Filleting, Part 1 (or, "Dairy Queen Owes Me Big-Time")

I tried laying epoxy fillets along the stem post today.  It's my first-ever experience with filleting, and I was really trying for a strong start.  There are gaps between the panels, so I covered them with masking tape to keep the epoxy from falling through.  And a friend suggested using tape to simplify clean-up after the fillet's applied, so I surrounded the fillet area with more tape.

Then it was on to the instructions.  The epoxy here is not the pure, transparent fluid I've been coating panels with; here, it should be thickened with silica powder and miniscule glass bubbles.  Wharram recommends a consistency like "soft ice cream." Being American, I instantly thought "Dairy Queen" and went with it.  What a hassle!  You can't manipulate something like that, you can only pour it.  I poured, trying to get it to flow along the seam.  When it ran down the stem post to the bilge, I tried my hand at pushing a liquid uphill with a plastic knife.

As I fought that hopeless battle, it gradually became clear to me that my boat was leaking.  White fluid was dripping out the edges of the masking tape and pooling below.  I tried briefly to contain that mess, but soon realized there would be no Containment, the best I could hope for was Spill Mitigation.

Fortunately, I had had the foresight to lay plastic sheeting below my work.  Unfortunately, that had happened in a parallel universe inhabited by a slightly smarter version of me.  Here in this universe, there was no protective sheeting, only a growing puddle of epoxy directly on the concrete floor of our porch.  I wiped up the mess with some paper towels, grabbed some plastic, and spread it under the leaking hull. 

I then quickly mixed up another, smaller, much stiffer batch of epoxy and stirred it into the dwindling puddle of fluid in the bilge.  The result was a slightly more workable substance that I managed to push into some of the nooks and crannies of the bow.  Finally, I had done the best I could with what I had to work with, and cleaned up.  The score was clearly Epoxy Fillets 1, Rich 0.

Looking back on the debacle, it occurs to me that they may not have Dairy Queen in the UK.  Their standards of what constitutes "soft ice cream" would therefore be vastly different from my own.  Next time, I will try to use a firmer mix, and will post the story of the rematch here.

Rigging plans

I've been studying the crab claw rig a bit, hoping that it will make sense by the time I launch.  It's very different from Western sail rigs, so a lot of my experience won't apply.  Here are a few of the things I've learned:

Weather Helm
When I learned to wind surf last month, I had some trouble sailing downwind until I understood the physics of it.  As you turn off the wind, you naturally end up with all of the sail on one side of the board, and this creates weather helm - the sail is levering the board around.  To correct on a windsurfer, you center the sail over the board.

Weather helm - the "x" marks
the sail's center of effort

Weather helm corrected.
Note the center of effort is in line
with the hull.

I think the crab claw rig will behave similarly.  If the mast is vertical, all that sail area to one side will tend to turn the boat hard, as shown in the diagram at right.  But if one uses the shrouds to change the mast angle, as shown on the right, the weather helm disappears.

The practical offshoot of this is that I need to be able to adjust the shrouds as I'm sailing, which means I ought to lead those lines aft to the helm.  I'm picturing blocks rigged to the forward outrigger pole, and the lines running from the mast, through those blocks, and back to cleats on the aft outrigger pole.  This is a minor departure from the plans, as Wharram recommends a simple toggle & deadeye arrangement.


Reefing
I mentioned last week that crab claw sails are reefed in an odd manner.  In Western sailing, the sail area is physically reduced by tying (or rolling) some of the sail along the spar or headstay.  The crab claw doesn't reduce sail area at all - instead, there are "spill lines" that bring the spars together and spill wind.

Full sail

"Reefed - the sail is allowed to curve excessively,
spilling wind and reducing the boat speed.

I plan to rig this system on my Melanesia even though it's not in the plans, because I want it to be as seaworthy as possible.  I'd like to be able to sail her in open ocean conditions, and even if I never do, I've had bad experiences right here in our little Colorado lakes with sudden storms blowing up.  Being able to reef in high winds is the difference between being windblown flotsam and a working sailboat.

Practically, this means that I should have four more blocks rigged - two blocks for each reefing line, and one reefing line for each side of the sail.  These lines, too, will be led aft to the helm, where I'll cleat them off.  If you need to reef, that's not a great time to have to abandon the helm station and walk around in the canoe.

