Board, rudder, cleats, oar start

The board installation is complete:

Eight ⅜" bolts fasten the upper guard to the rub rail.

I priced the commercial gudgeons and pintles and found they'd be around $100 taxes in, so came up with a different idea that I haven't seen before (at least, not that I remember).

I found a piece of aluminum channel offcut in the shop bin, cut two 1½" slices off of it, then cut each in half to make four simple right angles. Here are two finished pieces:

I couldn't get John to give me his last piece of aluminum rod, so I bought a piece of ½" Acetal rod. Fortunately, John had a ½" bit. So nice to have a band saw and a drill press! Aluminum cuts just about as easily as wood. Here are the pieces pre-assembled:

Notice that the hole for the rudder pivot has been strengthened with glass. The rudder stock has a layer of glass mat on it where the blade will rub, and I glued and screwed a piece of hardwood on the lead edge so I could attach the aluminum pieces to it. It just happened that I had space to stick a piece of high density plastic for the rudder stop. The blade itself is re-purposed from the leeboard I made for the sailing kayak, original hole filled, a slot made in the top for the downhaul rope to travel in.

Here it is all together, with tiller too!

I thought I was going to lead the rudder uphaul and downhaul lines along the tiller and cleat them to it, but seeing it for real, I see that if the down-haul line is cleated, then the tiller won't be able to pivot up, which I would like it to be able to do. I'll have to come up with a work-around.

The tiller was cut from a spruce two-by-four. I drilled the pivot hole before cutting the slot for the rudder head. That was tricky; fortunately I found a long ¼" bit in the shop.

 

The rudder head needed to be quite tall to put the tiller over the aft hatch cover. Seeing the photos, I'm thinking now to carve a chunk off the back, possibly like so:

I bought some one-by-six spruce for the oars. The middle layer goes handle to blade, then a smaller piece gets glued either side of it to thicken up the loom and handle. There isn't really a good place to store the oars, so I'm making them short enough (6'5½") to fit in the cockpit:

If you look closely enough you might see the oar drawn on the board. My intention is to be able to secure the oars off the floor just inboard of the seats such that I can use them as hiking straps. We'll see how that goes! I don't want them rattling around loose on the floor, and I don't want to be sitting on them.

In the next photo the oar core is nestled close to what I imagine will be the final spot:

Notice the cleats for the halyard (starboard) and downhaul (port) have been installed. The rough 2x2 is standing in for the mast. I wanted to make sure I wasn't going to be knocking my knuckles against the mast or the seats when cleating a line. I originally wanted to put the cleats in vertically, but found that my hands were bumping into things, so they went in horizontally instead. I put a board across inside to tie the cleats into, for extra strength:

I'm thinking it'll provide something to screw hooks or whatever into, to secure stuff. Maybe I need something else in there to attach tie-downs to?

Board and guards

Board and board guards assembled for the first time:

Board is parallel to centreline.

The pivot bolt goes through the centre of the lower board guard.

The blemish on the lower board guard is a knot, which will be filled.

The upper board guard is three layers of ¼" ply and follows the curve of the sheer.

Bits and pieces

Now that the mast is done I can finish and install the mast partners and step. Below are the two pieces that make up the mast step. On the left, a piece of cedar with a slot in it. This is the bottom layer. The slot is for drainage. On the right, a sturdy piece of fir to hold the mast in place:

Below, the two pieces of the mast step are fitted together...

...and then glued with Titebond III and clamped:

The mast partners are shaped. Below, they're clamped in place:

The plans call for a 5/16ths-inch thick bolt to go on either side of the mast opening.The gate is two pieces of ¼" ply glued together to make ½" thickness.

Below, the lower board guard gets checked out with the board in place:

(A template is standing in for the upper board guard.)

I had to put some foam chunks under the boat to lift it up, since the board is 4' long!

Mast shaped

Boring photos, but for the record, the mast is shaped.

Heel.

It ended up curved in two directions. I cut the curve out by trimming the mast on the band saw, first drawing the outlines using string for making straight lines from the top to a point 2' above the heel. I brought my 5' steel rule against the string and made a pencil line displacing the string.

