Canoe--some work on the hull at last!
Sep. 7th, 2010 04:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
catsittingstillToday I started work about 7:30 am. This is a great time in September--the sun is up, but just barely, so it's cool. I wasn't sure about working on the hull--well, I *was* sure that it wouldn't be a good idea to use power tools at that hour--but I still need to make the seat.
For Patience I made a very fancy seat; but with Constance I'm a bit more in a hurry. I will make a perfectly nice caned walnut seat; it will just be rectangular, which is simpler to make and doesn't waste as much wood. I have a lovely long board of walnut that is over an inch thick (but rough cut) which I cut a two foot chunk off of.
Remember I said it was rough cut? That means all six sides of the board look like they were cut with a saw--they are not smooth. Generally people handle this with power tools--jointing the edges and planing the faces to get a smooth straight board.
I don't have a jointer or a planer. I do, however, have planes. So I pulled out my planes, pinned the board to the top of my workbench with my bench dog and wonder dog, and set to work.
Whew. Do this in the morning when it is cool. However, even with my panting and grunting it's *much* quieter than a jointer or a planer. I got the board most of the way planed on both faces, then had to stop to make a wedge for Kip so he could use it to teach a little about cuneform. This was also the class that the wax tablets were made for. I hope it went well.
Brief break for a morning walk, and I came back and asked myself about working on the inside of the hull. I was feeling okay--hadn't even taken an ibuprofen--so I thought I'd just try for a few minutes and see how it went.
It was okay. Except that to get at the parts near where the gunwales will be, I found myself hanging my head in the boat, almost upside down, and found myself thinking "You know, you are really pushing your luck."
That was my signal to stop and rethink. I needed a way to get the gunwale side of the hull horizontal. What I ended up doing was this:
I clamped a stick to the leg of the cradles, then turned the boat up, open side to the stick, and ran a rope around the boat so it couldn't twist. The cradles were heavy enough, and broad enough, and the boat light enough, that this was a stable arrangement, though I ended up doing it with both cradles, to even out the stress on the hull.
Here's the same set up from another angle.
That worked just fine, and I got a lot of good sanding in along the sheer. I worked on it for maybe an hour and a half, then decided it was time to quit with the bending over the hull with a sander part of my day.
However I still wanted to work on the canoe, so I covered the hull with my canoe tarp (to keep it from getting too much of a tan, and also the epoxy on the outside is UV-sensitive) but left it outside, because I wanted to roll my shopsmith out into the middle of the garage to have a lot of clear space on each side. My next task was to cut spacers for the inwales. They're not very long (3 inches) but there are a lot of them, so I was starting with a fairly long stick of wood, which I didn't want contacting anything that was not the Shopsmith as I was trying to get it exactly arranged.
It's traditional to round off the spacers--and usually this is done by hand, with a rat-tail file, after they are glued to the inwales. But I thought it might be easier to just cut them rounded to start with, so that was what I did. I marked the spacing on my (bandsawed, planed, from yesterday) stick of walnut, but did the cutting by drilling through with a forstner bit (a specialized drill bit that cuts smooth sided, smooth bottomed holes) Now when they're glued to the inwale it will already look like someone rounded them off with a file.
This was a bit of a pain because I have 3 different thicknesses of walnut to work with. I want the spacers near the seat to be a bit thicker than the spacers near the decks, to give a nice tapering effect, and also because my clamp-in yoke will need something thick to grip near the balance point. That meant changing forstner bits, and keeping track of which bits were how thick--and also I have an extra long spacer that goes near the balance point (because I only roughly know where that will be, and with a clamp-in yoke that has to be provided with a spot to grip, it matters) and another extra long spacer for the thwart behind the seat, because I will be leaning back against it, so its spacing matters too, and I don't know exactly where it will go either.
I have all the spacers cut out, sorted according to length and thickness, and taped together in groups of four (bow port, bow starboard, stern port, stern starboard.) I don't know why I thought that would be quick, but it wasn't, very. I ended up working till about 3:30--at which point it was 87 degrees, and even with both doors and windows open and a nice breeze, it was time to stop.
I still have to plane the board for the seat parts more, but it is way too hot for that.Enter your cut contents here.
Does anyone else find that walnut tends to chip a lot?
For Patience I made a very fancy seat; but with Constance I'm a bit more in a hurry. I will make a perfectly nice caned walnut seat; it will just be rectangular, which is simpler to make and doesn't waste as much wood. I have a lovely long board of walnut that is over an inch thick (but rough cut) which I cut a two foot chunk off of.