Rigging for Load Variations
Because steering the Melanesia depends on the sharp bow holding the water, she's rumored to sail funny when there's no crew to hold the bow down.  Wharram even recommends carrying a 5-gallon water jug (40 lbs) to ballast the bow when sailing without crew!

I've heard of some Melanesia sailors being completely unable to work to windward because of this problem.  But I know that moving the center of effort forward can increase the bow's tendency to slide off the wind.  So being able to change the angle of the mast by adjusting the forestay will be helpful in handling the boat as load changes occur.

Light load, rig tilted forward:
this boat will not go to windward.
The rig should be brought aft to improve
windward performance (I think).

Normal load, rig too far aft:
This boat will tend to round up into the wind,
making it hard to sail in any direction.
The rig should be brought forward to balance the helm.
(I think...)

The practical implications here imply that I need to be able to adjust the forestay, but not necessarily that it needs to be led aft like the other lines.  The only situation I can imagine where I'd want to quickly change the angle of the mast would be if I lost my crew overboard and needed to sail to recover them.  But in that situation, it would probably be best to let the sail luff and paddle to the swimmer.  So here, I'll probably use a toggle and deadeye arrangement like the plans suggest.

Disclaimer
All of these diagrams and ideas are based on "book learnin'" rather than actual experience.  It may be that once I get my Melanesia launched, I find I've got some part of this totally backwards.  We'll see; for now, I think I understand the way the rig will behave, and these are my best guess at ways to improve the seaworthiness of my Melanesia.

Thoughts on Stitching

Now that the hull is stored in a manner that allows me to quickly move it into and out of storage, I'm back to construction.  Today, I finished installing the stitches and began taking up slack in places where the seams were gapping too much.  I also screwed the seats in place (temporarily), as they're integral in shaping the hull as well. The rear seat really didn't seem like it was going to fit, but I used a clamp to bring the hull into alignment with it and it worked out.  Gradually, as I installed and tightened the stitches along the open seam, it closed up and took the shape it should have.

So, with the hull shape coming together nicely, I thought I'd collect a few lessons I've learned about stitching for the benefit of other builders.  Here they are, in no particular order:

• Wire stitching hurts.  The wire ends are sharp, and spaced closely enough that it's hard to avoid occasional scratches.  My hands look like I've been teaching a knitting class for feral cats.  
• I notice that a lot of photos from pro builders show zip ties rather than wire.  Presumably, that's because wire hurts.  But it's also stronger than zip ties are, and cheaper if you're salvaging waste wire from construction sites.
• If you're salvaging wire, you can remove it from its insulation with a knife blade.  Set the wire on a cutting board or work bench; press it in place with a sharp, strong blade angled to cut along the wire.  Pressing the knife against the cutting board, pull the wire past the knife rather than pushing the knife through the wire.  It's a vastly more efficient way to do it.
• If you're going to use zip ties, you might want to get a "fourth hand" tool (shown).  It's a bike tool designed to pull on cable while you adjust brakes; I discovered when working at bike shops that it's also great for tightening zip ties. 
• Zip ties would require larger holes than wire, so there would be a bit more filling required after you're done.  I've seen some builders complain about this.
• A single stitch point isn't strong enough to hold the hull shape near the twisty parts.  I tore a couple stitch points out trying to move the partially-assembled hull when those wires were all alone at that end.  I should have waited - all of the stitches, working together, are strong enough to prevent that problem.
• The plans mention a "pull, twist, pull, twist" rhythm for tightening stitches.  This works great.  But the best way I've found to pull is to lever my pliers against the hull, which occasionally gouges the ply there.  You might want a putty knife to place between the pliers and hull, to spread out the force of your prying pliers.
• If you're trying to close a gap, remember that no one stitch can do it alone.  (Remember, the individual stitches aren't that strong?)  Work along the line of stitches, one at a time, and watch the gap disappear gradually without stressing any stitch excessively.
• If you do pull a stitch through, you can either redrill holes slightly to the side, or use clamps instead of wire at that spot, depending on the shape you're dealing with.
• The beauty of stitch & glue construction is the flexibility of the hull during the stitching phase.  Take the time to get it right - aligned, symmetrical, perfect -- because once you start filleting, you're locking that hull shape in forever.
• And finally....  I've always fantasized about building in welded sheet aluminum.  I think you could stitch & weld just as easily, and skip a lot of epoxy coating.  If I ever build a larger boat, I'll be tempted to try it.

