The plank scarfing jig

As our devoted readers will know, planking involves some kinda long pieces of cedar. Around 18 feet long. Since available cedar boards were, well, less than that, we had to scarf strips together. Sometimes two scarfs per strip, even. The first picture shows some short strips waiting to be scarfed. That's a LOT of scarfs, so a handy jig is a good thing.

Dictionary.com tells us that a jig, in this sense, is "a plate, box, or open frame for holding work and for guiding a machine tool to the work, used esp. for locating and spacing drilled holes; fixture." We're after something that helps us line up, clamp, and glue multiple scarfs.

Turns out an open U-shaped box lined with polyethylene is just perfect. Add strips of poly between each scarfed pair of planks, and it's slicker than a really really slick thing!

Once the scarfs are glued and stacked and tapped in from each end (not too hard, just enough to press the angled ends together firmly without undue overlap), we clamp the jig. We clamp the sides together, then insert a block to spread the force and clamp from the top as well.

It's a modest little production improvement, but it lets us scarf seven planks at once. No scarfing bottleneck in this operation!

Oh, and for those of you what are still waiting for the Plank Scarfing Jig, Courtney hasn't written it yet. Too busy playing actual shows to have some quality time with a mandolin!

We've started planking!

Minor emergencies (like Tim's emergency appendectomy, not to mention a wedding Courtney had to play and kind of forgot about) notwithstanding, we were actually able to start planking tonight. No pictures yet, they're coming soon. PLANKING, WOOHOO! That is all.

Summer and distraction

Well, it's been a busy summer. Lots of stuff happening with the band, and various people involved with the Shilling (most notably Tara and Buster) have been out of town. Tara visited the UK for several weeks, and actually got to spend some time with Phil Swift at Willow Bay Boats - how cool is that! No Shillings like ours on site at the time, but she did get to have a look at an open Shilling and check out the Willow Bay shop.

Buster was out on Island Eagle for a few weeks, and life is always busy, so we're just getting back into boat-building mode... well, Shilling-building mode, anyway. I (Courtney) trekked out to Wavey Creek for some Shilling work today, but got distracted: my nephew Tim has a new boat!

Buster and Tim whacked together a little hydroplane - it may not have a Tara-grade finish, but it goes well enough. Tim took it out for the first time, with Buster manning the oars of Mud Cat and me snapping photos. Check it out:

It's pretty fast, but I don't think I'll take it for a spin; it's got almost no freeboard with Tim in the cockpit, and I probably outweigh him by 150 pounds!

Good fun, though. Shilling construction resumes this week.

Ready for planking

Regular readers will probably notice that we've added a line drawing of the Shilling to the right-hand column. Here's a link to a full-size scan of the line drawing. She's pretty!

Not much to report on the progress front, at least not with pictures. Courtney and Buster finished beveling the frames and apron, and also tested the plank scarfing jig (I'll post a MIDI later, heh!), so we're basically ready for planking. Things are on hold while Courtney's parents are out of town, though... and then Tara's away in the UK for a while... and there's the Folk Festival... and lots of gigs... and maybe a trip to spend some time on Island Eagle...

Basically, what I'm saying is, progress is going to be slow for the next while. We hope to start planking in a couple of weeks or so. Talk to you then!

The stringers are on!

Yes, all four stringers are on. Courtney and Tara once again convinced Ron to help paint the fence, er, build the boat, and finished attaching the stringers this past weekend. Buster took this shot of them working away Monday morning.

It was good to have six hands for the job, too, for a couple of reasons. The first reason is that fitting the stringers works best if you have two people to hold a stringer in place and another to mark where the frame should be cut out.

The other reason... well, it's like this. There's this blade you can put on an angle grinder, and it has teeth rather like those on a chainsaw. Great for quickly roughing out, say, slots in the frames. Also good, as it turns out, for quickly roughing out slots in your thumb, if you get a bit careless with it. This left only five hands to work on the boat, or maybe 5.5 depending on how you're counting. Not the world's worst injury, and Courtney can still play guitar in his band, but it was enough to require a quick trip to the hospital.

Anyway, enough mit der sad stories - don't the stringers look great? You can't really tell from the pictures how neatly they're recessed into the frames and the transom and the apron, but it's a reasonably neat job, with the cracks all filled in with thickened epoxy. You can see Tara and Ron filling cracks in the last couple of photos.

We still have to pull the screws we used to hold the stringers in place, and then we have to bevel the frames and do a bit of trim around the hog, but the next big job is planking... and that is exciting!

Got the other sheer stringer on

...last night. Took all evening. Fiddly stuff. The deck-shelf stringers should be easier. Must stop telegraphese. (Only you can stop telegraphese. You can make a difference. Send money now!)

Good heavens, the avifauna at Wavey Creek! Hummingbirds, finches, doves, a zillion species of sparrow (well, it seems that way, anyway), blackbirds, cowbirds, woodpeckers, wood ducks and mergansers, to name but a few. No orioles this year or last, though, after a few years with dozens of them. Makes you wonder what's going on with their habitat, down south a ways.

Tempus fidgets.

Sometimes it's hard to find the time to update this blog. For the benefit of our regular readers, we haven't forgotten about you, and we are working on the boat; we'll have proper pictures when we hit the next milestone.

In the past week or so we:

• attached the transom;
• beveled the reinforced portion of every starboard frame;
• beveled most of the apron; and
  
• dry-fit and attached the starboard sheer stringer.

It's fiddly business, but now that we know how to approach it, the port sheer stringer should go much more quickly. The deck shelf stringers should be even faster, because they're recessed into the frames and held top-and-bottom... so they can't fall off.

Don't ask. ;-)

Pictures when we have all the stringers on!