Woodstock Begins Taking Shape

When a router works properly the results are sweet. However, the temptation to take experimentation too far sometimes leads to problems. For instance, in contrast to just knocking off a sharp edge I’ve really grown to like the look of a completely rounded (i.e. half-round) edge on the transom, skeg, seats, transom knees, etc. But, while the pass on the first side goes fine (left diagram) the pass on the back side cuts into the workpiece too far because the pilot bearing now rides on part of the roundover produced by the first pass.

That’s what happened to me with the hole in the front transom knee. I had to use a hole saw to eliminate the ridge produced in the center of the hole. That resulted in a larger hole and I was concerned whether there was enough material between the hole and the edge of the knee to provide enough strength for the forestay. I decided to use a variation of the “drill and fill” technique used to provide waterproof anchoring for screws in wood where the hole for the screw is drilled oversize and then filled with epoxy. The proper size hole is then drilled in the solid epoxy. In my case I placed packaging tape on one side of the hole I had created in the transom knee. I then mixed up a small amount of epoxy and, with the transom knee laying flat, I poured the epoxy into the hole until it was flush with the top surface of the knee.


I now have a “reinforced” liner in the hole which should be (?) more durable than the original plywood in terms of standing up to the forces produced by the forestay.

In other activity, I’ve begun coating the top three hull panels with epoxy as well as coating whatever the left over epoxy will cover (e.g. rudder, daggerboard, transom). Most of the hull panels soaked up the epoxy and produced a rough surface as expected. However, one panel that was distinctly lighter in color produced a fairly glossy finish because it didn’t absorb the epoxy to the same degree as the others.

I have also had the chance to stitch the #1 hull panels to the bottom.


As you can see, the entire operation had to be relocated to the garage. There was a time when I entertained the idea of building the boat in the basement and then bringing it up the stairs, through the kitchen (the stove could be moved of course), and out through the living room. But when I brought some of the hull pieces upstairs for sanding outside, I discovered the turn at the bottom of the basement stairs allowed for 8’ sheets of drywall but a finished boat nearly 12’ long was not a possibility.

By the way, rounding over the curves on the bottom edge of the transom doublers should be done BEFORE they are glued to the transoms. The pilot bearing on the roundover bit extends too deep to trim that edge once the gluing is done. Some very sharp chisels and some coarse sand paper produced an acceptable roundover.

I was a little reluctant to go at the first coat of epoxy with sandpaper that was too coarse so I started with 100 grit. Two feet later, when the sandpaper was all gummed up, I switched to 60 grit and made much better progress. And yes, budget for sandpaper and vacuum the surface often to prevent loose epoxy particles from gumming up the sandpaper prematurely.

Gosh that wood looks good under the epoxy!

Router – Learning, Relearning, Replacing

The instructions that come with the Passagemaker indicate that, while a router is very handy for dressing the edges of the wood parts, you can also do it with sandpaper. Hey, if you are going to spend $2000+ for a boat kit, buy a router. The quality of the contours produced with the router is worth it and it’s a lot faster than sanding. Once you have your router, find a nice 3/4” thick laminated shelf or something similar, drill a hole large enough (1-3/4” to 2”) to accommodate your largest diameter router bit, drill countersunk holes to mount your router, go to ACE and get screws of the proper thread (mine were 10-32 x 1-1/4”), and use some clamps to clamp the whole thing to a nice solid surface.

It’s cheap, it’s portable, and mine also came in handy for cutting the long tapers on the trailing edge of the daggerboard and rudder. In the cryptic diagram below the router, still mounted to my makeshift router table, is inverted and allowed to rest on the edges of two straight boards (shaded grey) with the daggerboard sandwiched in between.


