The oar factory goes on...

 Holy flying crap, the oars and oars and oars and oars........

As i have said before its all about layout. If you don't do it the end product will reflect that.

If you tiptoe around and lines you will never get anything done. A draw knife will hog off material fast. Be careful though you could potentially pull off way to much wood.

 If you take your time and do it right your gonna end up with a huge pile of oars. Yet still i'm making more.

The other boat, IRH.

For followers of this blog it may be easy to forget that i don't just work on the Powell boats. In fact they were just a happy accident. I have lately been developing a very small drift boat design called the IRH.

The Weekend out here dawned very wet. Its not really a surprise giving the geographic location of Port Townsend Washington. Look at the photo below 5:30pm on a holiday weekend. No parking spots on main street,  outside only quickly walking people heads bent to the wind.

This amazing weather really gave me the excuse to knuckle down and get some work done on the IRH. I haven't really had the energy to get any work done on her since the McKenzie River trip. I don't have any good reason, lazy?
No matter the game is back on. The first order of the weekend was to fabricate side boards. The way the coaming the side boards rest on allows the panels to lay flat. That made it really easy to fabricate them, i wish the for and aft deck would be that easy.

After the side boards were fitted i needed to build the forward and aft deck supports. The decks are compound curves which means that they are concave athwart-ships and convex for and aft. This gives the finished boat a very complex beautiful look but is a real pain in the ass to produce.

You can see both of them in the above photo. The construction of these supports was a little complex using the deck camber guide i built months ago. Then they were fastened to the boat just like everything else on the build, fillets of thickened epoxy. I really want to avoid mechanical fasteners.

She really is starting to look good. I haven't decided if i am going to finish the interior and then flip and finish the hull. Or i could flip, finish the outside and return to the interior at a later date. I cant do any more today so i think i'll have a beer and not worry about it.

Cheers!

Corkin' and the oar factory.

The team has split into two groups the first is corking the seams on the boats and the second is turning out oars.

I'll start with the corkers. Corking, corkin', or caulking is a method of sealing plank seams where cotton or oakum is driven into the seam in order to make it water tight. First the seam is cleaned, then raw linseed oil is painted into the seam. Next the cotton or oakum is pounded in and painted. Finally the seam is covered in seam compound.

The above description is for boats whose seams are tight enough to take the corking. The problem with the Powell boats is although they were planked extremely tight the planks have shrunken grossly due to the use of very green oak. (the selection of this wood was a huge amateur mistake, none of the instructors at the school thought it would be a good idea.) With the shrinkage a solution had to be decided upon.

The above photo shows the solution. As you can see there is a cedar spline in the seam with the cotton or oakum. The cedar is quite soft compared to the oak so when the planks begin to swell the cedar, cotton/oakum mix will simply crush together sealing the plank seam.

Were not reinventing the well here. Some older boats who have had damaged plank seams and were unable to spend the money to replace every other plank have been corked up this way with success.

In the back corner of the shop team oar (which i am a part) is hard at work carving the crap-load of ash oars that will accompany these boats down the Grand Canyon.

Its really fun work, lots of layout and hand tool work. Ash is a little stiff to work so the key is razor sharp blades in all the tools. With that the strips of wood just peal right off.

Oar making is an interesting project when your trying to make a bunch of oars that are identical. It all comes down to repeating every step every time.

By the end of the day today one boat was corked up except for the garboard seams, the other was close behind and there were six finished oars stacked in the corner of the shop.

The Powell boats go over again!

I have in the past given the folks at harbor freight a real hard time, there tools are crap and don't last. This is a true statement, but also they are super cheap and they are replaced with receipt. Anyhoo this under five dollar ninety degree attachment has saved my ass a million times. 

So it has come time for the boats to be flipped, they got to be corked if there going to float.

 This also is giving Ben a chance to see A) how many people it is going to take to move these boats, and B) how hard is it going to be to flip them on a beach.

Honestly it wasn't that bad. I think  group of four, possibly three with the help of a tackle or rollers couple with little difficulty roll the boats onto the beach flip them and begin fixing.

Thing two was shortly behind thing one and the corking has begun.

I crawled into the the stern hatch of thing one to see how it all looked from the inside.

The problem is that sopping wet green oak is highly unstable (it is going to shrink, a lot). As you can see there are quite big gaps in the planking now. So our solution is to put splines into the seams and cork into the now much smaller gap. Well see how it goes.

The original builders at the boatyard outside of Chicago would have had seasoned oak on hand. So their jobs would have been a bit easier.

Thwart Knees.

The race is on! By tomorrow afternoon the boats need to be ready to go into the water. Not to float but to swell up in order to cork the boats water tight.

Thing two is getting really close, i've been making thwart knees and installing them for the last two days. there are eight per boat sixteen in all and each is a custom job. Really fun but a little tedious.

Above is thing two with most of the thwart knees in. Below are two pictures of thing one with her knees already in.

 Here is a great shot of what the boats will look like, removable floors are out the hatches are open and all the little bronze bits are missing, but you get the idea.

Cheers,!

Ever closer.

I've been working on getting the inner coaming onto the starboard side of thing one. This involves steaming and bending a stout oak board into the boat. We tried to bend it the first time and it didn't quite fit. So we decided to over bend it using two benches a step ladder and a bunch of clamps.

 It may look nuts but in the end it worked and before you know it i was working on thwart knees.

With all the parts coming together the boats are looking more and more like they will when they roll the dice in the canyon.

I'll keep you posted.

Ah, the Powell Boats!

The boats are really getting there. Were finishing off the all the little things that will really make these boats pop when they are looked at.

From sweet super low hatches like the second Powell expedition.

To scarf joints right on the top of the gunwhale, i challenge anyone to do it that cleanly!

 Both boats are neck and neck as far as the completion date. That's good and bad, i would love to take a little more time to work on some of the little things any-hoo,!.

Next week is going to be huge so have a great weekend and stay tuned!!

Foundry Trip.

Sunsets here are always great. I've had a really stressful couple of days, week , whatever. So i haven't really thought about the blog lately. So i'm now thinking about it, here it is!

 The IRH is getting inner bulkhead comings. Its slow tedious work with a high mess factor but it is still bun.

 Meanwhile at the foundry the full round oarlock patterns are made.

 You can see that they come apart, you know cuz molds are in two parts...

 Here is a pile of other projects at the foundry that have just been poured.

Molten metal is just beautiful.

Ok, Ill try and be less stressed tomorrow and get some pics of the Powell boats for you folks.