Building the Mast - Chapter Three

That's the mast basically finished. It's now stored in the Great Hut with the plastic bag to stop people poking their eyes out on it, not ideal but better than this. 

The Great Hut started out in life as a boatbuilding workshop, then later we lived in it for two years while the house was built, by which time there was also a garage, which of course became the workshop and then the GH was suddenly taken over as a sort of women's retreat, complete with fridge, ashtrays, television, heater, seating and even a sewing machine. The spars will have to live here on suffrage, but I fear it won't be popular.

I'm quite pleased with the stage it's now at. It's a bit heavier than it could have been, but pretty strong and the glue joint is perfect.

I've now also made the boom, which is a rectangular hollow section, solid at the ends, and much easier to put together than the mast was. Here is the sequence:

First, strips about 5/8th inch put together, with a straight batten to keep them in order. Note cling film keeps the glue off the hands and clamps

Gluing done, ready to clean off and plane.

Flat top face, 1/2 inch thick, added. Another ten clamps borrowed for this.

Turned over the bottom face added.

Cleaned off, ends trimmed, corners rounded, preliminary sanding.

To finish off, the mast and boom will both need external blocks for strops and fittings, then outboard ends will get painted white and the finished spars varnished.

Like the mast, the boom is overweight, probably stronger than it needs to be by a huge margin, but I don't think that's too bad a thing. What now requires a lot of thought is how light I dare make the gunter yard/gaff/call it what you will, because weight aloft is a very bad thing. But of course so is a broken spar...

Building the Mast - Chapter One - Workshop Porn

One of the great delights in my boatbuilding activities is visiting my ancient friend in his Dragon's Workshop half way up a mountain a few miles from my house. Forget your dinky clamps when you can dog your stick down with one of these fellows, hand-forged in Sheffield. A whack on top with the heavy hammer secures it, a whack on the side and it's free.

I'm well past the stage of wondering whether to rig the Kotik as sloop or yawl, as discussed briefly, here: Hull Coming Along

I'm sure that the decision to go with the sloop is correct, as at 21 feet overall the Kotik is still a very small boat. Upwards of 24 feet and with a built-in trunk for the rudder stock would be a different story, because you would have positive steering and a more workable stern deck. That would of course entail a complete redesign, or going with Albert Strange.

The next step was to decide how to build the mast.

By far the strongest and simplest mast would be a rectangular box section, as described by L Francs Herreshoff in Sensible Cruising Designs, but of course it's not suitable for gaff/gunter rig. This left the birds mouth method, akin to making a staved barrel with extra bits, or back to basics with a solid single piece or a hollow two piece spar. 

Over the years I've read a lot about the birds mouth method and the drawings received from Iain Oughtred included detailed dimensions for the smaller Wee Seal design, which could have been scaled up. I can see the attraction if one has to use a lot of small sectioned stock, but less appealing if you are able to source some good stock. After a lot of thought the simplicity and certainty in the hollow two part method won the day and the following sketch resulted:

Some months ago a nice piece of Sitka Spruce arrived from the South of England and with the weather too cold and wet for working on the hull it's time for spar making. With a good fire in the stove conditions were ideal.

The first task was to split the stick, twenty feet by eight inches by two inches, lengthwise. There wasn't sufficient space to use the big machine, seen behind the stove in the above image, so we had to use the table saw, which was just possible when John cut a hole in the wall.

There followed an hour or so of thicknessing, again using a small portable machine.

This all goes to show that with care you can handle large sections and lengths with smaller machines.

Afternoon on day one involved starting the hollowing out process. By this time I'd decided to extend the hollow section through the foot length marked "solid" on the sketch, as I don't think pressure from the gaff jaws will be all that great.

We both hate routers and John drew the short straw, on the basis that a litre of the Grouse would restore him later.

There followed a couple of hours of work with one of those ancient planes that people find in antique shops and hang on their cottage walls, this one once the property of the man who trained the man who trained John's grandfather, or something like that. (I find it difficult to keep up with the prehistory of Derbyshire.)

