Balls, you ask? No canoe planks! With the last set of planks stitched in, it was time to (I quote the book) “pull the planks together at bow and stern”. The book further suggests that this could be a fight and that a spring clamp or two might be needed to position things. A few practice flexes of the hull halves suggested that all this was true – and then some. Plus I should point out that the ends of the copper ties are sharp – this adds some pain and the odd shallow but painful gash to the process.
Inside and outside shots before stitching bow and stern
Slacking off the first three ties along the keel helped the first two planks to flex enough to allow me to start drawing the bow and stern together – but (of course) I need these ties in place to help get the bottom two planks to twist into shape. Note – spring clips immediately slide off stressed planks and fly across the room with a “ping” sound. Did I mention that the ends of copper wires are sharp? Oh yes I did – and they are. If you decide to build a stitch and glue canoe, recruit an assistant for this stage – and get someone with strong hands who is reasonably impervious to pain. You can do it by yourself though – I can't even begin to describe how – but you can. Working slowly from the keel line and allowing the wood to rest at a couple of stages seemed to work. Whoopee! I have something that looks quite like a canoe – well ish. The stem and stern were a bit wobbly and the overall shape was a little bit odd but it was a good start.
Placing a spreader stick measured to just short of the canoe's designed beam at the centre line helped with the overall shape but it then needed some adjustment with a mallet to bring each pair of planks properly into line and to fair the stems overall – well in one dimension. The other dimension needed a couple of lengths of wood screwed and clamped to the canoe to bring them exactly into line. One thing you learn is that even dimensionally matched pairs of planks do not bend equally without some encouragement – the minor differences in the internal plies in the board affect the rate of (and resistance to) bending. The “gains” are a weak point as well and do not help bring the ends of the boat naturally into line.
The continued sub-zero day time temperatures and a couple of days of snow falls meant that I ended up lofting the lines of the bulkheads and decks on the kitchen table. Sawing them out had to be done outside in the big barn but the physical effort generated some heat to counteract the cold. The Japanese style pull saw came into it's own here and the resulting pieces needed almost no finishing. I am really getting into this tool – it is just about the saw of choice now for close and accurate work.
Ready to start tightening all of those wires.
The good book says that fitting the bulkheads is “one of the hardest chores in boat building”. Amen to that. The holy writ also suggests that the bulkheads could move an inch or two either way to get a good fit. In my youth I spent me leisure hours with a fun group where most of the guys worked in the (then still vibrant) Chatham dockyards. We had a little mantra that went something like this:
“An electrician works to the neatest quarter of an inch. A joiner to the nearest sixteenth. A millwright to the nearest thousandth and a shipwright to the nearest ship.”
I have probably missed one or two trades but you get the drift I am sure. I suspect that the canoe project has just shifted from the domain of the joiner to the domain of the shipwright.
Next weekend seems to be dominated by some sort of winter solstice celebration – named after some chap called Noel. There was a hint that I was not supposed to spend most of my free time outside boat building so there might be a short gap before I report on the process of gluing the hull.
No comments:
Post a Comment