Canoe... with detour
Sep. 6th, 2010 09:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
catsittingstillMy back is better but I still don't feel up to bending over the hull with a heavy sander.
If this keeps up I may have to come up with some better way to hold the hull and control its angle and height.
However for now I have been working on the trim, with occasional breaks. I have 1/4 inch 14 foot long planks for the inwales and 1/2 inch 15 foot long planks for the outwales. The outwale planks are thicker than I want them. I am thinking about planing them thinner (with one or more of my hand planes) but planing that much walnut is probably more than I can manage right now. The inwale planks are thinner than I want them but I'm going to use some of the leftover outwale planks as spacers, to stand them away from the inside of the hull, which will make them look thicker and also make them stiffen the hull better.. The problem is a 1/4 inch inwale with 1/2 inch spacers looks dumb. Clunky. Just Not Right.
Soo... I used my combination square to draw a line along the 1/2 inch plank that was 3/8 inch--then got out my bandsaw and bandsawed most of the extra wood off (not all of it because bandsaws are kind of inaccurate--at least when I use mine, it is.) *Then* I handplaned the rest of the waste away. (Using my bench dog and wonder-dog setup, which I totally recommend) Now I have a length of 3/8 inch thick plank I can cut up into spacers that will look right (I think.)
Then I turned my thoughts to the decks. I bought a mondo thick (like nearly 2 inches) plank of white pine for them. I bought a thick plank because my plan was to saw the plank in half to make two thin planks of equal width I could then open like a book (so the cut sides are up) and glue together (this is called "bookmatching"; the grain will mirror across the centerline and make interesting patterns, if you have a nice board and lay your pattern out cleverly.
I got an old cardboard box and cut one side out of it, taped it over one end of the boat, and drew underneath where the inside of the hull touched the cardboard. I took that off, flipped it over, used the old compass trick to split the angle in half, and measured out 18 inches along the centerline. This is the size that looks right to me, for the deck. There is a problem with this; I had planned to install "carry thwarts," which are short cross-pieces near the bow and stern that are a convenient way to pick up the ends of the boat. This lets two people carry the boat, one at each end, which is a nice, easy way to do it. However the carry thwart has to be no more than 6 to 8 inches long (otherwise you have to reach too far out from your body to grab the middle, and it's not comfortable) and the deck has to stop a couple of inches before the carry thwart so you don't pinch your fingers or anything. And that means little teeny decks; they look... ungenerous to me.
So instead I will make rope loops with wooden handles that can be inserted through the through-holes. It won't be quite as secure as carry thwarts but the decks will look much nicer.
Anyway, once I got this all sorted in my head, I measured 18 inches along the centerline, then used my french curve (I found it, finally) to draw a curved edge on the side that would face the center of the boat.
I ended up laying it out on the wood twice. I wanted the grain of the wood to run along the edge that would touch the gunwales, so the matching wood grain would make chevrons (arrows) pointing out of the boat. I like the grain and markings on a canoe to match the canoe's lines. I needed to cut a straight edge and a curving edge and I needed to be able to cut everything on my bandsaw, which meant the end passing to the left of the saw always had to be short enough to fit between the blade and the housing of the saw. The first time I laid things out, the long end would have had to pass to the left of the blade and there wasn't room. Fortunately pencil erases off white pine just fine.
I cut out two half-patterns, one for the bow deck and one for the stern deck. I wasn't very confident of my bandsaw abilities, so I didn't cut too close to the pencil lines. I clamped the pieces in the vise and used my low angle block plane to plane *right* to the lines, checking with a square occasionally to make sure my edge was perpendicular to the top.
Then I drew two lines around the edge of the thick pieces--one 3/4 inch from the top and one 3/4 inch from the bottom. There was about 3/32nds of an inch between them (it wasn't a very sharp pencil). I turned the piece on its side and bandsawed as far in from each corner as I could. There was a part in the middle I couldn't saw. I did that with my Ryobi hand saw. I was afraid it would be a complete mess because the Ryobi has no stiffening spine. This is why it can flush cut, for example, so it's not a bad thing. But while the fact that it cuts on the pull stroke tends to pull it straight in the cut, it has been known to wander.
But this time it came out good enough. It wandered a bit but the decks will still be 3/4 inch thick. I have the two rough-cut, bookmatched decks set aside for further work. (The next step is probably to glue the halves together but I need to make a jig to hold the parts snugly before I try that.
So tomorrow I may work on the hull, or if my back is not up to that, I may build the jigs and glue up the decks and cut the spacers for the inwales.
And even though I couldn't work on the hull, I feel like I haven't wasted another day.
If this keeps up I may have to come up with some better way to hold the hull and control its angle and height.
