Happier Developments (with Bonus Canoe!)
Oct. 30th, 2010 07:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
catsittingstillFirst off, we haven't heard back anything yet about the stolen laptop. However Pocketnaomi and Cflute have kindly donated funds that will make replacing it much more feasable, and I would like to publicly thank them for their generosity. We are going to hold off for a week or two to see if the stolen laptop comes home first, for obvious reasons (brave computer having walked 100 miles to get home confronts its replacement on the doorstep---awkward...)
Also... I think Constance is done. Once the varnish dries, I mean.
I thought caning the seat would be quick and I guess it was, sort of. For not very quick values of "quick." Which is to say I started caning at about 5:30 last night and caned (with some interruptions like dinner and stuff) until about 11:00 pm and then started again about 9:00 am this morning and finished around 1:00 pm. The first courses go pretty fast, because they're just laid down over each other, but I had to keep going back to the boatshop and whittling more pegs to hold the ends of the cane in the holes (until you have a "stitch" of cane next to a loose end to tie to you use a peg to keep the loose end from slipping out of the hole.) But on course four you start weaving--and you have to be a little careful about that, because there's a fair amount of friction (you use petroleum jelly to lubricate the cane so it won't melt from the friction.) So you don't want to pull it through too fast. And courses five and six are woven diagonally and by course six things are pretty tight. And if you get a twist in the cane (it has a rounded top side and a flat bottom side) you have to pull it out to untwist it. So it takes a while. It would take even longer but I don't do the binder cane finishing step some of the books recommend (a line of cane that covers the holes in the wood, "stitched" in place from underneath, using its own ends.) My problem with that is I think my cane is a little larger than the stuff the author of the book is using and four passes of cane is about all I can get through the holes before they're too full. I left off the binder cane for Patience's seat and it has worked fine for years so I'm not going to worry.
Then I took my caned seat out to the boatshop and laid it over the rails I epoxied in a few days ago. I discovered that the line of "stitches" on the bottom meant that I had to cut little slots in the rails for the stitches to lie in; I just used a knife to cut a straight line at each edge of the slot and removed the wood between the lines with a 1/4 inch chisel. I wasn't terribly neat about it but it will be hidden under the seat anyway.
Then I laid the seat with the caning in the slots and marked where the screw holes would go. The screws have to go into the thicker parts of the rails (more toward the center of the boat) so as to not risk drilling into / screwing into the hull itself. When I had the locations marked, I took the seat out and drilled the actual holes with the drill press, which is much easier than doing it by hand. These are wood screws of course, with the three widths of hole (the part with threads needs to be as wide as the shaft between the threads, then near the head of the wood screw the shaft of the screw "swells out" to fill the threads and needs to be drilled out wider, and then the top of the screw has kind of a conical section for a head, narrower at the bottom of the head than at the top. They sell special combination bits that try to drill all three widths at once but different lengths of #8 screw (#8 is the width) have different lengths of thicker shaft so I always end up having to drill these holes in several stages. For the thwarts I drilled them when they were actually clamped in the boat so I had to use the hand drill--using the drill press for this was much easier.
Then I took the seat, laid it in the correct place on the rails, and drilled into the rails using the predrilled holes as guides, but using the hand drill. To weight the seat down so it wouldn't shift while I was drilling, I used the router bag with the router in it. It was about the right size and worked fine. Then I used a stainless steel woodscrew to cut threads into the wood and replaced it with brass screws.
The walnut was absolutely the right choice for the seat--it looks great against the butternut and white pine of the hull.
After taking the seat out again, I put my second coat of varnish on the inside of the canoe this afternoon, paying special attention to the screw holes and the newly cut slots. I have thought it over and am going to go with 2 coats for now. There are a couple of reasons for this. One is that every coat of varnish adds more weight, (a pound a coat is what the books say, though I have coated 2 times, inside and out, with a 32 ounce can of varnish and I still have some left over) and another is that varnish is expensive. Not crazy expensive, but that 32 ounce can was 18$ and, well, we have a computer to replace, you know how it is. Two coats is kind of a minimum, but Constance should get a new coat every year as regular maintenance so two should be okay.
I put a second coat on the thwarts too.
Tomorrow at 1pm I'm going to launch. :-) I wonder how Constance will compare with Patience...
Also... I think Constance is done. Once the varnish dries, I mean.
