Building The Matinicus Double Ender- Part 6

The lug yawl sail plan is finalized .

Its hard to believe that almost a year has passed since the last post. Once spring comes around, there is so much work to do at the club in preparation for the sailing season, and then the season itself (which this year continued on until nearly Thanksgiving). Six months go by without any progress on the peapod! And so I look forward to the holidays as a time to re-connect with boat building.I had always intended to rig this boat as a lug yawl, and finally got around to drawing up the sail plan. I also decided to substitute a dagger board for the pivoting centerboard. The dagger board is lighter, simpler, and takes up less space than a centerboard, and when rowing, a plug can be dropped in the slot to eliminate speed robbing turbulence in the trunk. This conversion is not as simple as it might seem, as any changes to rig or underbody can affect the balance of the boat, producing a heavier than normal weather helm, or a possibly dangerous lee helm. The thwart layout and rowing positions determine, to some extent, the position of the dagger trunk, as thwart and trunk are mutually supportive structurally. Once the balance point of the hull is arrived at (by balancing a scaled cutout of the underbody on an awl and marking the point), the rig is drawn and its geometric center is found. I played around with mast placement, rake, sail shape, etc. and made many back and forth adjustments with the sails and the dagger board until I arrived at what I hope will be a well balanced boat.

So its on to the interior! I built the dagger trunk first, and made it a good four inches longer fore and aft than the board itself, still hedging my bets as regards the balance until the sailing trials. I'll fill in the excess slot once I determine the exact position of the board. The trunk is so simple! Just two posts, which extend through the plank keel, two sides, and two bed logs cut to the slight curve of the inside bottom.

The completed trunk, upside down. The posts will extend through the keel.

Slot pattern for a long top-bearing router bit.

 I made a router jig to cut the slot from inside the boat, and I left the ends of the slot plumb even though the posts are raked to avoid chiseling the angles through 1-1/2" of keel. A wedge will be epoxied in (one from inside, one from outside) to close up the gap. Very simple.

A wedge will be epoxied in to fill the gap.

I blue-taped the parts of the slot that must remain clean, and then glued and clamped the trunk into the boat, being careful to keep it plumb athwartship.

The area of the slot to remain clean is masked off.

The trunk is clamped to the boat through the slot.

The frames are next, and I chose to use a futtock style frame of spanish cedar, glued up in halves with short pieces to optimize grain direction. I settled on 5 frames, built to span sheer to sheer and set perpendicular to the centerline like a bulkhead, and joggled to fit the laps.

The first layer of the spanish cedar frame-halves.

Layer two spans the previous butt-joints.

 I'll confess right up front that the bevels eluded me. It would have been much simpler to set the frames square to the planking, but I wanted a continuous frame, dory style, and so paid the price. My method of finding the frame shapes is quite simple, and avoids spiling. I cut a scrap of thin (1/8") ply close to the inside shape, but ignoring the laps. I then hot-glued a few small blocks in the hull, and tack welded the rough pattern to the blocks with more hot glue.

A thin ply pattern is hot-glued to small blocks exactly in the frames intended location.

 I next ripped up strips of the same thin ply, cut them to length, and hot-glued them to the pattern board at each plank. This is very fast, and extremely accurate. As long as the pattern is set exactly where you want the frame to land, then the frame will fit every time.

Straight-edged strips fit snugly to the planks.

The shape is traced onto the glued-up frame blank, and sawn out.

 I use the same pattern for both sides of the hull, but I do try it out on the other side and make notes of any slight discrepancies. Now for those tricky bevels. I cut the frames square, tight on one edge, but leaving a gap at the other.

The frame fits tight on one edge, bust is open in way of the bevels.

 I ripped up a pile of variously beveled strips on the bandsaw, and used this stock to add the bevels to the frame, rather than cutting the bevels away. I release-taped the hull under each frame half, and glued these bevels to the frame halves right in the boat.

Beveled wedges are glued in.

 When the glue cured, I removed the frames and cleaned everything up, before installing the frames permanently in the boat. The end result is structurally identical to a sawn bevel, even if the method is somewhat unorthodox. I will admit to being a trifle sheepish about it, but I'm quite satisfied with the end result. The frame halves are connected together across the bottom with a final piece, then the inside curve is sawn to shape and beveled in one piece before installing in the boat. Don't forget to cut the limbers!!