Tip.

The top ended up being only 1" square as a result of cutting the curves out, rather than 1½" as called for. I'm confident that 1" square will be fine, since there's so much fir in the mix. It's good fir with no knots, heavy and strong. The mast is 11' 10" long, 2" square at the base up to 24", then tapers to 1" square at the top.

I decided long ago that my mast would have a square section with rounded corners, and that's what I did. I don't see a reason to take any more wood away, compromising strength. At this size and with a non-racing boat, it doesn't matter if the mast is not foil shaped. It doesn't even need to be straight, since the sail doesn't end at it, but floats past it. A reasonably straight branch would work!

Avast*—a mast!

I need to learn to re-read the instructions before I do something like this. The mast was supposed to be pine or something else light. I didn't get the message, and bought fir, which makes it really heavy. So I put a layer of cedar in-between two layers of fir. It'll be a very strong mast! Maybe I'll make it a bit smaller in diameter.

More than half of those clamps are John's, and he helped me to clamp it. Thanks, John! We put a string down the middle and eyeballed it for straight, taking out a curve by drilling long screws into the floor in key spots and putting wedges between the upright screws and the mast until it was straight.

I used Titebond III for this as well. It was 8º and the glue bottle says it needs at least 7º(C), so it's going to work fine.

Also

My Polysail kit arrived today. Thanks, Dave!

Something I really like about the polysail is that it floats. I nearly lost my sister JoAnne's CL16 jib one time, as it sank really fast! 

So, with the enclosed ends on the boat, the extra buoyancy the seats will add, and the buoyant sail with its wooden spars, this boat will not turn turtle very easily. In the event of a capsize, it should lie on its side with most of the boat out of the water. The amount of water that will need to be bailed after righting should be minimal.

I think I'll save sail making for the really cold weather when it's just too cold to work in the unheated shop. I plan to make the sail in my apartment building lounge. Just don't tell anyone, okay?

😁

* I also need to look up words before I use them. I didn't realize that "avast" means to stop or cease!

Board edge, other bits & pieces

I applied a layer of glass to one side of the board, wrapping around the forward edge and trailing past the after edge, which I had cut the point off of. When that first layer was hard, I turned the board over and filled in the point of the trailing edge with chopped glass strand in resin (which John makes himself, and calls "goop"):

After the goop was hard, I cut the ragged part off, then ground the rest in the shape of the point of foam I'd cut off. More or less.

Then I glassed the second side, over the gooped "point". So the board's fine trailing edge will be all fibreglass, to withstand whatever hits it might endure and not get chunks taken out. The point will be ground and filled as necessary to even it all out.

Meanwhile, I've worked up a mast partner. I'll wait till I've made the mast before finishing it, so the hole will be sized right. I was going to make the mast ¼" larger than what the plans call for (hence the pencil line around the hole), but I may just do it per plan.

 

The upper board guard is made with three layers of the ¼" mahogany ply. I laminated it in the position it will end up in, just under the gunnel, so it has the same slight curve as the sheer:

I'll cut the slot out when the board is finished, so I know the exact width.

And... here's what the hatch cover mold looks like so far:

Fibreglass hatch cover mold, more board

I thought a curved-top hatch cover for the forward opening would be cool. With John's direction and assistance, I made a mold out of MDF for the sides and Masonite (hardboard) for the top—my first mold! Needs lots of work yet.

The thing looks way too large to me, but I decided I'd wait to see what actually comes out of the mold before I decide if I want to use it or not. Also, it's not as canted forward as I imagined it would be, but I may be able to change that after it's made.

 

More Board

The board is shaped now.

I used the table saw to cut the corners off, as shown in the previous post. I had to do the whole blade end-to-end, and add the handle later, because it had to pass through the saw from both ends.

The handle is now a nicer shape than what you see below. It will get blended in with the body of the board with filler before it all gets glassed.

The flat part near the top of the board is the part that turns against the pivot guard. Forward is to the left in this pic, as the board will be on the starboard side of the hull.