Our Whale Yacht

Whaleboat number one is right side up again, and is pretty much complete.  The key word is pretty, we think.  She has the beautiful lines of her ancestors, and the meticulous fit and finish done by WoW craftsmen as accustomed to building sailing yachts as rough and ready workboats.  With her white hull, ISM blue sheer strake, and dark grey gunwales, she looks simply fantastic.

From the bow . . .

Amidships . . .

Or the stern, she looks every bit as fine as we had hoped she would.

With a tight splash deadline looming for both boats, there is not a lot of time to admire our work.  There is still a lot to do on the second boat, although the team is moving along at warp speed.  Floors have been fitted in both the bow and the stern where soles will be installed, and work has begun on the ceiling, which runs nearly the length of the boat, from keel to thwart rails.  That is a LOT of spiling, cutting, planing, fitting, screwing, and perhaps just a bit of swearing along the way.

The aft sole sits on floors, ready to be fastened.  A similar structure is going up forward.

Bruce cuts out a section of ceiling.  It's double thick so it can be resawn for a port and starboard section.

After the saw the next step is always the hand plane.

The first of many ceiling sections is clamped in place.  Note scarph on aft end.

Lee finishes up sanding the five oarlock pads needed for the whaleboat.

Suzy, the L.F.Herreshoff Meadow Lark, continues her makeover at the far end of the shop.  Jeff has completed his structural repairs on her keel, and is putting her back together.  The chines have been fastened in place and the edges carefully beveled to accept the adjacent plank.  Prior to re-planking, all the old screw and nail holes in the keel, frames, and stem needed to be filled with wood dowels.  John S. was the man with the pen knife taking care of this task.

Jeff checks the fit of the chine on the port side.

Measuring the angle for the plank bevel.

John whittles dowels to fill old screw holes.

A bit of repair work needed to be done on the replica sailmaker's bench.  The pine surface of the bench, which has been on display in the museum as an interactive exhibit, suffered a bit too much interaction from a young would-be sailmaker.  Since it will be part of the upcoming Tides of Freedom exhibit, a re-surfacing job was in order.  Fortunately, the repairs can be made, and the bench will be ready for visitors to experience the craft again.

Fixing damage to the sailmaker's bench.  A coat of paint, and no one will ever know.

True blue

The first Beetle replica whaleboat is now sporting her color scheme.  She has a bright blue shiny sheer strake, and bright white topsides.  The color scheme matches the Independence Seaport Museum's logo colors, which is wholly appropriate.

No question where this boat was built!

One more coat of topside paint, and she will be ready to flip.  Launch day is coming quickly.

Her sister is coming along nicely as well.  As promised, frame installation is complete, and the team moved on to the multitude of interior construction tasks that will need to be completed by our committed launch date in June.  The centerboard trunk was constructed outside the boat, and Jeff fitted it and fastened it in place.

Jeff works from below fastening the centerboard trunk.

The trunk is in place among all those frames.

At the bow, Charles began fitting and shaping the bow chocks.  When whaling, the harpoon line, once it was "connected" to a whale, payed out through the space between these chocks, so they had to be both massive and well attached.

Oak timbers squared and ready to be shaped into bow chocks.

Port bow chock shaped and sanded.  Ready for installation

Starboard chock has been rough cut.  Shaping is a multi-step process.

With frames in place, attention is turning to the installation of thwarts.  Before thwarts can be fitted, the thwart risers must be installed, and Bruce, Steve, and Jeff worked on that task.  

Steve oils newly installed port thwart riser.

Starboard thwart riser is clamped in place, ready to be fastened.

Once the risers have been done, the boat builders can turn their attention to measuring and installing the thwarts.  Aside from providing the crew with places to sit, the thwarts are essential to the structural stability of the boat.  They provide stiffness, and to enhance that function, they are fitted with knees that connect the thwarts to the sides of the hull up to the gunwales.   The knees are steam bent on a jig designed for that purpose.  Bruce, Newt, and Carl experimented with the jig to refine the steam bending process for thwart knees.

Bruce and Newt bend a knee on the knee shaping jig.

Work continued on the hull of the L. F. Herreshoff Meadow Lark, Suzy.  Jeff has fitted his new keel sections, and fastened them in place.  He also fabricated a new chine section to replace a rotted one, and that too was fastened in place.

Jeff beds the keel chine with Sikaflex.

Suzy's hull is due for a new paint job, and to get ready for that, thorough hand sanding is necessary.  The two Johns worked on that tedious, dusty, but essential task.

John sands the hull.

Meanwhile, Bob was engaged in galley repairs.  The galley will get a new top to replace the existing one, which is failing.  The old one will be used as a pattern.

Bob cleans up the old galley top.