Before the frames are glued in, the hull is taped off for easy clean up.

The frame spans are too large to adequately support a 3/8" thick floor board, so I fitted short floors (timbers) between each frame. I went ahead and made patterns for all the floorboards while I was at it. The floors were glued in just like the frames.

Floor board patterns were made at the same time as the timbers.

A finished floor timber, ready to install (note the limbers).

Floor timbers are glued into the boat. This completes the framing!

I installed the sheer clamps (inwales) after the frames, notching the frame heads before they went in the boat.

The inwales (sheer clamps) are scarfed to length.

 I scarfed up a plank of spanish cedar to length, ripped out the pair, and fitted them to the boat. I did this by myself, and it is a bit tricky with epoxy all over a 16 foot long noodle which gets surprisingly stiff and contrary when forced into a deep compound bend. But it worked out well. The notched frame heads really help hold the timber in place.

Inwales are clamped to the sheer. It takes a lot of clamps!

 There are no breasthooks in this boat. She will be half decked, with an oval coaming. I like to fit a longitudinal beam (like a deck king plank) let into the deck beams and going all the way to the stems, taking the place of a breasthook, and strengthening the centerline. This longitudinal beam can also double as a mast partner like on my crab skiff Cricket.

Different boat! This shows the deck framing I like to use on Cricket.

We'll end here for now. I'm working on the final deck and furniture plan now, and fitting the seat risers. By next time, the interior should be shaping up well. Stay tuned...

Building the Matinicus Double Ender- Part 5
To view Part 1, Click Here.

Rollover!
One of the more gratifying aspects of boat building, amidst all of the hard work, is the much anticipated rollover. But first, some thought has to be given in preparation for the event. I decided to build a luxury cradle for this boat, on wheels so that she can be rolled around, and as nearly level both fore and aft and athwartship as I could make it. I fitted female molds at two stations, joggled to fit over the laps, and carpeted. This took a little fiddling to get right, but once they were fitted and sitting astride the hull, I set up my laser and shot a level reference line on both molds. I cut the mold bottoms parallel to this reference, pulled them off and built the cradle, adding nice wheels with brakes. Before freeing up the hull from the building jig, I made sure that all of the stations were marked off inside for future reference, and while I had the laser out, I shot the load waterline on the outside.
 

I decided to flip the boat with three molds left in, but unscrewed the rest, and made sure the boat wasn't stuck anywhere! With help from my assistant, Ashok, plus Robert and Eric from neighboring shops, we lifted the boat up and flipped her onto the cradle. I had not thought the cradle all the way through somehow, and consequently the boat's amidship depth was too much for the cradle.

 Ashok and I quickly cut the cradle down, and lifted her back on. Nice! the ability to roll the boat around is a real plus. I temp-screwed two of my lining battens around the sheer to even out any local plywood humps or flats, and added braces across the boat to hold the beam and shape intact, then removed the rest of the molds.

I was finally able to see the whole shape, and this really is a sweet hull!  As I was looking over the hull that evening, it occurred to me that there is much more interior volume than I had imagined there would be.

I also realized that I was looking at a potentially blank canvas, and that I can really do anything with the boat that I want. I had fully intended to finish this boat out as traditionally as possible, with frames and solid thwarts, etc, but I may play around with the interior some to create a solo camping beach cruiser. This might entail an off-center board and a level, flat sole, with enclosed side benches for stowage, and bulkheads in the ends. A very different boat on the inside, with perhaps more potential for cruising than the traditional layout affords. Maybe not... There is time to consider all of this as I work out some rig details. Stay tuned.

Building the Matinicus Double Ender- Part 4
To view Part 1, click HERE.

Work continues on the boat, albeit at a snail's pace, it seems. I finished the planking (!) and then set up a form to laminate the outer stems. I keep a stash of "L" shaped blocks for laying up curves. I've used these same blocks to laminate curved, half-wishbone booms for a Herreshoff 31 (cat-ketch), and also for curved outrigger cross beams on my sailing canoe, and now for the peapod stems. They were just hot-glued together, but have held up well! I used the original mylar stem loftings to generate the curves, and screwed the forms down to my bench along the curve. Plastic keeps the layup from sticking to the bench.

I dug around in my scrap piles, and found some nice rips of Honduras mahogany which I re-sawed into strips about 3/16" by 1-1/2". I dressed these down to a tad less than 1/8", and bent a stack around the form dry, to make sure the whole lot would take the bend. Each stem required 7 strips, to finish out to 13/16".