However for now I have been working on the trim, with occasional breaks. I have 1/4 inch 14 foot long planks for the inwales and 1/2 inch 15 foot long planks for the outwales. The outwale planks are thicker than I want them. I am thinking about planing them thinner (with one or more of my hand planes) but planing that much walnut is probably more than I can manage right now. The inwale planks are thinner than I want them but I'm going to use some of the leftover outwale planks as spacers, to stand them away from the inside of the hull, which will make them look thicker and also make them stiffen the hull better.. The problem is a 1/4 inch inwale with 1/2 inch spacers looks dumb. Clunky. Just Not Right.
Soo... I used my combination square to draw a line along the 1/2 inch plank that was 3/8 inch--then got out my bandsaw and bandsawed most of the extra wood off (not all of it because bandsaws are kind of inaccurate--at least when I use mine, it is.) *Then* I handplaned the rest of the waste away. (Using my bench dog and wonder-dog setup, which I totally recommend) Now I have a length of 3/8 inch thick plank I can cut up into spacers that will look right (I think.)
Then I turned my thoughts to the decks. I bought a mondo thick (like nearly 2 inches) plank of white pine for them. I bought a thick plank because my plan was to saw the plank in half to make two thin planks of equal width I could then open like a book (so the cut sides are up) and glue together (this is called "bookmatching"; the grain will mirror across the centerline and make interesting patterns, if you have a nice board and lay your pattern out cleverly.
I got an old cardboard box and cut one side out of it, taped it over one end of the boat, and drew underneath where the inside of the hull touched the cardboard. I took that off, flipped it over, used the old compass trick to split the angle in half, and measured out 18 inches along the centerline. This is the size that looks right to me, for the deck. There is a problem with this; I had planned to install "carry thwarts," which are short cross-pieces near the bow and stern that are a convenient way to pick up the ends of the boat. This lets two people carry the boat, one at each end, which is a nice, easy way to do it. However the carry thwart has to be no more than 6 to 8 inches long (otherwise you have to reach too far out from your body to grab the middle, and it's not comfortable) and the deck has to stop a couple of inches before the carry thwart so you don't pinch your fingers or anything. And that means little teeny decks; they look... ungenerous to me.
So instead I will make rope loops with wooden handles that can be inserted through the through-holes. It won't be quite as secure as carry thwarts but the decks will look much nicer.
Anyway, once I got this all sorted in my head, I measured 18 inches along the centerline, then used my french curve (I found it, finally) to draw a curved edge on the side that would face the center of the boat.
I ended up laying it out on the wood twice. I wanted the grain of the wood to run along the edge that would touch the gunwales, so the matching wood grain would make chevrons (arrows) pointing out of the boat. I like the grain and markings on a canoe to match the canoe's lines. I needed to cut a straight edge and a curving edge and I needed to be able to cut everything on my bandsaw, which meant the end passing to the left of the saw always had to be short enough to fit between the blade and the housing of the saw. The first time I laid things out, the long end would have had to pass to the left of the blade and there wasn't room. Fortunately pencil erases off white pine just fine.
I cut out two half-patterns, one for the bow deck and one for the stern deck. I wasn't very confident of my bandsaw abilities, so I didn't cut too close to the pencil lines. I clamped the pieces in the vise and used my low angle block plane to plane *right* to the lines, checking with a square occasionally to make sure my edge was perpendicular to the top.
Then I drew two lines around the edge of the thick pieces--one 3/4 inch from the top and one 3/4 inch from the bottom. There was about 3/32nds of an inch between them (it wasn't a very sharp pencil). I turned the piece on its side and bandsawed as far in from each corner as I could. There was a part in the middle I couldn't saw. I did that with my Ryobi hand saw. I was afraid it would be a complete mess because the Ryobi has no stiffening spine. This is why it can flush cut, for example, so it's not a bad thing. But while the fact that it cuts on the pull stroke tends to pull it straight in the cut, it has been known to wander.
But this time it came out good enough. It wandered a bit but the decks will still be 3/4 inch thick. I have the two rough-cut, bookmatched decks set aside for further work. (The next step is probably to glue the halves together but I need to make a jig to hold the parts snugly before I try that.
So tomorrow I may work on the hull, or if my back is not up to that, I may build the jigs and glue up the decks and cut the spacers for the inwales.
And even though I couldn't work on the hull, I feel like I haven't wasted another day.
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no subject
Date: 2010-09-07 03:51 am (UTC)Perhaps you need an air sander? Would that perhaps weigh less? Or are you already using one?
no subject
Date: 2010-09-07 11:27 am (UTC)Some other system of cradling the boat, however, I could probably come up with for under a hundred bucks in materials and under a week of work. Probably not much under, though.
My back is gradually getting better, so I think I'll take it a bit easy for a while and see if I can get back into it with the equipment I have.
no subject
Date: 2010-09-07 08:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-07 10:27 pm (UTC)When the boat is in the planking stage it doesn't really feel like a boat. Sometime around the time it turns right side up it starts to feel like I'm almost done. Even though I'm probably only half done. That plus the changing weather has me really ready to finish this boat.
But working on the trim gives me something productive to do when I can't work on the hull.