OK...

Sorry to have been off the air for so long but there is only so much you can say about the process of nailing planks onto a boat without becoming 'Mr Boring'.

However this week we have, between learning how to renovate old boats, started work on the mast and spars for the ' Rose and have put one of my birthday presents to work with quite fantastic results.

Two 17' lengths of Sitka spruce that will be tapered and then hollowed out prior to being stuck together and then faired into a mast.

Planing up the stock using a leveller plainer, 4 kilo's of tradition adding its weight to a razor sharp honed steel blade, slices through the timber like a hot knife through butter...

THE BEAST at work!

It is amazing how much umphh you can get behind a plane that weighs in the order of 4 kilos it really does produce a beautiful finish and while there are steel soled equivalents they don't have the same feel.  Incidentally the test of whether the iron is sharp enough, or not, is to shave hairs of your forearm, the ability to hone the iron to that sort of edge is also a measure of the quality of the steel... this one is very good. (I have a bald patch on my left arm where I got carried away.)

As to learning how to renovate boats this has involved lots of action with an angle grinder, hammer, and skill saw, none of it pretty.  However, we have succeeded in learning a great deal about removing random planks from a clinker boat.  Ironic really, as the sole focus of my life at the moment is trying to get planks onto a boat not taking them off!

Back to the 'Rose we are now something like half finished on the planking and 15 days behind schedule, I refuse to panic however.. really I refuse to panic... Mr Mannering...  There is still a great deal to do but I remain confident that we will be finished on schedule, well we will meet the finishing date the schedule went out the window several weeks ago.

Steaming the end of a plank prior to fitting

One of the complexities that has challenged us has been the tuck at the transom and the difficulty of shaping the end of the planks; it has involved considerable torturing of wood with the application of steam and large screws!  The other difficulty has been cutting the geralds at the transom to achieve a smooth transom shape that reduces the danger of snagging lines etc.  This is the problem with having a wine glass transom and planked deadwood.

Over the next couple of weeks I will be ordering the sails and trailer and starting to look seriously at the rigging, so we will be running a number of things concurrently to try and catch up.

So that brings you upto date with the current state of play and I promise to be more diligent in keeping this blog current.

Next update tuesday

A little more....

Generally speaking this build has proven extremely difficult and the original programme got thrown out of the window about 4 weeks ago; there have been a number of contributory factors, certainly not having a proper design and working from a drawing has created difficulties.

I think one of the other points is that because of the complexity of the shapes involved and the tension created in the timber, the difference between the flexibility of of Elm (the original building material) and that of Larch has proven a significant factor and has led to the cracking we have experienced.

However the most important factor has to be that of skill and practice, we all know how to do it, the problem is that the moment we can't do it fast enough and I have found that once you get beyond about 10 hours you enter the realm of negative returns on invested time and do more damage than good.

So that is where we are at.... PLANKING (This is becoming almost as monotonous as Garboards.)

So where are we now...

Well the truth is not so very far forward...

Progress remains painfully slow with a definite 3 steps forward 2 steps back feel to it; given the tuck at the stern we have now cracked 3 planks, all of which have required lengthy and time consuming repairs and yesterday saw us steam 2 planks into place only to have one decide it was going to completely change shape due to the run of the grain and end up looking like a corkscrew.  The only solution is now to cut the end of the plank, re-spile the front 5 feet, cut, shape  and scarph in a new for'ard section and then re-steam it.

Work has now begun on the centre plate case and today I will order the wood for the spars and mast.

These two photographs show work under way on effecting a repair to the for'ard end of   one of the planks, as you can see once again I am using the worlds supply of clamps and there is probably an entire sector of the adhesives industry currently being supported by my efforts.

The process of steaming underway, a now well trodden path!

Steaming!!!

This is a repair, called a graving piece, basically where there is a significant knot you cut out a neat diamond,, circle or square to about a third to half the depth of the plank and then insert a piece of plank.

The graving piece inserted and glued in place

the repair planned up and good to go...

The only tragedy is that having carefully completed the graving piece and making good we now have to chop the front of the plank off.

 

OK...

Having just checked I see that nothing has been posted since the 9 August, and the truth is that quite a lot has happened in the interim.

Having steamed the second garboard there followed the usual 10 days of increasing frustration as it refused to fit, added to which we lost 4 days learning how to apply paint and varnish.  Now it was fascinating and I learnt a great deal, it was not however the top of my list of priorities as I watched the days go by and what I jokingly called a Project plan rapidly becoming a greater work of fiction than the old British Rail Timetables!

Eventually, as an ever growing cloud of despondency formed over me, one of the tutors who had considerable experience of building clinker boats wandered over, sucked his teeth and calmly said 'That is a really nasty bit of planking, would you like a hand.' I think he was marginally embarrassed as I kissed the hem of his garment.

There are very few people can cut to within a couple of mm with a large mallet and 1' chisel, fortunately Justin is one of them and a combination of his experience, enthusiasm, and drive quickly moved us forward and we were able to get several planks on, and while not without problems, achieved the tuck and succeeded in making the turn onto the transom before I left for Italy leaving the next stages in the tender loving care of Justin and Ben.

More to follow...

Several Planks and a week in Italy...

Firstly my apologies for the lack of activity on the Blog for the past couple of weeks, there has been a flurry of activity and once I get back to Lyme on sunday or Monday I shall be posting a fuller description of activities and photographs from the past weeks.

Progress is now being made having finally fitted the Garboards, it really had become a nightmare with the planks changing shape with changes in humidity and a degree of timidity on my part having had one plank split.  I now understand why I was having such difficulty and planks are now going on a little more rapidly.

However I am now well behind any sort of realistic schedule and we are now going to be into weekend working until launch day.

Italy was fantastic!

Made it....

As in made an oar, this is what the blank looks like before you start,  a 10 foot  length of spruce with two chunks glued on the end.

Following 3 days of labour and a large pile of wood shavings I ended up with this!

Okay I know it is only one oar, but there is another under way, so contrary to common belief I shan't be going round in circles, well no more than usual!

The rest of the time has been spent working on the garboards, steaming the second and finally fitting the starboard garboard, a task that we completed today.  We can now move onto the second and start browing off and spilling the second planks, this will hopefully go a little quicker than the first as we at least know what we are confronting this time; this remains to be seen.

This week has also seen the first of our underpinning knowledge exams for City and Guilds, I think it went alright but I had forgotten how much work one needs to do in preparation for an exam and found myself burning both the midnight and early morning oil.

However back to the garboard, assisted by Christian and Jackson and a cast of, what at times seemed thousands and accompanied by lots of sucking of teeth and shaking of heads, (the sort of behaviour that from a car mechanic spells lots of money) and even the occasional 'I wouldn't have done it like that!" the garboard was finally completed and attached to the boat with a multitude of nails and screws.

Jackson drilling pilot holes

Examining a pilot hole ?

Steaming the other garboard.. I am nothing if not optimistic!

and yes it is a high tech. wall paper stripper,  producing lots of steam and most importantly they are cheap.

Steaming is a highly technical business, well maybe not,  involving duck tape, polythene tube and a wall paper stripper, the average plank of 19mm takes about 40 minutes to soften to the point where you can bend it easily, at which point there is a flurry of activity normally resulting in my fingers getting trapped in a clamp and suffering 3 degree burns from the boiling water trapped in the tube.

I actually excelled myself this time by stripping off the tube and pouring the water into the extension socket, this instantly tripped the breakers and the building was plunged into darkness, well I exaggerate slightly, but the lights did go out and one or two power tools ground to a halt.

So we make progress and we now have lots of other bits that need assembling so plenty to keep us all busy...