After laminating, I dressed the blanks down to the stem siding of 1-3/8", and tried them out on the boat. I had to tune up the inner stem and plank hood ends slightly to get a good mate with the outer stems. I left the outer stem blanks un-tapered until after gluing and screwing them onto the boat. I should have done it before glue-up though, because it was much harder to do in place than it would have been on the bench! At the same time that I was fitting the stems, I also fitted the outer keel, and glued that up as well.

 

 

 With all the planks, stems, and keel now in place, I gave the whole boat a coat of epoxy. I will still have a little fairing of the scarfs to do, and I want to run small fillets at the plank laps. A coat of epoxy will help when sanding and fairing, because it hardens up the wood, and keeps the sander from dishing out hollows in the softer wood around the filled scarfs, and screw holes.

The next time I post, will be the turnover! Stay tuned...

Steven Clancy's Matinicus Double-Ender

Last Year, I wrote an article for the "Ash Breeze", the quarterly journal published by the TSCA (Traditional Small Craft Assoc.) desrcribing the start of my MDE boatbuilding project. I got a nice email from Steven Clancy who built the same boat 20 years ago out in  Bellingham Washington. Steven sent along some nice photos, and I'd like to share them here!

 

Steven built his hull from 6mm occume and framed her up with laminated, sawn frames, instead of steamed ribs. This will be my plan as well (the frames, that is). His thwarts and stern sheets are cherry.

Steven did a beautiful job with his peapod, and Matty, as she is called, now belongs to his daughter Brenna, and son in law Ben.  Its time for me to get to work! Can't wait.        

Building The Matinicus Double Ender- Part 3
To view Part 1, click HERE





It has been quite a while since the last post. I should have been planked up, flipped over, and well into the interior by now, but I have been very busy elsewhere for the past six months with work and sailing, not to mention the time spent re-powering the Sebago Canoe Club Boston Whaler; all good things though, and all necessary.

Sebago acquired a classic 13 foot Whaler to serve as a new safety boat/club launch. I had the job of selecting a new motor for the boat, and having it installed. We hung a beautiful new Honda 30, with power tilt and trim, on the transom. "Seagull" has already served race committee duty this fall.

In the last post, I had the garboard planks hung. They were difficult, ornery things to twist into place and fasten, but as they are typically the most difficult of the seven pairs of planks to hang, things have gotten easier as I planked around the bilge and up the topsides. The garboards, (and each subsequent plank as well in their turn), must be beveled at the laps so that the next plank has a place to land, and will lie flat to the next mark on the mold. Lapstrake planks are like facets cut into the round shape of the boat, and each plank overlaps the one below it by a set amount (3/4” in this case). The bevels are cut with a block plane, and checked frequently with a straight edge against the mold.

Checking the bevel with a straight edge.

Also, gains must be cut into the hood ends of each plank so that the edge of the next plank disappears, or lies flush with the one below. I like to use rabbeted gains, possible only with glued laps in plywood. Solid wood planking would have to be treated differently, because the wood would split along the weakened rabbet line.


Rabbeted gain at the stem.

To find the shape of the next plank, a pattern board, or spiling board is bent around the molds, making sure to overlap the bevel planed onto the previous plank. Care must be taken not to edge set the pattern board. It must lie perfectly flat at each mold, or the plank shape will be off when the pattern springs back. Any attempt to force an untrue plank edgewise will create a bunch or wrinkle in the plank, and no amount of coaxing will lay it flat. The pattern is marked from underneath at each mold, and along the upper edge of the plank above, then removed, laid on the planking stock, and all of the information transferred. I like to play it safe, cutting outside of the lines by 1/4" or so and putting the actual plank on the boat for final marking. I use a single, washer-head screw through the lap at each mold. this guarantees that the plank will go back on the boat in the same place when the glue is on. I then take the plank off again, cut the scarf, snad the inside, and mask off below the lap lines with tape to keep the epoxy drips at bay. I use simple clothespin type lap clamps to squeeze the laps together between molds.