The top edges of the guide boards must be absolutely parallel to each other and spaced far enough apart to produce the taper you desire. I chose a taper of 10:1. Since the daggerboard is 12 mm (1/2”) thick and the top board is 19 mm (3/4”) thick, for a total of 31 mm (1.25"), I placed the edges of the guide boards 310 mm (12.5”) apart. The edge of the daggerboard must also be absolutely parallel to the edges of the guide boards and placed so the top edge of the daggerboard is just below a line from one guide board to the other. The whole stack must be clamped so nothing slips out of position. Now set a larger diameter (e.g. 3/4”) straight cut bit so it extends about 1/16” below the table. Slide the table/router on the edge of the guide boards while guiding the bit over the edge of the daggerboard. Depending on the position of the daggerboard the router “table” may not actually rest on the edge of the guide boards until some material has been removed from the daggerboard. CAUTION: Don’t let the edges of the router “table” slip past the edges of the guide boards – they are preventing the router from dropping down into (ouch) the daggerboard. And, the taper on the daggerboard doesn’t go all the way to the handle so rig some kind of stop at the proper location.

Once some initial material has been removed gradually lower the bit until you have removed as much of the taper as you want. Flip the daggerboard over and repeat on the other side. The plywood in this kit is very high quality so the plies can be used as accurate depth of cut references. I tried to leave the center ply untouched so the trailing edge of the daggerboard had a thickness of about 1/8” (3mm). As I sanded and trimmed to correct slight variations I ended up with a trailing edge a bit thinner than that.

If you haven’t ruined the requisite number of projects learning what NOT to do with your router, beware, routers can be evil. Don’t get me wrong, routers like computers can be wonderful tools. But, just like computers, routers will do exactly what you tell them to do whether right or wrong. However, unlike computers there is no “Undo” choice when you tell routers to do the wrong thing. The golden rule of routers – always try out your settings on a SCRAP piece of wood before you work on the finish piece. I wanted to round off the edges of the handle hold on the skeg with my router. I carefully took a profile view of the table and lined up the flutes of my 1/4” roundover bit so they were just below the surface of my makeshift router table. Then I went ahead and routed one side of the handle hold. The edge was rounded off beautifully. It also had a beautifully uniform “race track” just below the flat surface around the handle hold (no pictures). Apparently the flutes on the bit were just above the surface of my router table.

Now, learning to use a router properly is an important part of working on a woodworking project. But, learning how to make the mistakes you make with the router not look like mistakes is the other important part of using a router. In my case I decided to use the next size larger roundover bit to take a little more material away in the hope that the racetrack would be removed. In the picture below you can still see just a little remnant of the original racetrack in the second ply from the surface.


The bonus to this solution was that I preferred the contour the larger bit gave to the handle hold and decided to do the bottom edge of the skeg with the same bit.

I’m sure there are those who don’t like having so much of the plies visible beyond the edge of the plywood but the resulting contour really felt nice to the hand.

By the way, the second rule about routers is to learn which direction to feed the wood (or feed the router into the wood) based on the rotation of the bit. Do an internet search for an explanation and practice on some stock (normal boards and plywood). After a while you will naturally bring the router to the stock (or feed the stock to the router) the proper direction. One direction the feed will be much smoother and the results will be far superior. (Feeding the proper direction is also safer!)

Some of you may remember the “gold rush” of late 1979/early 1980. Well I got enough cash for my class ring so I could buy a router. Not just any router mind you, it was a Craftsman Super Router! I still remember my first few attempts were disappointing. Burning the wood, chipping out the edge, and discovering that the motor wasn’t held perfectly vertical so I would get different cut depths depending on the side of the router I used. I was disappointed with my purchase but I figured it was ‘the nut behind the wheel’ and for the few occasions when I had to use a router it was available.

As I started using my Super Router on this boat project I was doing OK. I remembered the quirks of my router and things were going pretty well with the exception of the incident described above. And it worked really well when I discovered the aft transom doubler was out of alignment with the transom by about 1/32”. That misalignment isn’t a structural problem but sanding that much on the end grain of plywood filled with epoxy is a bit of a task not to mention trying to dress up the handle hold. A straight trim bit with a pilot bearing trimmed the transom flush with the doubler in fine fashion. The trimmed portion shows up lighter in the picture below.

A couple days ago I happened to notice the plastic housing on my Super Router was loose. Far be it from me to let that go. I can probably repair it! Turns out not so much. Some of the coercion I used to disassemble the router broke the upper bearing mount. Now why the designers at Sears would mount the top bearing in the phenolic resin used to insulate the electronics in that end of the motor is beyond me but that’s what they did. And that’s what I broke. Dang! I’ll have to buy a new tool. Of course forcing me to replace a tool with a new one is like forcing me to eat a medium-well rib-eye steak at Logans’ Roadhouse – it’s not a terribly difficult thing to get me to do ( I sense some understatement here.)

