Those nice big sides are pieced together from 3 seperate pieces of plywood, bound together with two butt splice plates that are glue, nailed, and clinched (bending the nails over). Well those splices won't come apart, no matter how much I wish. Since I creatively broke the replacement sheet, there's no practical way to cut out a replacement side. Well, I was rather in a mope and relayed as much to James, who thought I would call when I had the new side cut and done. Well no such luck as he had to get me off my "moaning chair" (Payson fans make note) and steer me back out to make things happen.
Ok. I can't remake the main center portion of the hull and I can't salvage the butt plates--since there's no way to take them apart. Now what? Well, some study of the issue helped. One thing I had to do was make sure the fore and aft ends of the new butt plates matched the fore and aft positions of the other hull half, as these are locators for the "temporary" frames that mount later. Well if the center portion is shorter (by the 2 inches on either end from the cut off butt plates) then the ends have to be longer, and so must the butt plates to keep the fore and aft ends in the correct position. Confused?
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| You can see the larger butt plate on the upper half of the hull. The lower hull shows the original setup (which was cut off the center of the upper. The side to the left had to remain constant to allow fitting of the frames. |
Once the butt splices were set and the side glued up, we hit the next interesting problem. In Bolger's plans, the connection at the bow and stern are called stems. In the plans, they show these as triangular pieces of lumber that are about 22 inches long and which would be a breeze to make up on a table saw....which we didn't have. James took a stab at cutting some with a saber saw and made up a 3 inch chunk. This wasn't going to work out well. Hmmmm, where to go? James suggested Home Depot, but I figured they would laugh at us at best and sic lawyers on us for endangering their staff. Hmmmm some more. Finally I thought to visit a woodshop I knew was nearby. Never had been in there before, but gee I needed something fixed, so let's go to the local wood mechanic, as it were. James I think was doubtful, but what the hey eh? The shop is Wood Fusion Studio http://www.woodfusion.com/ and taking a piece of 2 x 4 and the Instant Boat book with me, the owner (whose name I failed to remember) was able to take the 2x4 and make nice triangular stem pieces very quickly. Thanks!
So, back to the boat at hand. With stems in hand, and a main frame made up, it was pretty much time to assemble. For some reason though, it seamed the temporary frames didn't fit. The ends fit up beautifully and a little more study showed that I was trying to put the temporary frames in the wrong places. Swapping them about fixed the problem neatly. It was suggested, and I like the idea, that the temporary frames (plywood) might be the basis for making a couple airboxes for the boat. I thought they were a good idea, so slathering from PL Premium and fitting them in yielded a very nice start to the boat. The other thing noted is that the thing is big (relative to a Harley 8. Others might think the vessel is minuscule, but if I can lay down in it (more or less), it's pretty roomy.
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| Yours truly while laying out on the yet to come deck of the Teal. People claim that there's not a lot of room inside, but for two, not terribly overside, folks I think it would work. Weight would be a bigger problem for boat handling, but I'll deal with that when I get there. |
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