Steaming and Drilling

A big space has been cleared at the front of the shop for students in the ongoing SAILOR Program.  Every Wednesday, the floor is filled with white painted plywood lofting boards, as the kids learn to transfer boat designs from plans to full size patterns.  The program is still gearing up, and more groups are scheduled to start soon.  

Volunteers, meanwhile, continue to work on the Beetle Cat restoration.  We are still engaging in "tag team" frame replacement, with each group of volunteers taking over from the team that worked the previous day.  Slowly but surely, the new frames are being bent and fastened.  We are well over half way in the process.

Some more oak frames-to-be steam in preparation for bending.

Bob M. contemplates his next move.

A whole line of newly bent and installed frames.

The "Holiday Boat" has left the shop and now sits in the ISM lobby as part of the seasonal decorations.  Fittingly, before being put on display, she got a fresh coat of green topside paint, applied by volunteers.

The holiday boat, a Whitehall, ready to go on display.

Charles and friends, most notably Bob F., continue the mechanical installation on the Oughtred Grey Seal.  The 1200 pound lead ballast is completely installed -- bedded, bolted in place, faired, and painted.

Ballast faired into skeg using thickened epoxy which was later sanded smooth.

The ballast is complete -- sanded and painted.

Work has turned to the engine installation.  First step was hoisting the engine, a rebuilt Yanmar 1GM, into position on the engine bearings.

The engine is lowered into position below the cockpit sole.

  Once the engine was set in its approximate location, the location and slope of the prop shaft needed to be determined.  This was accomplished by mounting a board along the centerline of the boat, using a plumb line to transfer the slope of the engine bearers to that board, and extending the slope aft.  The drill bit was then positioned at the same angle, and at the height appropriate to drill the  36 inch deep shaft hole.

Slope of engine bearers and height of engine coupling is drawn on board at centerline of hull.

Guide blocks were mounted to supports at the appropriate height to begin drilling.  The drill bit -- a 24 inch long 5/8 inch auger bit -- was inserted into the guide, and drilling began.  Because one of the major problems in drilling deep, deep holes like this is that the drill bit moves off center because of density variations in the wood, the tip of the auger had to be ground off, creating a "barefoot" auger bit.  This configuration stays much truer, but cuts very much slower.

The slope and height have been transferred to the drilling guides.

Once the drill has gone a foot and a half or so into the wood, the guides can be safely removed, and drilling can proceed.  The last foot of drilling will require the addition of a drill bit extender.

Charles drilling -- the bit is about 15 inches in at this point.

  

It's Getting Cold Outside

The weather outside is getting colder and the wind is up.  Fortunately, most of the work at WoW is indoors, in the comfortable heated and air conditioned shop.  

The WoW volunteers are approaching the end of the re-framing project on the Beetle Cat.  Lee and Bob M. added several more, as we move aft in the boat. Nearly all the half frames that end at the centerboard slot have been replaced, and the full frames toward the transom are being done.  It is a slow, fussy, and laborious job, but it feels good to be contributing to the survival of another classic boat.

Bob fastens a frame on the starboard side. . .

while Lee does the same on the port,

The whaleboats were the last boats to leave the basin for the year. The other members of the ISM fleet are safely tucked away for the winter in the Navy Yard warehouse.  Once out of the water, and with a new coat of oil on her interior, the second of the whaleboats was trailered to the warehouse to join the fleet.

Bob F. fastens straps on the whaleboat.

Hitched up and almost ready to go.  See you next Spring.

With a goal of launching her next Spring, work continues on Misleading Lady. Newt is in charge of the finish carpentry and the stain and varnish jobs currently being done, and is carefully adding trim to the underside of the engine hatch covers.

Newt hand sands a strip of oak trim for the hatch cover underside.

The Oughtred Grey Seal, "Lagniappe" has her keel ballast fully installed.  The ballast was bedded in BoatLife, and through-bolted to the keel with nine 1/2 inch bronze rods.  Hours were spent drilling the holes through the lead, and even more hours went into drilling countersinks in the underside of the ballast to hide the lower washers and nuts.  

Ballast clamped into position for drilling

Holes drilled, and ready for a thick layer of Boatlife caulk.

Bob is drilling holes to countersink nuts at end of keel bolts.

Preparing for Winter

The fleet has been hauled, washed, and trailered to the warehouse for winter storage.  The basin looks fairly empty now, and will be until next spring.  The whaleboats are still in the water, and may be rowed a few more times before they too are hauled.  

