Dear BBC how to do this???

So the Northwest School of Wooden Boat Building is re creating the 1st Powell expedition boats down the grand canyon. I have been trying to think of a way to present the daily progress. Here it is, i will post all of the photographs here on a daily basis. You may not get my epic narration in every post. Feel free to ask questions comment or buy us beer. I'll introduce the teem next week. Right now here is the pics so far. I'm out for my birthday weekend.

So there you go, visual overload. Fire away with your questions its going to be a fun trip!!!

The Powell Boats

For the uninitiated the grand canyon was and is something ot the Holy Grail Of American whitewater. The first man to step into the task for the purpose of fame fortune and glory was Major John Wesley Powell a veteran of the civil war. In this expedition he helped to close a chapter on U.S. history. His expedition and his faults of character shed light on one of the most amazing places on planet earth.

So how the hell do i fit into this??? Well its a simple case of right time right place. I have already explained how i came to the Northwest School Of Wooden Boat Building. I was trying to decide which route to take as far as a emphasis is concerned than this dashing disheveled  guy reared his head. A odd coincidence for someone who can't seem to get the canyon out of his life.

As rivers and wooden boats have slowly taken me, i have become a man possessed. Still i have have always thought the Powell expeditions crazy. Taking boats designed for coastal water taxies into a place that's only similarity is general dampness. Without a doubt just the type of insanity i love. Adventure, excitement, glory! (A jedi seeks not these things but than again Jedi were general boring creatures at diner parties.)

So that has brought me here to this huge oak flitch.

This huge slab of oak is sort of the around point in my spiral into rivers. If i really think about whitewater exploration In the United States of America this is it, the beginning.

Holy shit were recreating the first grand canyon boats!

Do it with style?!

Dr. Emmett Brown, "The way I see it, if you're gonna build a time machine into a car, why not do it with some style?"

Stuber, "If your gonna build a time machine into a boat why not use a Whitehall?"

As the sayer of that statement here is why. Whitehalls have no place in whitewater. Although for a brief time after the middle of the 1800's they became all the rage as small work boats and water taxis. So while a DeLorien would clearly raise suspicion on a road in the 1800's why not turn to a little work boat into a time machine? For starters Powell's boats were not your normal breed.

I like to think of them as little floating brick shit houses.

 

Something like this but more 1800ish.

So how does a project like this start? With oars my friends oars and sweeps. The longer boats 22ft started with two rowing stations and 11.5ft oars. These were cut down to 8 ft during the trip and a sweep was added to the boats. These were big Ash affairs (Ha!). Each boat had four oars and one sweep. Assuming that the group was prepared (like the boy scouts of yore) they should have (could have) had two spares per boat for a total of seven. Multiply that in twain and you get??? Fourteen,  fourteen custom oars that all must match. here is the beginning of that operation.

 A sharp chisel will go a long way but the patters below will help standardize all of these oars.

 Clamp em up and saw em out.

One must always start with a center line  Especially with something as fickle as wood, it changes. Pull a line and project it down with a tri-square.

 With many to make one must be careful to do it right layout is everything,

EVERYTHING!

 Here are some of the tools of the trade. All of them except the mug and Japanese saw would have been recognized by the original builders.

 Take it down to the line,

 add to the pile,

repeat.

Loftery

Lofted out the IRH today. Its a funny looking little boat when you realize that that's all the bigger its going to be. I am willing to bet it is going to be one fun ride! I did find some mistakes in the Table of Offsets nothing impossible to figure out. Pictures aren't great but here they are anyhow.

IRH Tables.

Here is the table of offsets for the IRH.

Not a super exciting post but i am stoked!

The bitter taste of defeat or elbow room.

Over the last few weeks i have been putting the finishing touches on the drawings for the prototype I.R.H.. Followers of this blog may notice that i have dropped the full rocker bottom. Knowing what type of water this boat will be used for i realized that a shallow draft was more important to me than the rocker profile. If it doesn't work out i can always change it in version two.

MMMM not great pic. Try this,

Still not perfect but you get the idea.

So the goal is to do the shell developments and stitch and glue this hull together. I have found only one publication with instructions on shell plate developments,

It's a great book. There is a heap of good information, classic drawings, and that old time reference feel. All the things i love about books like this. Only one problem after reading the section on shell plate developments ten of fifteen times i am no closer to solving my little drift boats panels. My gut feeling on this is that the book is over complicating things.

I generally pride myself on solving complex problems. This problem is kicking my ass. So it was with the bitter taste of defeat in my mouth that i e-mailed Roger Fletcher of Drift Boats and River Dories. I hope he can help out with this problem. Otherwise there are going to be some unnecessary steps in this build.

For those of you who know me know i have a bit of a boat addiction, as in i have a couple of them. The issue here is i have no place to build the I.R.H.. For anyone who has built anything in their spare time you know that if the project isn't close to home nothing will get done. You need to be able to walk less than a hundred yards from the comfort of your bed (or the beer fridge) in order to be efficient with your spare time.You don't want to wast it in transit.

With that in mind i hit the garage hard last night and rearranged it to do a little deck work on Flo and perhaps in the near future build the I.R.H. 1.