tent because the top started leaking along the ridge. This ‘Wedding Canopy’ tent was designed to be up for a week during a June wedding, so I can’t complain too much that it’s having problems after 8 months in the weather. I tried to order a replacement top via EBay, with no luck. I tied lines to every grommet around the tarp and ran the lines down to screw-eyes into the foundation. That’s about 40 lines! Last winter I was so nervous about the whole thing blowing away that I ran anchor lines over the top just in case.  I’ll be able to relax more this winter, I hope.

The real boat looks a lot like the model I made last winter. I’m kind of surprised for some reason

We flipped her over yesterday. With the great help of two friends - Jim and Eric, we got the task done in just a few hours. Not even any injuries!

There were some challenges - mostly that the tent it’s in is only three feet wider than the boat and only 18 inches higher than the beam of the boat. And the tent frame is too fragile to fasten anything to for lifting. So what we did was to spin it more-or-less in place, using ropes and come-alongs.

Here’s a sequence showing the whole process.

(Link to full-size images, hosted on Microsoft SkyDrive.)

Saturday morning I raised the stern with a hydraulic jack, set it on sawhorses, and dismantled the strongback. The bow is resting on the stem piece.

Then I swept and vacuumed below.  I built a sled from a sheet of plywood with steel eyes to hook 2 come-alongs to.

Then I slowly lowered the stern to the deck. I jacked up one side of the boat so most of the weight was on the sled.  Meanwhile, I ran four lines (2 on each side) from the internal bracing around the boat and through holes punched in the tent walls to solid points on either side. The South side mounted to the house, and the North side went to a canoe rack I’d installed a couple of years ago.  I replaced one of the South lines with a webbing-style come-along because I knew that would be the line that needed most of the lifting force. You can see the lines below.

Early Sunday afternoon the guys showed up and we jacked the North side up bit by bit until all the weight was on the sled. We took up the slack on the South side lines and removed the supports and the boat stayed up like we hoped it would.

More lifting. You can see the temporary diagonal braces bolted to the bulkheads. At this point we couldn’t raise any more because the side of the boat hit the tent poles on the South side. So we slid the bottom corner of the boat North using the come-alongs hooked to the sled.

More sliding. We’re approaching the point where she will want to fall to the left instead of the right, so we tightened up the North side lines.

I’m testing the line as the others stand wisely out of the way in  case she slides or falls.

Adjusting the blocks on the sled.  She was pretty stable in this position with all four lines tight. As far as I could tell she didn’t flex at all while we did the turning.

A little further…

Once she was fairly stable on her side we moved her over on the sled by rocking her forward and aft until she was in the right spot.

Jim and Eric lowered her down by letting out the lines a little, one at a time. Each line went through a pulley to a cleat, so they had pretty good control all the time. 

Moving the sled over to keep her centered in the tent.

Almost down! You can see Jim on the right letting the line out while Eric and I steady.

She’s upright! I’ve never had such a complicated series of tasks work so well, with few unforeseen problems. A lot of that is due to the thought and safety-consciousness of the guys helping.

After flipping, we had a great meal made by Meryll, drank lots of beer, and sat around for a while. Jim had to leave, so Eric and I spent a while leveling her with jack stands and various blocks.  Then we drank some more beer!

I rolled on 2 1/2 coats of red Interlux Micron CSC bottom paint using the ‘Rollerfoam’ rollers. It went on well, although pretty thick. The last half coat was as recommended on the can - adding extra protection to the high-wear areas at the stem and keel. I saved about a cup from the gallon for touchups when I launch.

I made the waterline about 1 1/4 inches above DWL. I hope it looks OK when the boat is in the water.

I made three pages of pictures of small tugboats to help me with ideas for the boat I’m making. They might be useful for others:

(Lots of pictures - slow to load unless you have a fast connection)

Great Lakes & Seaway Shipping Online - http://www.zoomatron.com/tom/smalltugs.html

Historical Collections of the Great Lakes - http://www.zoomatron.com/tom/smalltugs2.html

International Tug Boat Race - http://www.zoomatron.com/tom/smalltugs3.html