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. 

JAWS

Today was Easter Sunday, so I spent most of my time cooking and groaning about how much food I'd eaten.  The rest of the day was a bit frustrating.  I had time to devote to the boat, but none of the next steps were ready to go.  So I used the extra time to clean the covered & screened back porch, which was desperately overdue.  Not only have I begun to stack boatbuilding tools and materials in there, but it's also a dusty, disorganized mess due to its winter role as a dumping ground for muddy shoes, kid debris, etc.  Since I am trying to use the space for my build - without preventing the rest of the family from enjoying it when I'm not working - I really had to clear out the junk and give it a good sweeping.  Well, that's done now.  While it doesn't exactly qualify as boatbuilding, it certainly was a necessary step in the process.

Mast jaw with joining cut

I also managed to find something useful to do in the evening, which has to do with the title of this blog entry.  I have a couple crotches cut to use as boom jaws.  Tonight, I trimmed one of them down to nearly the recommended diameter.  That was a lot of work, and I have about a half-gallon of wood chips to show for it, even though I was only going from 2.25 to 1.75 inches diameter.  Once that was done, I cut a stepped diagonal shape into it as detailed in the plans.  That process was sketchy.  The plans show the cut and the method of joining the jaw to the crabclaw spar, but they don't detail the length of the cut, or the angle, or any other guiding info about this particular bit of joinery.  Apparently, one is supposed to eyeball it. 

Eyeballing joinery is not my strong suit.  But I eventually decided to go for it; by starting on the crotch, I'm not risking much, as I've got at least one spare already cut.  In the end, it turned out reasonably well, though it didn't exactly follow the lines I'd shakily drawn in to guide me.  But the diagonal cut surface is nice and flat, and it is believable that I could do it again on the end of my spar if I needed to.  We'll see if my optimism is justified.

Once I have two pieces that fit nicely together, the plans indicate that they should be pinned and lashed together.  This seems awfully shaky to me.... I wonder if there's supposed to be epoxy involved, or not?  It's not mentioned anywhere, but the shape of the joint suggests it.

Another (rare) example of ambiguity in the plans is that there are a couple small timber bottom frames specified, but they're not listed in the timber shopping list.  It's no big deal, as they are to be cut from 40x20mm timber, and I have plenty of scrap 1x4" pine left from a home improvement project.  I checked with my calipers, and the nominal 1" thickness is about 19mm, which I think is close enough.

Since I haven't spoken much about the plans yet, I'll try to collect my thoughts on that matter over the next few days.  And I should have my lumber ripped to the plan dimensions on Wednesday night, which means I can start lofting by the end of the week, and begin cutting the plywood soon thereafter.

Trees, trees, trees....

A busy week behind me, one in which I had little time to work on the boat.  But that doesn't mean it wasn't on my mind.  Every sapling I passed was evaluated for its suitability as a pole. I stole the occasional moment to debark some of the 3/4" diameter poles I've collected.  And on Friday after work, I managed to fell and limb a small tree that will make one of my two crabclaw spars.

Tonight, after a busy day of swimming with the kids, I slipped off to Home Depot for some dimensional lumber.  I purchased one 16' 2x4 to rip down for the gunwales, two 8' 2x4's to make my steering paddle, and a 4' 1x12 for the seats.  All of these pieces will require careful ripping down to smaller widths & thicknesses,  but my friend Steve has a beautiful SawStop saw in a location that will accept 16' lengths, and has graciously offered to let me use it, so we have the ability to do the precision cutting we need. 

Speaking of 16' lengths, it's a little shocking to me, after chasing straight 13' trees around in arid Colorado, that there are trees around big enough to pull 16' lumber out of.  The store had 16' lengths of pieces as big as 4x4 or 2x10.  That's a huge tree.  It's pretty humbling to think of how long it would take to grow such a long 2x4; I'll try to deserve the wood by not messing up and having to scrap any of it.