The planks twin is then hung on the other side of the boat, then another plank is patterned and gotten out. There develops a rhythm; bevel the lands, cut the gains, pattern the plank, cut it out and glue it on. One thing that I noticed, at about plank four, was that I was getting a little unfairness in the region of the scarf, due to fairing only one half Of the plank (either forward or aft) at a time. I decided that I would be better off scarfing up long lengths of ply, then laying out the entire plank at once. By doing that, I was able to fair out a small hump in the run of plank five, letting my batten sweep the entire length of the boat. Plank five is what transitions the turn of the bilge to the topsides, and is the straightest plank in the boat. I also decided to hot-glue up long lengths of cardboard to use as patterns. By plank five, most of the twist is gone from the shape, and the cardboard lays nicely on the molds, being simply push-pinned on and marked out.

The pattern for plank six is laid out on the planking stock.

I've just finished hanging plank six at this point, leaving only the sheer plank to go. I will still need to fit the outside keel and stems before I flip her over. I'm really hoping to see her right side up by Christmas!

One more plank to go!


Inboard Profile- I'm a little ahead of myself here, but I like to think about what the interior will be like (sometime in the future). This arrangement is exactly like what Walt Simmons has shown in his drawings. I may change things around a little to suit a different rig, perhaps, or put in some minimal decking. We'll see...

Building The Matinicus Double Ender- Part 2
To view Part 1, click HERE

The keel has been finished, set up on the boat, and bonded to the stems. I have checked and adjusted the sheer marks on the molds with my batten, and will measure the girths at each station in order to determine the plank widths. Walter Simmons recommends hanging the garboard plank first before final lining off of the remaining planks, and this is the way I approached the job. I made the garboard a little wider than the rest of the planks, and let it climb the stems as high as I felt was reasonable. I let the hood ends land above the load water line at both ends. I checked the run of the garboard with my batten as well.

Checking and adjusting the sheer curve.

Each end of the garboard was spiled to rough shape, then clamped to the boat and marked at the molds. I decided I would glue up the plank scarfs right on the boat, rather than pre-scarfing the plywood. This proved easy to do, and saves a bit of material as well because the tapers can be flipped end to end on the sheet of ply. I should mention here that I had quite a rough time with the garboards up forward. I cracked the first plank that I tried to twist around the forefoot, and thought I might have to resort to boiling the ends. I had scrimped a little on the plywood, buying 5 ply, 9mm Joubert instead of the much more expensive 7 ply Shelmarine from Greece. I had only bought two sheets though, so I broke down and ordered the good stuff for the lower planks. This 7 ply material and a closer attention to my clamping methods was a success!

The aft port garboard, cut to shape and taped off for easy cleanup of the epoxy.

I like to use temporary washer-head screws to fasten the garboard to the keel and stem. There are a lot of holes to fill later, but it saves fiddling with all those clamps. The screws put the plank right exactly where it was hung dry, so there is no chance for slipping. The subsequent planks will be screwed only through the laps at each mold, and clamped elsewhere, so there are fewer holes to fill. I will leave in the temp screws in the hood ends, and replace them later with bronze screws.

The first plank is hung!


A close-up of the scarf. I made these 4" long, which is a little better than a 10:1 ratio.


A lot of clamping pressure, and careful placement of the clamps and pads are needed to twist the garboards around the forefoot.

Both garboards are complete!

Now it's time to do the rest of the lining off. Lining plank for lapstrake boats is a real art, and an otherwise good boat can be spoiled by a bad job. I felt that I really needed to see the planks shapes on the boat, so I made a set of lining battens from poplar dressed to the width of the lap, 3/4" in this case. It is common practice for the next plank up from the garboard to be a little wider than the remaing planks, to offer a transition from the wide garboard to the narrower bilge strakes. Also, some thought must be given to the width of the rub rail at the sheer, because that will reduce the apparent width of the sheer plank. I re-measured the girths from the garboard to the sheer, subtracted the width of the rubrail, and divided this by the number of remaing planks. A set of dividers set to this width was then used to step off the planks around each mold and at the stems. I then put on all of the lining battens to these marks, and had a good look at the boat from all angles.




Rather than slavishly following all of the width marks, I adjusted the battens up and down slightly for a sweet flow around the boat, and for reasonably similar apparent plank widths. When I was satisfied with everything, I marked the top edge of each batten at all of the molds and stems. Also, any surface that needed further beveling was noted, and I tuned up the lands on the stems. The next step is to bevel the plank lands on the garboards, and cut the gains in the hood ends. Stay tuned...