George ties up whaleboat rigs for winter storage.

Whaleboat sail hanging out to dry thoroughly before being stored.

Inside the shop, however, there are boats and there is an increasing level of activity. We are gearing up for the student boatbuilding program, and expect that soon there will be as many as four or five small craft under construction by students and their advisers.  The front half of the shop has been cleared for the students, a special tool cabinet and a safety equipment locker have been installed, lofting boards have gotten a new coat of white paint, and we have begun to hear young animated voices over the din of shop machinery. 

Steve built a tool cabinet for the student boatbuilding programs.

Work on the Beetle Cat continues, with volunteers moving through the laborious task of removing and replacing frames.  About half of the frames have been replaced already as we move from bow to stern.  When the frames have been replaced, we will cut a new transom to replace the present one, which is showing signs of rot and has several significant cracks.   Even though we will not be putting on a new deck for a while, volunteers have begun to mill cedar and to cut out deck boards using the old ones for patterns.

Lee and Steve plane cedar to 1/2 inch thickness for deck boards.

The new kingplank is ready for installation.

Volunteers John and Bob fasten a new frame to the sheer clamp.

Lots of new frames in place and fastened.

Meanwhile, Newt is in charge of making the Ventnor runabout, Misleading Lady, as pretty as she was when she left the factory in 1928.  Careful cycles of varnishing and sanding are the only way to do this work, and that takes lots of time.

Varnish, sand, varnish, sand, varnish, sand . . .

The shop got a new resident this week. Volunteer Charles brought in his newly built Iain Oughtred designed "Grey Seal" named Lagniappe. She is a 22 foot gunter rigged sloop. Some heavy work, much more easily accomplished at WoW than in the garage will be done.  First on the agenda is the installation of the 1200 pound lead keel ballast.  Later, the engine will be installed and some standing rigging fabricated and installed.  

Steve, Charles, and Jeff plan the move of Lagniappe into the shop.

In position next to Misleading Lady.

The lead ballast being jacked up into position.

Putting the Beetle Cat Back Together

We have pretty much stripped the Beetle Cat down to her bones, and discovered most of her warts and wrinkles, and now we have begun to fix things.  The most glaring problems, the leaky centerboard case and three broken frames under the foredeck, are our first concerns.  We are removing the broken frames, and replacing them with new ones, one by one, so as not to cause the hull to distort.  

The first step is to break up the old, damaged frame and remove it in pieces. Then, the screws holding the planks to it can be backed out.

New frame fastened in place.  Next old frame forward has been removed.

The new frames need to be steamed, and bent on a jig made from hull templates.  For each frame to be replaced, we need to make a new template, and adjust the jig to match it.

A white oak strip gets steamed.

Frame bending jig with frame just removed.

After the new frame has cooled, it is inserted between the sheer clamp and the sheer plank, and pushed gradually past the keel and into the space between clamp and sheer plank on the opposite side.

Two frames in place.  The upper one has been clamped for screwing.

The new frame is clamped in place tightly against the planks, and against the floors.  Then it is ready for fastening with bronze screws. Where possible, we use the old screw holes in the planks, but if they have widened too much, we drill new ones, and will bung the old ones later.

Screws in place, mostly in newly drilled holes.

We managed to remove three frames, and replaced two of them by day's end. That leaves something for the next crew to do.

Meanwhile, Dockmaster George was finishing cleanup chores from last weekend's Old City Seaport Festival.  Among many tasks, the cannons used in the pirate battles needed their barrels cleaned out and oiled.

Multi-talented George cleans a cannon barrel.

Festival is coming.

Misleading Lady is still getting prettier by the day as more coats of varnish are added to stained mahogany and stain is being added to newly fine-sanded panels.  Latest to receive stain are the massive engine hatch covers.  Newt and volunteers are seeing the process through from beginning to end. Misleading Lady's owner has decided that the boat deserves to be finished to show-quality, so care, precision, and perfection are the standard.

Fine sanded mahogany engine hatch cover awaits staining.

A bit more dis-assembly was required on the Beetle Cat project.  Three cracked frames under the foredeck need replacement, and the only way to insert new frames, which must go gunwale to gunwale between the planks and the sheer clamps, is to remove the sections of deck above the repair location.  As with prior deck removal, these boards were fastened with copper ring nails.  They needed to be drilled out. First, using a bung cutter bit, the board is cut free of each nail.  Then, with the board removed, the nail can be pulled with a claw or cat's paw.  Slow work, but unavoidable.