All this wood is Douglas Fir from the Pacific Northwest, which may not be sustainably sourced, but at least it's harvested under first-world labor and environmental laws.  It makes me think of the role big timber and shortages of the same have played in world history.  Easter Island became uninhabitable because they ran out of canoe trees.  England's dominance of the seas in the 18th & early 19th centuries owed a lot to the giants they harvested in their North American colonies - trees they were dependent upon because such timber was getting hard to find at home.  The American Revolution was a pretty significant blow because it reduced England's access to quality shipbuilding timber - though eastern Canada continued to provide for a while.

In my case, I got all the dimensional lumber my project will require, plus a 3/4" drill bit, for just $21.47.  Once I get this lumber cut to its final shape, I'll be able to use some of the 16' gunwale timber to loft the cuts on the plywood.  So buying and cutting this lumber is the critical next step that's been keeping other things from happening.

Found and store-bought lumber together for the first time.

Here's a pile of my lumber and found wood on the back porch, leaning up against two sheets of marine plywood and a decommissioned mountain bike.  Longer pieces aren't shown here because they didn't fit into this space, but I'm trying to keep everything under cover in what has turned out to be a very wet spring.  The found timber is stored vertically to encourage drying and keep it from warping.  In this picture, you can see 2x4's, several of the peeled poles, as well as some unpeeled ones and a few "Y" shapes that are candidates for making the spars.

A Quiet Weekend

After picking up the plywood on Friday, I had hoped I might carry that momentum through the weekend - maybe get the paddle laminations done, or visit my friend with the table saw to rip the gunwales....  But in the end, I had to settle for finishing my three deadeyes, and getting a little further with the found lumber. 

I felled a diseased elm that hangs over our driveway on Saturday, and was able to get one good timber "Y" crotch out of it.  The rest was too crooked to use, sadly.  I found another crotch on something I brought home a few days ago, but it's shaped oddly and may not be usable.

I peeled the bark off of most of my outrigger sticks ("tuki"), and they are pleasingly solid pieces all.  The plans don't definitively indicate how long they should be, so I'm not sure how many lengths I have right now. 

I also noticed that I had been wrong about the length of the outrigger poles ("kiato").  I was thinking they needed to be 12' long like the ama, but the plans actually say 10' is adequate.  I think I had been confusing them with the crabclaw spars.  So I found one piece long enough on my yard, and spotted another couple down the street that I need to ask about before the neighbors haul them away.  That could resolve all of the poles, leaving me with just the ama and spars to find.

I've spotted a roadside strip where the utility company is cutting trees that are getting too close to the power lines overhead.  A couple of the trees in question are long, straight and skinny.  I'm thinking of taking those down myself, or leaving a note asking that they be left whole.

And on the ama issue, I'm not sure whether to try to join 9' and 3' pieces of aspen trunk to make my 12' ama.  It's hard to imagine that kind of joint handling the punishment I suspect the ama will take, though if I could perform a pinned, epoxied and taped diagonal scarf, it should be strong enough.  I stopped by my friend's house to look at the pieces in question, but he wasn't home.

In non-Melanesia news, my brother and I got the mast partner installed (correctly this time) on our Teal project.  And we cut decking to go on the bow and stern, which really makes it look more like a boat somehow.  That project is probably a little more than a month from being rowable at our current schedule of a couple hours per week (he's a busy college student).  It only needs the shoe and skeg installed, the chines taped & epoxied, and a couple coats of paint. 

It will be some time longer before it's ready to sail, as that requires building and finishing rudder, leeboard, mast and boom, not to mention sewing a sail.  There is a real possibility that my boat will be ready before his, since it's a simpler design, simpler process, and will benefit from all the lessons I learned working on his boat.

That's all for now.  I don't expect any progress for the next few days, as we have a busy Monday through Wednesday here.

Toggles, Deadeyes and Found Wood

I walked home from work today, shaping my first deadeye with my Leatherman tool as I went.  By the time I got home, it was nicely formed and smoothed.  Since the line in the outer rim will be eye spliced tightly on to the deadeye and stationary, it doesn't really have to be perfectly round, so the drill press idea is probably overkill.  I started a couple more of them after I got home.  I'm playing with different ways of forming the groove around the circumference, with mixed results. 

