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#1
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Wooden boat beginners question
Hi. I'm getting into boatbuilding ; as a rookie.
I was considering building one of the simple designs - say Herb's One Sheet Skiff as a sort of trial run. I understand the instructions etc. fine, but there's one part I don't understand. In the design he has top and bottom chines (gunwales ?). The top one is notched and fits over the plywood. The bottom one is angled at 70 degrees (the sides slope so the boat has a flat bottom) - on about 8' x 1" x 2" strips. This is fine, but I can't for the life of me see how to do this ! Any advice is very much welcome. |
#2
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The easiest way would be to run it thru the table saw with the blade tilted.
A circular saw with rip guide and tilted blade would be only a little more awkward. Start with an 8 foot 1x2+, allow 1/8" for kerf and you get both chines at once. Lacking either of these saws, use a bevel gauge to guide your hand saw and cut shallow kerfs at the desired angle, then plane off the intervening wood. I'd use my electric block plane, but you aren't removing enough wood to make a hand plane impractical. For the notch, set the blade of your saw shallow and make multiple cuts, or use a dado blade. Roger http://home.earthlink.net/~derbyrm "Paul Robson" wrote in message ... Hi. I'm getting into boatbuilding ; as a rookie. I was considering building one of the simple designs - say Herb's One Sheet Skiff as a sort of trial run. I understand the instructions etc. fine, but there's one part I don't understand. In the design he has top and bottom chines (gunwales ?). The top one is notched and fits over the plywood. The bottom one is angled at 70 degrees (the sides slope so the boat has a flat bottom) - on about 8' x 1" x 2" strips. This is fine, but I can't for the life of me see how to do this ! Any advice is very much welcome. |
#3
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Oops, that should have been "Start with an 8 foot 1x4+, ...
Roger http://home.earthlink.net/~derbyrm "Roger Derby" wrote in message ink.net... The easiest way would be to run it thru the table saw with the blade tilted. A circular saw with rip guide and tilted blade would be only a little more awkward. Start with an 8 foot 1x2+, allow 1/8" for kerf and you get both chines at once. |
#4
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I haven't built a OSS or one of Gavin Aktkin's Mouse boats, but I've built 4 tiny plywood boats of my own design, two of them one sheeters (photos under "Boats" on my website). (David Beede's "Summer Breeze" was the inspiration for my one sheet "Delta" which in turn inspired the one sheet "Prism" in Finland which can be found by a search of the Internet.) "Paul Robson" ) writes: Hi. I'm getting into boatbuilding ; as a rookie. I was considering building one of the simple designs - say Herb's One Sheet Skiff as a sort of trial run. I understand the instructions etc. fine, but there's one part I don't understand. In the design he has top and bottom chines (gunwales ?). The top one is notched and fits over the plywood. The bottom one is angled at 70 degrees (the sides slope so the boat has a flat bottom) - on about 8' x 1" x 2" strips. This is fine, but I can't for the life of me see how to do this ! Any advice is very much welcome. Instead of cutting a notch the length of the gunwale (the one on top) you can just screw it to the ouside of the boat. That's how I do mine. Drill the holes beforehand and put in a few screws to see how it goes (called a "dry fit"), take it apart, optionally spread some glue, then screw the gunwale on again. Sand off the top edge so it's smooth. Then spread some plastic resin of some kind (epoxy, polyester, polyurethane varnish) to seal and protect the exposed edge of the plywood. My gunwales now tend to be made of one or two 1/2" layers so they will bend without breaking. Where the sides join the bottom is called the "chine" and the strips of wood "chine battens" if they are on the inside, or "chine logs" if they are on the outside. The way I cut them at an angle is to first cut a slice off a 2x4 board (or 2x6 or whatever you are using). That gives a strip of wood 1.75 inches high. I then set the saw blade to the required angle and cut the 1.75" strip in half. That makes two approx 0.75" chine battens with the required angle (some of the wood, the width of the saw blade, is cut away by the saw. I use a "narrow kerf" (ie. thin) saw blade.) TF Jones says 1/2" thick chine battens are thick enough for small boats. It'sj ust easier to cut a 2x4 into 0.75" thick battens. If you own or can borrow a table saw cutting the gunwales and battens is not hard to do. If you just have a hand held circular saw there are a couple of ways to do it. The easiest is to plunge cut a slot in a scrap of heavy plywood and screw the saw to it. Then turn the saw upside down and you have an instant table saw. You have to wire the trigger closed and turn it off and on by pulling the plug. Don't set the depth of the saw blade any more than is needed. It's less scary without the whole saw blade sticking up through the plywood. I screw a piece of straight material to the plywood the appropraite distance from the blade to use as a cutting guide. My guide is a scrap of drywall (plasterer's) corner bead. I've also cut gunwales and chine battens by putting the 2x4 between 2 other 2x4's on a couple of saw horses, drawing a line where the 2x4 is to be cut, and running the hand held circular saw along the line. Recently I paid $10 for a simple cutting guide which attaches to the saw and lets me cut faster than following a pencil line alone. The extra 2x4's help support the weight of the saw. I've kept the wood from sliding around with nails into the saw horses, and later with clamps when I got some big enough. -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ William R Watt National Capital FreeNet Ottawa's free community network homepage: www.ncf.ca/~ag384/top.htm warning: non-FreeNet email must have "notspam" in subject or it's returned |
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