Sail Progress: Bolt Rope Installed

With some weird late-winter weather interrupting our early summer, I've been able to spend some time sewing the bolt rope into the edge of my sail without feeling guilty: surely you don't expect me to work on the hull when it's 43°F and raining?!?

The bolt rope is an actual rope sewn into a hem along the edge of the sail.  It provides a simple way to reinforce the edge so that stresses are well-distributed without a complicated seam.

Tonight, I put the finishing stitches in.  For those of you keeping track at home, that's about 26' of hand-stitching. Sewing is not my strong suit, so it was tough work.  I actually missed the infernal device!  But the sail really looks like a sail now.

There's still more rope to sew on, but that goes outside the hem, and is merely sewn/lashed to the interior bolt rope at 6" intervals.  I suspect it will be quicker work.  Before I can do it, though, I'll need to buy some line at the local hardware store. I don't have enough of the used polypro rope I pulled out of a trash can to complete the job.

I'll try to pick up that line, and maybe some sandpaper, tomorrow. And if this weather holds, I might just pull out the infernal device again to sew on my sail numbers and Wharram insignia, too.

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.

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.

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.