I thought caning the seat would be quick and I guess it was, sort of. For not very quick values of "quick." Which is to say I started caning at about 5:30 last night and caned (with some interruptions like dinner and stuff) until about 11:00 pm and then started again about 9:00 am this morning and finished around 1:00 pm. The first courses go pretty fast, because they're just laid down over each other, but I had to keep going back to the boatshop and whittling more pegs to hold the ends of the cane in the holes (until you have a "stitch" of cane next to a loose end to tie to you use a peg to keep the loose end from slipping out of the hole.) But on course four you start weaving--and you have to be a little careful about that, because there's a fair amount of friction (you use petroleum jelly to lubricate the cane so it won't melt from the friction.) So you don't want to pull it through too fast. And courses five and six are woven diagonally and by course six things are pretty tight. And if you get a twist in the cane (it has a rounded top side and a flat bottom side) you have to pull it out to untwist it. So it takes a while. It would take even longer but I don't do the binder cane finishing step some of the books recommend (a line of cane that covers the holes in the wood, "stitched" in place from underneath, using its own ends.) My problem with that is I think my cane is a little larger than the stuff the author of the book is using and four passes of cane is about all I can get through the holes before they're too full. I left off the binder cane for Patience's seat and it has worked fine for years so I'm not going to worry.
Then I took my caned seat out to the boatshop and laid it over the rails I epoxied in a few days ago. I discovered that the line of "stitches" on the bottom meant that I had to cut little slots in the rails for the stitches to lie in; I just used a knife to cut a straight line at each edge of the slot and removed the wood between the lines with a 1/4 inch chisel. I wasn't terribly neat about it but it will be hidden under the seat anyway.
Then I laid the seat with the caning in the slots and marked where the screw holes would go. The screws have to go into the thicker parts of the rails (more toward the center of the boat) so as to not risk drilling into / screwing into the hull itself. When I had the locations marked, I took the seat out and drilled the actual holes with the drill press, which is much easier than doing it by hand. These are wood screws of course, with the three widths of hole (the part with threads needs to be as wide as the shaft between the threads, then near the head of the wood screw the shaft of the screw "swells out" to fill the threads and needs to be drilled out wider, and then the top of the screw has kind of a conical section for a head, narrower at the bottom of the head than at the top. They sell special combination bits that try to drill all three widths at once but different lengths of #8 screw (#8 is the width) have different lengths of thicker shaft so I always end up having to drill these holes in several stages. For the thwarts I drilled them when they were actually clamped in the boat so I had to use the hand drill--using the drill press for this was much easier.
Then I took the seat, laid it in the correct place on the rails, and drilled into the rails using the predrilled holes as guides, but using the hand drill. To weight the seat down so it wouldn't shift while I was drilling, I used the router bag with the router in it. It was about the right size and worked fine. Then I used a stainless steel woodscrew to cut threads into the wood and replaced it with brass screws.
The walnut was absolutely the right choice for the seat--it looks great against the butternut and white pine of the hull.
After taking the seat out again, I put my second coat of varnish on the inside of the canoe this afternoon, paying special attention to the screw holes and the newly cut slots. I have thought it over and am going to go with 2 coats for now. There are a couple of reasons for this. One is that every coat of varnish adds more weight, (a pound a coat is what the books say, though I have coated 2 times, inside and out, with a 32 ounce can of varnish and I still have some left over) and another is that varnish is expensive. Not crazy expensive, but that 32 ounce can was 18$ and, well, we have a computer to replace, you know how it is. Two coats is kind of a minimum, but Constance should get a new coat every year as regular maintenance so two should be okay.
I put a second coat on the thwarts too.
Tomorrow at 1pm I'm going to launch. :-) I wonder how Constance will compare with Patience...
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Date: 2010-10-30 11:59 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2010-10-31 12:25 am (UTC)D'ohh! I knew about using a conical bit to countersink the head of a screw, but I never thought of drilling wider to accommodate the unthreaded "neck"! Thank you very much for this, uh, bit of knowledge (NPI*).
* No Pun Intended. Really. It just came up out of the sludge and jumped right into the sentence.
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Date: 2010-10-31 12:19 pm (UTC)They do sell combination bits at the hardware store, as I mentioned. These are approximations of course but they are much better than nothing, if you don't like drilling each hole in three stages.
Also, when I drill out different depths of the neck, I use a bit of tape on the drill bit to mark the depth I need to drill to.
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Date: 2010-10-31 07:30 am (UTC)I trust there will be photos.
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Date: 2010-10-31 12:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-10-31 06:51 pm (UTC)Ah, yse, I remember doing all that stuff with countersunk screws in high school wood shop. I always thought it was cool how they worked.
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Date: 2010-10-31 10:59 pm (UTC)Will there be an official christening and launch party? I am sure she deserves it.
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Date: 2010-10-31 11:15 pm (UTC)You might engrave the numbers in a single brass sheet--that would save you a *lot* of finishing edges, which is a pain.
I think the launch party is a good idea, but it should be virtual--I will have it in my next lj post :-)
Regarding local people I plan to offer them rides, one by one. I invited Steve Lloyd (the guy who helped me when the drill bit *and* the screw broke off in the front thwart) to come along this time and it was loads of fun.