That's all for now.  Weather permitting, I'll put some more time in tomorrow and maybe be ready to start filleting by the end of the day.

Storage System

I've rigged a storage system on my porch with a couple wall hooks, a couple pulleys overhead, and a bit of rope.  I've managed to rig it so that there are three positions:

1. for pure overhead storage, 
2. hangs the hull at chest level (handy for stitching work), and 
3. hangs the hull at knee level (handy for fillets and other work where you really need access to the interior).

The system works like this:

The rope is tied to the stem and stern post handles, then goes to the overhead pulleys.  From there, it goes to the wall hooks.  There are two loops between the pulley and the wall hook, each corresponding to one or more positions.  The inline loop, when attached to the wall hook, yields the storage position (#1).  The bowline at the end of the line yields position #2.  And if nothing's attached to the wall hook, the inline loop jams the pulley and holds the hull at position #3.

Overall, it works okay, I guess.  The "overhead" position isn't quite over my head, which means that I occasionally gouge my scalp on stitching wire if I forget to duck.  But I'm taller than everyone else in the family, so I'm only inconveniencing myself.

I can't hang it higher because I'm joining two lines together (to save money) and the join won't pass through the pulley.  So obviously, it would be better to have enough rope to hang it properly.  I might re-rig it when I purchase the line for the sheets, shrouds and forestay.

And I think it would be better to have cleats on the wall, so that the system would be infinitely variable rather than the three-position rig I ended up with. But again, cleats are expensive. So I'll tough it out with this setup for a while longer - hopefully, the stitches will be replaced by fillets soon and it won't matter so much whether I knock into it.

It's a Boat! (Sort of....)

I stitched the sides panels on today.  The first was done before I left for work, and I added the second one after I got home.  There was a little trouble getting things to line up right - the sides want to ride up on the ends, leaving gaps at the chine and covering the handles.  But I was able to fix that by using a clamp between the gunwales and the keel, then tightening the wire stitches.

The hull takes a very slim shape until you force the seats into place.  This encourages the sides to curve properly, which helps the ends of the gunwales fit properly at stem & stern.  The seat shown is in only temporarily here -  I need to trim the aft seat to fit the taper of the hull before it will fit at all, and the forward seat needs to be notched to fit around the butt joints, too.  So the hull shape will change a bit yet, but it's not far off now.

With the seats in place, the hull has a beam of about 22" at the widest -- narrow! And it's long!  Assembled, it's not heavy, but it is awkward to move around.


There's still some stitching left to do.  After I get the last stitches in, tighten everything up and double-check the lines, it will be time to start packing the seams with epoxy fillets.

Ama (?)

We spent the weekend in the mountains, in the presence of good friends and a lot of tempting timber.  Finally, when I found a downed aspen trunk that looked straight enough and about the right size for the ama (outrigger), I couldn't take it any longer.  I asked our hosts if they would mind me taking the tree, and they gave their permission enthusiastically when they heard what I wanted it for.  Turns out they'd given permission for a relative to fell the trees for a project, but he got a job out of town before he could use them, and they'd been languishing since.

So I now have a 13' aspen log on my dining room table. 

I've stripped the bark off of it, and it's firm wood with no rot damage.  I've also taken from the plans some rough "by eye" guides for the shape of the finished ama's cross-section at certain points:

However, there's one small problem, and it has cropped up every single time I've dealt with found timber: It never turns out as perfect as you thought it would.  It's always a little crooked, or a little too short, or something. 

In this case, the aspen trunk is a bit crooked, but acceptably so.  The real issue is that none of what I brought home quite reaches the 4.75" diameter recommended in the plans.  The fat end is a little too skinny:

A 4.75" circle leaves gaps all around at the
fattest part of my ama candidate.  Is this okay?

and it just gets skinnier from there, down to around 3.00" diameter at the skinny end.  So there's a real chance that this ama won't provide enough flotation when it's on the leeward side, or enough weight when it's on the windward side.

On the other hand, it's aspen, so it's light and strong.  And it's by far the closest thing I've found so far, unless you count the two-piece aspen trunk offered to me by a friend.  And having stared at a fair number of tree trunks now, I have to say I'm not sure I can find anything else this straight.

