lumber
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Hull Finish Work (or Correcting Mistakes III)
I like to joke that I bring Old World Craftsmanship to my work. Old World like Neanderthal, the fine kind of workmanship you get from precision woodworking tools such as heavy clubs and sharpish rocks. One of the things I like about building is all the layers of increasingly fine-tuned craftsmanship one brings to a…
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Correcting Mistakes I
Today, the chickens come home to roost. Remember that pesky three degree error? As we assembled each of the stringers, we could see that the pieces didn’t come together quite right. It would have been laborious but simple enough to cut new ones, but oh no. I figured I could just cheat the difference on…
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Side Stringers
The side stringers are the sides of the boat. So far everything we’ve been doing was stuff inside; here we finally tackle something that will ultimately keep water out. Yikes! And because of the complexity of the build and our boat-tardedness, it took us about seven hours per side to assemble. In our last build…
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Keel and Skeg Stringers
It most conventionally built wooden boats, the frames refer to what you might think of as the “ribs” of the boat running across ways (that’s “athwartship,” to you, matey!). In the Glen-L Waterlodge, the framing members run longitudinally and are called stringers. So building the boat frame means assembling the individual stringers and then tying…
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Angles and Precision
I have experience in the housebuilding, construction world. I used to joke with my workers when they’d talk about measurement in sixteenths. “Sixteenths? I didn’t know they made fractions smaller than eighths.” And in homebuilding, unless you are a finish carpenter, there is seldom need to take such fine measurements. Not so much in building…
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Making Sawdust
The whole process of building a boat involves cutting a lot of lumber, but at the beginning there were whole days of doing nothing but. The plans called for kiln-dried or air-dried lumber of no more than 12% moisture. I live in the hills of Northern California which at times is like living in a…