Foredeck boards have been drilled out to expose damaged frame ends.

John S. removes screws and old, damaged frame.

Old frame has been chiseled out.  Screws are next to be removed.

Meanwhile, preparations are underway for the Old City Seaport Festival the weekend of October 12 and 13.  The ships have begun to arrive. First in was the schooner Hindu, out of Key West.  She sat at the Museum dock in the nor'easter rain and wind awaiting her comrades and the festival.

Schooner Hindu at the dock, through the windows of WoW.

A Tale of Two Boats, Chapter 2

The main focus of the shop continues to be two boats -- the 29 foot Ventnor "Misleading Lady," and the mid-1970s Beetle Cat.  The former continues to get more bright and shiny as her brightwork nears completion.  The latter has turned a corner, with disassembly nearly done, and reconstruction beginning.

The Beetle Cat's leaky centerboard case has been removed and she has been flipped.  The source of the centerboard case leak has likely been determined. The case was fastened to the keel with large copper nails hammered in from below.  Providing waterproofing between the case and the keel was a gasket made of canvas, probably saturated with bedding, which dried out over the decades.  The working of the case against the nails probably loosened the structure also. The case will be rebuilt and fastened in a more secure manner.

Once the hull was flipped, caulking could be removed, exposing seams that were much to wide.  

Removing the old caulk.

We will need to fix these seams!

Too many fasteners over too many repairs had left the keel around the centerboard slot looking a bit like swiss cheese.  Charles routed the keel out an inch wide and an inch deep around the slot, and replaced the holey wood with new strips of white oak.

Routing is complete

New oak strips glued in place.

The Beetle Cat's transom presented an unusual challenge.  It seems to have been oak, originally, but at some point a plastic pseudo-wood grain veneer was applied with what seems to be contact cement!  An unusual treatment, to say the least. The veneer has been removed, and slowly but surely the contact cement is giving its hold. If the oak comes up nicely, we will probably finish the transom bright.  Otherwise -- paint.

The transom with plastic veneer removed but cement very much in place.

Misleading Lady is fully in that iterative process of varnishing and sanding, as Newt works to build up a durable and brilliant smooth finish.  There is no substitute for slow, methodical, and careful work at this step, and quality and care show.

The transom has been restained and varnished.

The starboard side deck and coaming shine in the afternoon sunlight

The Tale of Two Boats

There are two boats in the shop these days. One is Misleading Lady, the 1928 Ventnor Boat Company craft which has nearly completed a thorough and meticulous restoration, and the 1970 vintage Beetle Cat sailboat, which is just beginning hers.  The Ventnor is receiving coat after coat of stain, sealer, and varnish and is taking on a bright, deep luster.  Every day she looks more yachty and more grand. At the same time, the Beetle is shedding parts and looking increasing forlorn.  In wooden boat restoration, as in many aspects of life, things tend to get worse before they get better.

Newt sands a side deck, in preparation for staining

Nearly there.

Last week, the Beetle gave up her coaming, rubrails, and deck canvas.  This week, she lost a few deck planks and is close to being divested of her centerboard trunk.  The trunk, just like virtually every centerboard trunk, leaks, and must be removed, inspected, and either repaired or replaced.  In the case of the Beetle, disassembling and removing the centerboard trunk involved removal of three foredeck planks, including the king plank, in order to gain access.  Then several members designed to brace the trunk against the deck beams could be removed. 

The process was complicated by the fact that the deck planks were fastened with copper ring nails which had corroded to the point where they had essentially become one with the surrounding wood.  Finally, we decided to drill around each nail with a bung cutter to remove the king plank.  While the plank will need to be replaced, it remains intact as a pattern for its replacement.

John and Lee prepare to remove the king plank to gain access to the centerboard trunk.

  

Jeff pounds out the brace holding the trunk in place.

The brace is removed and the entire trunk is accessible.

The sides of the centerboard trunk are fastened to the head ledges with through bolts, which were removed fairly easily.  Additionally, several copper ring nails had been added for good measure.  Removing them was not so easy.

Aft end of the centerboard trunk.  Nearly all the through bolts have been knocked out.

Once the trunk has been completely loosened, we will flip the boat to remove the trunk and begin to work on the planks.