As for whether it's too light.... outrigger guru Gary Dierking has instructions for a foam and fiberglass ama on his website, so flotation must matter more than weight.  Flotation is a product of size and density; this ama is a bit small, but it's also at the low end of the recommended density range, so it might work out after all.

So my plan is to set it aside, maybe work a little on shaping it when I have free time, but not to invest too much in this piece until I decide it's my best option.  When I'm done with the hull, I'll shape an ama out of the best piece of wood I have at that point.  If initial sea trials are disappointing, I might even try Gary's foam & glass option. 

Link Dump

Won't be much news around here for a couple days, so here are a couple links of interest to outrigger sailors.

• First, a document about how to handle the "Malibu Outrigger," a sailing outrigger one-design class.  Of particular note are the sections about safely launching and landing through the surf on a beach, which I've been wondering about.  This link comes to you courtesy of Tim Anderson, outrigger adventurer extraordinaire.
• And second, I've also been wondering how the heck one reefs a crab claw sail.  Well, according to this article on Proafile, one doesn't "reef" (i.e., reduce sail area) a crab claw.  But one can "de-power" it quite effectively by means of a line between the spars.  Scroll down to the section titled "Reefing" to read about it - though the rest of the page has some good info, too.

Dreaming

I managed only a little progress today.  The lashing pads I cut out last night are shaped and matched, a process made vastly easier by the belt sander.  There are 12 lashing pads, and I'm not great at assembly line work, so I had 12 slightly different rectangles when I set the saw down.  No worries - clamp them tightly together and run the belt sander over the edges until they're all identical(ish).

I put the first coat of epoxy on the lashing pads this evening.  While I was spreading epoxy, I coated the last little bit of the stem & stern post tapers, and did the flip side of the deck beams I started on yesterday.  Here's the night's work, all layed out and curing.

Life is about to get a little busy again - some wet weather is headed our way, which forces me to stow my panels indoors and keeps me from using little scraps of time here and there for small boat tasks.  And I don't expect any significant time to work on the boat out of the next five days. 

So I've started dreaming a bit, which is dangerous.  (cue dream sequence sound effects...) One of my dreams for this boat is to take it on some coastal expeditions.  I'd start out with something mild and forgiving, like Padre Island, Texas, but I'd love to someday sail California's Channel Islands in it, like Tim Anderson did in his slightly larger outrigger canoe.

And, don't forget, there are also the WaterTribe races, the "best known" example being the Everglades Challenge.  All of their races are designed to test small craft and their skippers for versatility, seaworthiness, endurance and portability.  Entrants frequently use sea kayaks or similarly minimalist boats, sometimes rigging a sail for the downwind portions.  But there are also classes for small mono- and multi-hull sailboats. The Melanesia would fit the Class 5 definition, I believe, provided something were done about reefing the crab claw sail and building positive flotation into the hull.  Personally, I'm not big on swamps, gators or mosquito clouds, so I might give Florida a pass.  But the North Carolina Challenge?  That sounds fun. 

Whoah, there, did I just say out loud that I'd like to enter my as-yet-unbuilt outrigger canoe in a 100-mile endurance race, or sail it offshore in Southern California?  That's crazy talk.  Get the boat built, learn to sail it, try a little local camping expedition with it, maybe.  That's lofty enough for the time being. 

But it's definitely true that these crazy visions keep me motivated.  There's not much glamour in mass-producing lashing pads, so every little bit helps.

Sweating the Small Stuff

Here's a tip for any aspiring Melanesia builders out there: finish shaping all of your parts before epoxy coating them.  Otherwise, you'll end up having to do tiny-batch coating on things like the stem- and stern-post tapers, which is where I am now.  It's frustrating because it's keeping me from stitching the panels together and moving forward.

Since I'm using pumps with my epoxy, the smallest batch I can mix is way too big for the tiny spots I'm coating, so I've been looking around for other small parts to work on.  Oh, yeah, the deck beams and lashing pads!  Completely forgot about those....  So I put a first coat on the deck beams and cut out a bunch of lashing pads last night.  I'll finish the last of the stem/stern post touch up today, and coat the pads & beams while I'm at it.  Once that's done, it will be stitching time.