Home Depot, Lowe’s, Sears, Hitachi, DeWalt, Milwaukee, Porter-Cable, plunge, fixed-base, variable-speed, soft-start –it’s like being at the ice cream parlor. People who love tools know what I’m talking about. However, I am not making raised panel doors for a living and cost is an issue. Off to the online reviews. Boy, do a lot of people hate Craftsman. One review said any name brand was probably OK as long as it didn’t say Craftsman! I’m guessing my Super Router wasn’t followed up by many successful revisions in the past 37 years. Wait! What about this one. It looks different. And since Sears website even includes the reviews of their rotten models that are now on clearance the user reviews might be legit. One review is by a guy who does cabinetry for a living and he seems to own more routers than I do socks. He says this model is on a par with his dearly loved Porter Cable. And it’s only $80. Other reviews include equally high praise. ‘Nuff said! It’s off to Sears for a router Mfr. model #17542.

Now I am no tool connoisseur, and I certainly don’t use a router often enough to appreciate the finer points of a $500 router. But I am a fairly hard to satisfy consumer and compared to my not-so-Super-Router, this thing rocks. Soft start, variable speed, 2 hp (those alone are worth the $10 extra above the similar 17542 model), nice height adjustment, secure motor clamp, dust collection adapter, aluminum housing and base, and nylon motor enclosure. The base plate from my old router will fit if I need a backup and the motor is not nearly as noisy as my old router. It also has exactly the same mounting hole spacing and threads as my old router (although the holes are rotated 30 degrees off from the front/back axis on the old router).

(Late addition: After some use the heigth adjustment mechanism doesn't work smoothly and the router motor no longer slides through the base housing freely when the locking mechanism is released. Some shavings may be jamming things up since I have been using the router on the table - upsidedown - and the shavings drop into the space between the motor and the base housing. I'm no longer as excited about this model as I was.)

I am trying to keep a very accurate record of costs in this spreadsheet.

“Roots” and Actual Boat Construction (Finally)

ANNAPOLIS - the birthplace of my boat. During my spring vacation a month ago my wife and I made our annual trip to visit our daughter and son-in-law near Baltimore, Maryland. Annapolis is only 30 minutes away. So, besides enjoying the kids and the blossoms (which bloom at least a month before they do here in Michigan) we took a side trip to Annapolis and that Mecca of homebuilt boats, Chesapeake Light Craft (CLC).

It was a beautiful day. We arrived mid-morning and parked directly in front of what was apparently an office door. I placed the keys of the rental car in my pocket and proceeded to get out of the car. As luck would have it, this was yet another of a myriad of opportunities I have had to inadvertently activate the “panic button” on the key fob of my car. (Has anyone ever actually had a legitimate reason to use that wonder of modern technology?) As always it took me far too long to realize what was happening and then I had to fumble to find the right button on the fob. Besides startling all of us the front of the car was about 40” from the front of the building and poor John Harris, the owner of CLC, was sitting on the other side of the wall. Unfortunately the startled ‘what the heck is that’ look on his face as he suddenly appeared in the window will be the lingering memory of my first meeting with John.

After allowing an appropriate amount of time to pass, which served to moderate our embarrassment and allow John’s heart rate to return to normal, we went in and had a look around. Fortunately John’s desire to make customers feel welcome outweighed his desire to whack me upside the head with a Sitka spruce oar. Upon learning I had purchased a Passagemaker kit and had traveled from Michigan he took us on the 50-cent tour of the fabrication/instruction shop, the CNC router area, and the millwork shop. He was also kind enough to pose for a picture. (That’s John on the right. I'm the guy one student refers to as 'highlighter'!)

During our tour I learned that besides their fine line of boats CLC also makes the parts for kits from several other kit sellers. That fact further underscored my confidence in choosing a kit from CLC.