Curved things made of wood

Thursdays have become a very busy day at WoW in recent months, and even with most of the students off on spring holiday, there was lots of action.  Oddly, nearly every project underway seemed to involve making curved things out of wood.  Frames continue to be formed, fitted, and fastened into the the second Beetle replica whaleboat at a truly prodigious pace; Suzy, the L. F. Herreshoff Meadow Lark, has a new keel to stem bridge ready to be bolted in place; the whaleboat bow is being fitted for, and will soon to be sporting her curvy and massive bow chocks.  A day of curved stuff, all around.

The work on Suzy continues below the water line.  Jeff has completed removal of the decayed wood at the junction of the keel and the stem, and he built a three dimensional plywood template of the new member.  Using a well dried and massive white oak timber, he cut out the new keel/stem section.

Cleaned out to the good wood, and ready to rebuild

Jeff's template for the keel to stem structural tie.

Jeff is sawing . . .

This is real macho carpentry, with the full range of workshop machinery -- bandsaw, planer, jointer -- participating in the process of making 50 pounds or so of dry white oak into a useful and fairly elegant form.

Jeff is jointing . . .

Jeff is planing . . .

Jeff is spiling . . .



Most of the surfaces are determined by the adjoining members in the existing structure, but the upper surface simply follows the inner sides of the keel and stem in a fair curve, which Jeff guarantees with ice picks and batten.

Ready to be fitted



In she goes, nearly ready to be fastened.



 Similar well dried big chunks of white oak were being formed into bow chocks for the second whaleboat, elsewhere in the shop.  The first  step was lofting the shape from the plans.  The bow chocks are complex, resting in a notch at the front of the inwale and sheer plank, flaring outward toward the stem, and fairly curved downward to join the gunwales at the aft end.  Three loftings were needed.  Actually all of this work was done a year ago when we build the first whaleboat, but in an successful effort to assure that we would get to build a second one, we discarded the earlier patterns.

Side bow chock pattern in place on starboard side.

Notches through plank and inwale will receive the chocks.

Not a curved piece of wood -- yet.

Meanwhile, Bruce and his team, which included Jeff the Younger, Lee, John, Newt, Bob and three or four visitors who just came in looking for the bathroom, were continuing to break land speed records making and installing frames.  In less than two weeks, they have nearly completed the painstaking framing process.  They are not slacking on quality either.  The batten notches are tight and square, and the positioning of the frames is precise and consistent.

MANY screws and cans of Dolfinite are needed to bed and fasten 72 frames.

The steamer is used steadily to rebend each frame prior to fitting.

Bob fits a frame up forward on starboard side.

Bruce cuts batten notches.

A LOT of frames, with more to come.



A little of everything nautical

The replica sea chest needed for ISM's early May exhibit is nearly finished.  All parts were glued up and fastened with decorative copper rosette head nails, similar to those used in the original.  The inside of the pine box was sealed, and the outside is ready for painting, once we can make a decision on the appropriate color.

Box interior showing "till" on left side.

The original box has handles which consist of a captured grommet in a pine becket at either end.  Lee put his rope splicing skills to work on a couple of lengths of 5/8 inch manila kindly provided by Olympia.  The handles look great, and give a real measure of authenticity to the project.

Lee splices.

Ready for painting

Nearby, the first Beetle whaleboat replica has gotten her waterline taped, her bottom painted, and a coat of white primer on her exterior hull.  The sheer strake has been primed with gray since the final paint will be a darker color.  Our deadline for putting her in the water is fast approaching, and she will most definitely be ready for launch.

White bottom paint (???), white topside primer, and gray sheer strake primer.  Looking sharp.

The second whaleboat is moving toward completion at warp speed (Startrek warp, not wood warp,) with a goal of having her ready to sail by late of May.  While this is a very aggressive schedule, nothing so far has given any reason to believe that it cannot be met.  The port inwale is fastened, and the starboard one is about to be, having already been steam bent and fitted.

Port inwale has been bedded and fastened

Work has begun on the painstaking task of fitting the many frames around the battens and against the planks so they can be fastened in place.  Repeated fittings, cuts, re-fittings, trimmings, and finally painting, bedding and fastening make this a very slow process which must be done for each of approximately 72 frames.  A good team can complete about 6 frames per workday.  Bruce modestly expects to do much better than that.  We shall see.

Jeff removes molds prior to frame carpentry beginning.

Bruce test fits a frame while Lee awaits orders.

Lee cuts notches for battens in a new frame.

The Suzy restoration is also moving along.  Jeff continues to dig out decayed wood and is almost ready to start fabricating a new stem-to-keel section that will greatly enhance her structural rigidity up front below the waterline -- always nice to have.  Meanwhile, the compass binnacle has been mounted in the cockpit, and it is a great improvement.

The new compass binnacle.  the opening on aft surface is for stowage.

Bob was working on one of the "luxuries" to be added to Suzy -- an on-deck shower installation.  You never know when you might want to get clean while on board a sailing vessel.

Plumbing may not be glamorous, but it is always welcome.  Bob installs shower fittings.