Remember I said it was rough cut? That means all six sides of the board look like they were cut with a saw--they are not smooth. Generally people handle this with power tools--jointing the edges and planing the faces to get a smooth straight board.
I don't have a jointer or a planer. I do, however, have planes. So I pulled out my planes, pinned the board to the top of my workbench with my bench dog and wonder dog, and set to work.
Whew. Do this in the morning when it is cool. However, even with my panting and grunting it's *much* quieter than a jointer or a planer. I got the board most of the way planed on both faces, then had to stop to make a wedge for Kip so he could use it to teach a little about cuneform. This was also the class that the wax tablets were made for. I hope it went well.
Brief break for a morning walk, and I came back and asked myself about working on the inside of the hull. I was feeling okay--hadn't even taken an ibuprofen--so I thought I'd just try for a few minutes and see how it went.
It was okay. Except that to get at the parts near where the gunwales will be, I found myself hanging my head in the boat, almost upside down, and found myself thinking "You know, you are really pushing your luck."
That was my signal to stop and rethink. I needed a way to get the gunwale side of the hull horizontal. What I ended up doing was this:
I clamped a stick to the leg of the cradles, then turned the boat up, open side to the stick, and ran a rope around the boat so it couldn't twist. The cradles were heavy enough, and broad enough, and the boat light enough, that this was a stable arrangement, though I ended up doing it with both cradles, to even out the stress on the hull.
Here's the same set up from another angle.
That worked just fine, and I got a lot of good sanding in along the sheer. I worked on it for maybe an hour and a half, then decided it was time to quit with the bending over the hull with a sander part of my day.
However I still wanted to work on the canoe, so I covered the hull with my canoe tarp (to keep it from getting too much of a tan, and also the epoxy on the outside is UV-sensitive) but left it outside, because I wanted to roll my shopsmith out into the middle of the garage to have a lot of clear space on each side. My next task was to cut spacers for the inwales. They're not very long (3 inches) but there are a lot of them, so I was starting with a fairly long stick of wood, which I didn't want contacting anything that was not the Shopsmith as I was trying to get it exactly arranged.
It's traditional to round off the spacers--and usually this is done by hand, with a rat-tail file, after they are glued to the inwales. But I thought it might be easier to just cut them rounded to start with, so that was what I did. I marked the spacing on my (bandsawed, planed, from yesterday) stick of walnut, but did the cutting by drilling through with a forstner bit (a specialized drill bit that cuts smooth sided, smooth bottomed holes) Now when they're glued to the inwale it will already look like someone rounded them off with a file.
This was a bit of a pain because I have 3 different thicknesses of walnut to work with. I want the spacers near the seat to be a bit thicker than the spacers near the decks, to give a nice tapering effect, and also because my clamp-in yoke will need something thick to grip near the balance point. That meant changing forstner bits, and keeping track of which bits were how thick--and also I have an extra long spacer that goes near the balance point (because I only roughly know where that will be, and with a clamp-in yoke that has to be provided with a spot to grip, it matters) and another extra long spacer for the thwart behind the seat, because I will be leaning back against it, so its spacing matters too, and I don't know exactly where it will go either.
I have all the spacers cut out, sorted according to length and thickness, and taped together in groups of four (bow port, bow starboard, stern port, stern starboard.) I don't know why I thought that would be quick, but it wasn't, very. I ended up working till about 3:30--at which point it was 87 degrees, and even with both doors and windows open and a nice breeze, it was time to stop.
I still have to plane the board for the seat parts more, but it is way too hot for that.Enter your cut contents here.
Does anyone else find that walnut tends to chip a lot?
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2010-09-08 12:44 am (UTC)(I know I ask all sorts of silly questions, but it has been really interesting to follow how you are making Constance.)
no subject
Date: 2010-09-08 02:50 am (UTC)The light wood in the hull is white pine, which has a number of different shades and grain patterns, which I did my best to match on both sides of the canoe. However those patterns are subtler and don't show in this picture.
no subject
Date: 2010-09-08 02:51 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-08 02:05 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-08 02:50 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-08 05:43 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-08 12:45 pm (UTC)It's slightly a pain to post pictures--but when I think about how hard it *used* to be, before I had a digital camera, it seems boorish to complain about a process that is much simpler now.
no subject
Date: 2010-09-09 11:45 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-09 12:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-08 07:52 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-08 12:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-09 11:43 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-09 12:32 pm (UTC)