Having satisfied my need to know that my boat had come from good stock we left CLC and set off for downtown Annapolis. If you ever get to Annapolis besides visiting CLC go to the Visitor’s Center and take the trolley tour of Annapolis and East Port. Annapolis is rich with history, architecture, and scenery as well as the military academy. The trolley tour gives a great overview and provides lots of suggestions for other things to see and do in Annapolis. At the very least you will want to stroll down Main Street, look in the shops, and walk around the docks at the end of the street. For those of us who don’t live on the ocean coast or who haven’t grown up sailing, visiting a place like Annapolis really places boats in a larger context of history, tradition, and technological development.

Our visit to Maryland was accompanied by wonderful spring/summer weather. However, our return trip home involved checking the wings of the airplane for icing and a snowstorm greeted us back in Grand Rapids. Indeed we had some of the worst weather of the “winter” the next two weeks.

Since our trip to Maryland I have actually had some time to complete a worksurface I had been thinking of for other projects as well as boatbuilding. I really don’t care to try to handle 4’ x 8’ sheets of ¾” material by myself and I’d like to be able to move my operation from the basement to the garage and back again without assistance. So, after some internet research, I decided to use 7/16” thick OSB and make 32 equally spaced square cutouts approximately 8” x 8” to leave a 4’ x 8’ grid of 3” wide “slats”.

The sheet ends up weighing half the original weight and the grid provides a multitude of locations for clamping things in position. Of course the 7/16” thickness bends pretty easily so I cut another sheet into 4” wide slats. I made slots in these slats so they would slip into each other on edge and match the pattern of the grid in the worksurface and provide support from below.

I made two of these assemblies and then linked them together with tie plates and used T-nuts slightly recessed into the tops to preserve a flat surface. The whole work surface ends up pretty flat.

So far I have glued up the rubrails and the hull panels and the worksurface system has worked great with one exception. The 4” wide support slats in the gridwork below the worksurface are just the right depth to interfere with turning the handles on the 2” C-clamps I am using. Keeping the handles topside is one solution. I’m thinking of trimming the support slats to a 3” as another possibility.

The scarfs on the mating ends of the rubrail strips weren’t quite parallel so they needed a little dressing before gluing.

And, even though I did some dry runs in preparation for gluing them together, I still didn’t get them lined up along the other longitudinal plane.

But, it turns out the rubrail strips warped in the dry environment of my basement and the scarf joints are no more curved than the rest of the strips so they should bend to the contour of the edges of the hull without much problem.

The whole idea of covering the surfaces adjacent to the glue joints with something like packaging tape works really well. I am using the slow hardener that comes standard with CLC’s kits and 24 hours after the joints were clamped I was able to remove the thin layer of epoxy that oozed out by just peeling the protective tape off. However, larger globs are less accomodating.

My worksurface arrangement worked out extremely well for aligning the hull panels. I could conveniently clamp alignment blocks to my grid so I could slip the panels in proper position for gluing and clamping. (Probably should have done something similar with the rubrails.)

I used alignment blocks thick enough so both sets of panels could be stacked as indicated in the instructions and held in perfect alignment.

And Now This Late Bulletin: The other night I had a little epoxy left over and didn’t want to just pitch it so I tried to glue the daggerboard handles to the daggerboard without any means to hold them in alignment. As other builders have indicated the parts are pretty slippery with the epoxy between them and getting them to line up while clamping them was a (messy) challenge. With that memory and looking ahead to other miscellaneous tasks I can accomplish while waiting for the glue joints on the hull panels to cure it struck me (Duh!) I can use the same procedure I used for aligning and clamping the hull panels with the transom doublers, skeg halves, and daggerboard trunk. I just have to make sure that I have the worksurface and alignment blocks covered with wax paper or packaging tape anywhere the epoxy may ooze out or run. Sweet!!

Here’s some pictures of the setup I had for the transom doublers and skeg halves.

It's a little difficult to identify the blocks used for positioning the parts because many are also OSB like the worksurface. In the middle picture you might be able to see the trimmed packaging tape used to mask off the area adjacent to the transom doubler.

Progress thus far:

- All four sets of hull panels glued at scarf joints.

- Bottom panels glued at scarf joints.

- Transom doublers glued to both transoms.

- Handles glued to daggerboard.

- Getting pretty good at estimating how much epoxy I need for a given step without a nice thick "medallion" left in the bottom of the mixing cup.

- Priorities straightened out (a little boat building every day).

This is way fun!