Happy Birthday to you...

...Happy Birthday to you / Happy Birthday, dear Shilling / Happy Birthday to you! (Courtney wanted pictures of cake and candles, but Tara said no.)

Yes, Boxing Day (December 26th for those of you who don't have Boxing Day) was our Shilling's first birthday, in the sense that we started work on December 26th, 2006. Like most one-year-olds, the Shilling still doesn't talk much, doesn't get around all that easily, and isn't allowed to drive yet.

We're almost done planking (man, I'm getting tired of saying that), as you can see from the portside shot. We're still looking almost sane, as you can see from the picture of both of us. That's probably about all we can ask for at this point. (And more coffee - we can ask for more coffee. It's very morning out.)

Interior pix

As we put on the last few planks, we're also beginning to clean up the exterior of the hull. Ron (being rather more compact and flexible than, say, Courtney) volunteered to go inside and hammer out some badly placed nails, so we have some shots of the interior.

Looks fairly well-sealed for this stage, though of course once we clean up the squeeze-out and glass the interior it will be REALLY tight!

And speaking of tight, how about this sight of Ron contorting himself around frame #2 and the CP case? We're very lucky he's decided to put in some "sweat equity"!

Sometimes we're clever. Of course, it's usually too late by then.

We're almost done planking, so it's kind of silly that we came up with a major improvement to the process now. We post this for what it's worth to anyone crazy enough to be contemplating building their own boat. :-D

See, when we glue the planks onto the frames, some of the glue squeezes out and runs down the frame edges. When the glue is dry, we use a chisel to remove it. But wouldn't it be good if the squeeze-out ran down onto something we could remove easily? Some kind of sticky paper we could use to, you know, "mask" the bits where we don't want glue?

Something like this newfangled stuff called "masking tape", perhaps? (DUHHHHHHHHHHHH!)

Limber holes!

Planking continues, and since we're about to start covering up the points where the frames meet the hog, we had to think about limber holes.

What are limber holes, you ask? Well, see, the frames divide the interior of the boat into compartments. The lowest point on the bottom should be between frames 4 & 5, or so it appears - in other words, if water gets into the boat, it's going to want to settle down in the bilges between frames 4 & 5. So that's where we'll have the bilge pump intake.

Of course, we only want ONE bilge pump intake (or maybe one on each side of the CP case, I have to think about this)... so we want water to be able to get down to the lowest point. That means we have holes (well and truly protected with epoxy so they don't let water into the plywood) in the frames, right where they meet the hog, so bilge water can drain down to the pump. Limber holes.

We've cut some oversize holes and sealed them with epoxy, but we're not done. The plan is to wax some short (5-6") lengths of 3/4" OD flexible tubing, coat them with paste wax for easy removal, and epoxy them in place when we fillet (i.e. reinforce and seal with filler and epoxy and maybe glass) all around the edges of the frames. The waxed tubing slides out afterward (we've tested this), leaving nice, smooth, waterproof 3/4" limber holes.

Or that's the theory!

More planking

A couple of crappy phone camera pix of planking progress to date. As you can see, we've crossed the sheer stringer at the bow as well as the transom now. Planks will be getting shorter quickly now as we have to cover 3-4" less at each end with each plank on the topsides (i.e. at the bottom of the picture.

We put in a few tapered planks as we worked toward the keel, and as you can see, those planks are already much shorter than the topside planks. It's getting harder to force the curve on the topsides, so we might put in a tapered plank or two to make it easier there, too.

Not long now 'til we fit the whisky plank!

There's always something...

...that gets in the way of working on the boat. This time it's a cedar shortage in the shop, combined with deer season (as subsistence hunters, Courtney's folks have to get out there and fill the freezer!). Next scheduled work day is Sunday, when we'll rip up a bunch of 14' cedar boards and get back to planking. And post pictures, of course!

Interesting sub-milestone

The next BIG milestone is when we finish planking (the eagerly anticipated "whisky plank"). We hit an interesting point in the planking today, though: we fit the two longest planks on the hull. Because of the way the hull curves, the plank that crosses the top of the transom (in other words, since the hull is upside down, the plank at the lowest point on the transom in the pictures) is the longest one on the boat.

It worked out well; we scarfed up just enough really long planks to finish that bit. From here on, the planks will get shorter quickly, because of the small angle at which they cross the sheer.

Um, that's all for now.