First, having sharpened the blade on a stone that arrived here shortly after the American War of Independence Mr H applied principles developed by Isaac Newton to assemble and adjust it (hitting it with a hammer.)

To my astonishment I found that even an old office worker could make a passable job of cleaning out the ridges left behind by the router.

Turning the Hull

This week it became impossible to put off turning the hull any longer. The outside had three coats of epoxy, nicely sanded down to give a key for further coating, the weather was nice and Annie and Gareth had arrived from New Zealand for their wedding in a Highland castle next weekend to lend a hand. They and a group of local pals rallied round to help with muscle and, of course, advice.

I'm greatly indebted to Mairi Fleck for the images on this post. They make words quite unnecessary.

Lovely Boat-building Weather

It's a great delight being able to build a boat by the sea and especially nice in Argyll, where the weather is better than anywhere else.

Building any boat requires a lot of time spent on the plans, as it's easy to miss important details, even when Iain's drawings are beautifully drawn and self-explanatory. The more I study them the more I feel that the Kotik design is ideal for safe inshore cruising in comfort, the latter guaranteed by the installation of a Sardine Stove.

I pondered for a while on the rig and decided on the sloop rather than the yawl option. The main advantage of yawl rig in a small boat is getting home safely in a blow, but the cost is a cluttered stern deck and many more fiddly ropes to keep tidy. A small trysail seems a more sensible option.

It seems quite a while since the wood for the keelson, stems and so on arrived on the old car, now gone to Volvo Valhalla, as my devout brother says, "Rust to Rust and Bashes to Bashes".

I'm trying a few innovations with this build, including choice of materials. I chose Accoya for the main structural parts, as it doesn't rot. It's an interesting material. A fast-growing softwood such as Radiata Pine, grown in huge quantities in New Zealand, is sent to the Netherlands where it is pickled in vinegar and machined into useable planks. It's now the wood of choice for makers of good quality timber windows and I'm sorry it wasn't used in our house.

I got some big chunks of this stuff from James Latham & Sons at Eurocentral and it may be the first they have supplied for a boat. It's pretty well clear and stable, as can be seen from the images showing the forward stem in place, fitting perfectly.

The stems were made a few months ago, while details of the kit were sorted out with Alec Jordan. 

Having the planks machined by Alec means that I may get a chance to sail this boat before I expire. I reckon that 90% of the time spent on my yellow boat was marking out and spiling planks, which I still didn't get entirely right.

It was a great day when the kit arrived, fortunately dry and sunny, as it usually is here of course.

The plank pieces are easily extracted with a Japanese saw. It's a huge mistake, as happened with the Seil skiff, to allow a bunch of old guys with jigsaws to do this. The pieces come out fine, but you've got days of work removing what's left of the wee webs every foot or so.

In line with the spirit of innovation I'm using the Finnish Vendia Plank for the hull. Most glued clinker boats are dry-sailed, but this one will spend months on a mooring and I don't trust conventional "marine" plywood. The Vendia is made differently. Rather than the tree being peeled, as by a giant's pencil sharpener, the wood is sliced lengthwise and reconstituted with most laminations running that way, meaning that you get a stable, very strong material.

Here are some images of progress to date.

Just enough space in the house

Mould one goes below the building base line.

pin-holes showing that Mr Holmes is an old hand with his bandsaw

A Start is made

Inner stems made

After a couple of years of thinking about it a decision about the next boat has been made and she’s going to be a Kotik, the extended Wee Seal design from the board of Iain Oughtred. In deference to Francois Vivier I have to say that his Beniguet is utterly lovely and only lost out after very careful reflection, on the basis that I don’t think she’s quite enough boat for our West coast, the cabin is a bit cramped for comfort and the cockpit correspondingly larger than really required.

I’ve always loved Iain’s designs and Wee Seal was rejected only because she seemed a bit like her name implies, just a wee bit wee. The stretched version has emerged since I last acquired the book of plans and it’s going to be just possible to build her in the space that’s available to me.

Boats always seem very big when you’re building them and terribly small when you’re offshore in a blow. You have to compromise between what one person can handle and achieving reasonable seaworthiness and maximising speed (as ability to get home fast has saved a lot of lives over the centuries).