Homemade teak toggles and deadeyes

I also made three toggles  to secure the lines after they pass through the deadeyes.  They're the rectangles in the photo.  Line passes through one hole in the toggle, then through the center of the deadeye, then back through the other hole in the toggle and is tied off there.  This way, when the line is tensioned, the toggle prevents it from slipping.

I also spotted a brush pile in a field along my route home, and found 5 more decent ama attachment sticks.  This puts me close to having enough of those, which is great.  But... it also means that I need to start worrying about the serious wood - the ama, the spars and the outrigger poles.  All of these things are much longer and stouter than what I've found easily in my wanderings.  Hopefully, I'll be able to take stock of what I actually have over the coming weekend, so I can make a plan for finding what I lack.

Materials, pt. 2: Found Timber

One neat thing about the Melanesia is that it calls for several pieces of found timber, to be used as spars, outrigger poles, outrigger attachment sticks, and the outrigger itself.  The plans give detailed specifications, including length, diameter, and, in the case of the outrigger float, ideal density.  They go on to recommend certain species of tree that might be good for each purpose, and mention that bamboo is acceptable for most of these applications as well.

Dimensional lumber can be substituted, but it's described as an inferior choice, and I'm on a tight budget anyway, so there's no reason to go that route.  I'm tempted by the idea of using bamboo poles because of their incredible strength to weight ratio, which would really maximize the boat's performance.  But poles are prohibitively expensive, because they don't seem to be available locally, and only expensive trucking companies will ship parcels as long as 12-13 feet.  So found lumber it is.

James states in the Melanesia plans that using found timber will change your relationship to your environment, because you'll suddenly find yourself assessing every tree you pass.  I can confirm that this is the case.  In the last week, I've noticed dozens of trees along my daily commute that never caught my eye before.

The plans actually list a density figure for the outrigger float (ama) of 30lbs/cu. ft.  Not knowing wood densities by heart, I looked it up and found that elm, the most plentiful wood in my back yard, is too heavy.  Pine, which is abundant in Colorado, is all over the density table at 23-55lbs/cu. ft.  Some varieties are light enough on paper, and a friend has a few dead pines standing on land near his cabin in the mountains that I could have.  But I have a theory that our dry climate produces a denser pine than is typical.  The growth rings are pretty slim on the pines I've seen; I might find something suitable, but it would take a bit of looking.

We have plenty of cottonwood about, but it's rarely straight, and I think it has all the structural virtues of soggy cardboard.  It's an odd, spongy wood, and I don't think it could be used for anything on my boat.

Another common Colorado wood that is well under the maximum density but stronger than cottonwood is our fabled quaking aspen.  I happen to have a friend who's been battling a blight in a stand of aspens he owns, and frequently brings chunks of dead aspen over when we host bonfires.  I buzzed him, and he has a trunk that would be promising, but it's a little short.

So for the moment, the ama could end up being two pieces of aspen joined together, a pine trunk from the mountains, or a particular elm in my backyard.  Unless I find something better.  I'm considering calling around to local tree services and see if anyone has a better aspen trunk available.

As for the rest of the pieces, I scored a few small sticks of unknown species for the outrigger attachment role.  They're supposed to be about 0.75" and springy; I chanced on a pile of saplings the city had cut near our bike path, and found several decent lengths of the right diameter.  There are 12 of those sticks; I have at least 3 or 4 now, possibly more.  I stripped the bark off a few of them this evening after work, and they seem perfect for the job.

I have one or possibly two standing elms that could make outrigger poles, and I found a couple pieces in my neighborhood this evening that might make good spars, if they're long enough.  Length seems to be the biggest problem.  Twelve feet is long, apparently longer than I think, because I keep bringing home sticks that are too short to use anywhere.

And a couple good crotches are required to make the spars.   I'm pretty sure I can take them from the elms in our back yard.

I'm sure there will be plenty more to say on the subject of found materials in the days to come.  I'll be nervous about it until I see a neat stack of stripped poles against the shed.