Melanesia Video

For a while now, I've been searching for video of a Melanesia under way.  It would be so helpful to see the rig in action, to see somebody using a steering oar, to see the details of somebody else's finished boat.  But there were none... until a few days ago.  Here's Youtube user andy4us's video, taken during a sea trial in his almost-finished Melanesia:

Momentum

Stem post - what will become the bow.

A long weekend and some beautiful weather gave me the opportunity to really leap forward on the build.  By the end of the day today, I had the sheer stringer/gunwale bonded to one of the side panels, bevels planed on all panel edges, and had begun stitching the bottom panels together.

Stitching is a major milestone, because it's at this point that the boat stops being an entirely imaginary thing.  As you can see in the photo at right, the stitching process transforms flat panel shapes into a curved hull section.  It is now possible to squint and see the boat emerging from all of this work.

That said, I've really stitched more together here than I should have.  The stem and stern post finish work isn't complete - there's Sharpie and rough epoxy visible on the stem post photo at right - so I need to extract them, sand 'em a bit further, and lay on some more epoxy before reassembly.  I couldn't help myself, I needed to see the shape.

Center frame forces panels near-horizontal;
in distance, stem post forces panels near-vertical.
Between, ply visibly twists into the proper shape.

When you begin stitching the bottom panels together, there's nothing to keep them from lying flat, face-to-face.  That's where the frames come in.  There are two frames, one exactly amidships and another about 35" further aft.  They force the plywood to lay almost flat at those spots, and the stem- & stern-post stitching force the plywood to lay almost vertically at the ends.  In between, you get a "tortured plywood" hull shape that transitions gradually for the first 8' of the hull, and more quickly at the stern.  This produces a sharper bow and a rounder stern, which are important in handling the canoe under sail later on.

Over the next week, I'll complete the second gunwale installation, drill the side panels to mate with the bottom panels and end posts, and complete the finish work on the end posts.  Once those things are done, it will be time to complete the stitching, at which point I'll appear to have a hull.  But the stitching wire's job is just to hold the hull in shape temporarily.  That shape then gets bonded together permanently with fillets (thick seams) of thickened epoxy and fiberglass tape.

I suspect that the filleting will take a couple weeks worth of evenings and weekends, and there are the decks to install, too.  So we're not likely to have a complete hull before mid-October at the earliest.  And even then, there's the issue of coming up with the ama, outrigger poles, steering paddle, spars, completed sail, rigging.... sigh.  This canoe will almost certainly not sail this fall.  But it's conceivable that it might float as a paddling canoe before winter sets in.  That would be great motivation for the finishing touches, so that I can have a proper launching in the spring.

Even that modest goal of a spring launch is the product of a rosy outlook, but it's a rosy outlook fueled by the vision of a hullshape finally starting to emerge from my odd collection of plywood shapes, and that should keep me rolling for a while.

Impatient!

With life settling down a bit, I've been anxious to make some headway on the boat.  I'm in the middle of epoxy coating the interior panels, which requires two coats to achieve an even, thorough protective layer.

Unfortunately, you can't rush the chemical process of curing epoxy.  So I've been coating, waiting, sanding, cleaning, coating, waiting....  I've set up a workstation in the back yard, where I have a piece of plywood on sawhorses and covered with a sheet of plastic.  The weather has held, for the most part, and the only real problem is the thousands of grasshoppers who can't wait to scratch their initials in my finish surface.

The payoff for all this waiting, though, is very exciting: the next step is stitching the hull panels together.  That will be a red-letter day.

Other facets of the build....

• Rounding up found lumber: as mentioned before, I have a line on a carbon fiber windsurfer mast.  No real movement on other poles or the outrigger ama itself.
• Sailmaking:  I'm displeased with the quality of my hand-stitched center seam, and trying to figure out how to run the fabric through my wife's fragile sewing machine.  Need to source some stout machine-friendly thread and learn how to use the infernal device....
• Paddles: I lofted the lines for the steering paddle onto a piece of scrap 2x12 the other day, but the plank has a lot of twist to it, and I don't think that's going to work.  So I think I need to go buy more wood to laminate another blank together, before trying to shape it.  I also need to get belts for my 1950's Craftsman belt sander.  The teardrop-shaped propulsive paddles are awaiting final finish sanding and varnish.