It’s also important to build something that looks nice and to my eye the sheerline on the Kotik is quite lovely.

Finally it’s nice to have one’s friends involved. Iain has been a pal for years, as has Richard whose comments on displacement, design and internal layout are invaluable, Alec who is doing the kit, and Mr Holmes of Barbreck, who will be planing the wood on a machine that started life on a battleship. For him it will be a change from making Georgian windows.

The Trouble with Old Boat-builders

Lisa von Luebeck

Adrian Morgan has just posted an interesting article on The Trouble With Old Boats, bemoaning the lack of profit in traditional boat carpentry, which he fears is partly caused by competition from colleges of boat-building taking on restorations as cost-subsidised teaching aids. His post ends with the words

"Ultimately it's the likes of us, unfunded and unsubsidised what's trying to make a living from building boats, and a craft that can't scratch a living is irrelevant and deserves to die out".

Some of the comments are reminiscent of the complaint by my wife's friend Pat, a now-retired professional opera singer, who would sometimes be approached after a performance by patrons asking "And what do you do during the day, dear, when you're not singing?" It's terribly easy for those on the outside looking in on what appears to be simply an enjoyable activity to forget that there's actually a lot of skill, self-discipline and time involved.

Actually I suspect that the competition from the colleges isn't sufficient in terms of size to make a significant impact on the rest of what is admittedly, in the UK at least, a cottage industry. I suspect that the total number of precious old boats awaiting the enthusiastic attention of the cohorts of recently-retired professionals and others attending the courses is quite small. The client of such a college looking for a cheap job has to be prepared for a long wait, as the colleges by their nature have a head start in attracting business and will start the most profitable jobs first. It's not in the nature of the wealthy, successful businessman wanting to create an impression on the "classic" circuit to be patient. He's more likely to send the work abroad, as happened a few years ago when a very high-profile yacht, now well established on the international circuit, was restored in Burma of all places.

A few decades ago almost all traditional boatyards here had either gone to the wall or converted to fibreglass. The survivors were extortionate and well beyond the capacity of any client other than the most wealthy. In line with this apprenticeships had become unknown. It's a wonder that wooden boat craftsmanship didn't die out entirely.

That there are now training courses, albeit available at a price, is entirely due to a slowly-growing awareness that good craftsmanship is something to be treasured. In the United States the stirrings started with the coming of Woodenboat magazine in September 1974. The first concrete indication that anything was happening here came with Iain Oughtred's book "Wooden Boatbuilding in Britain" published in 1986. (Iain had come from Australia in 1964, probably the very worst time to start up as a boat designer and builder, but he's a tenacious fellow.)

We are very far behind our neighbours in the rest of Europe, however.

Ten years or so ago on a visit to Luebeck I called in on the Hanseschiff project and saw a swarm of youngsters working on a massive outdoor construction. Lisa von Luebck is now complete and I quote from her website:-

"About 350 people built the ship over a five year period (1999-2004). 240 were between 19-25 years old, previously unskilled young adults who had taken up a one year course in wood and metal-working. Since the ending of the original project in March 2003 about ten municipal workers have worked to complete the ship. They have been supported by many unpaid volunteers from the city, who have given freely of their time to keep the ship going."

 

On the same visit I called in on the yard of Krause und Wucherpfennig, whose shed was packed with restoration projects of all sizes, from twelve metres to small commuter motor launches. One of the partners Andreas Krause, Henry Rasmussen's grandson, assured me that they had work for the foreseeable future and numerous apprentices taking up the trade.

Our German friends have certainly got the message that beautiful traditionally-built boats are to be cherished. Perhaps underlying this is the relative shortage of old yachts, since so many were pinched by the British forces after the War (and, by the way, not only those owned by the German State; a lot of private ones went too).

Developments of this sort are exactly what should be happening in Scotland, given the current concentration in our cities on encouraging awareness of our maritime heritage, the availability of brown-field land in places like Clydeside and a young generation facing an uncertain future.

Visit:-

http://www.hanseschiff-luebeck.de/LisavonLuebeck/LisavonLuebeck.html