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.

More Sailmaking

For some reason, I'm loathe to break out the sandpaper and finish the fillets in my hull.  But time's a-wasting, so I need to make some sort of progress on the boat.

There's still the sail to work on, so this morning my son and I broke out the infernal device the sewing machine.  We retouched some segments of the center seam that were sloppy or crooked, or where the machine skipped stitches.

Then we got out the batten, and sketched in the hollow in the leach (mouth?) of the sail.  I triple-checked to ensure that it really was cut that way, and not just shown curved in the drawings because that's how it looks when you're sailing.  But no, I'm pretty sure that's actually how it should be cut.

So we sketched and cut the hollow, then hemmed it to a length of polypropylene webbing.  It looks much more like a crab claw sail with that curve in place.

The next step will be to hand-stitch the bolt ropes into the seam along the head and foot of the sail, and again outside the seam.  That rope will be used as eyelets when we lace the sail to the spars.

Speaking of spars, I picked up three impressive lengths of straight, dead aspen at a friend's cabin last weekend.  I haven't decided yet if they're to be spars or kiato, or some of each.  But they represent some more non-hull progress.  So even though I'm avoiding the fillets, I'm still moving the project forward.

Budget Update

I mentioned recently that I was out of glass bubbles (an important filleting additive) and getting low on epoxy.  So I've placed another order with Merton's, to the tune of $67.24.  This brings the epoxy lineitem in my budget up to $243.76, and the total cost thus far to $595.89. 

For those of you keeping score at home, that's around $150, or roughly 33%, over the initial budget estimate, which I arrived at by converting Wharram's budget estimate from British pounds to US dollars. 

But the "good news" is that I'm not only well over budget, I'm also well behind schedule.  Extra time means extra time to save money towards the build.  So while I'm not thrilled to be over budget, I do at least have the money to spend.  If I had reached this point in the build last fall, I would have had to put the build on hold while I saved up for more materials.

Oh, and that Merton's box showed up yesterday, so I should be able to produce some more construction news shortly.  That's all for now.

Chine Fillets and Shaping the Ama

Saturday hovered slightly below epoxy-curing temperatures all day, frustratingly.  I'd sworn I would make some progress this weekend. 

You can see how the ama is a little crooked.
I figure the traditional boats made do with what
they had available, and they sailed fine.
Right?  If it doesn't work out, I think I'll probably
just make a foam & fiberglass one for version II.

Well, if you can't work with epoxy, you can at least work on the other parts of the boat, right?  I pulled the ama (outrigger log) out of storage and went after the ends, which I'd done only a little rough shaping on before.  After a bit of work with saw and rasp, I was pretty happy with the shape.

Stern end of the ama is a little fatter than the
bow, because most of the boat's weight will be
carried aft (I think).

 

 

I pulled out my 1950's-vintage Craftsman belt sander and did a bit of general sanding along the length of the  ama so that it will be ready to paint.  I'd call that effort about half-done; I stopped because the old sander was starting to sound like it needed another overhaul.

Today warmed quickly to around 75 degrees, and I had a fairly open schedule, so I lowered the hull and prepped the chine fillets.  This involved sanding the epoxy-coated plywood I'd be laying the fillets on, hammering the copper stitches down so they wouldn't protrude from the fillets, and masking the entire length of the chines so that I can have a nice clean edge when I'm done. 

I also masked the benches, thinking I might as well fillet them into place while I'm at it.  And I prepared the lashing pads for installation - I forgot to put them on the panels before stitching the hull together.

Chine fillets done.  Note how smooth they are,
compared to the bilge fillet.  Also visible are
the lashing pads (clamped in place) and the
bench fillets.

Finally, I began mixing and applying fillet epoxy.  I've hit on a pretty dependable recipe - 4 pumps each of hardener and resin, then 3 little cat food cans full of microballoons and 3/4 of a can of silica thickener.  The resulting paste is workable, but doesn't sag or flow much at all, a vast improvement over my earlier efforts.

It took 4 batches - 16 pumps in all - to fillet both chines.  Then I changed over to microfiber & epoxy to glue the lashing pads to the hull.  Unfortunately, I grossly overestimated the amount of epoxy needed to do that job, so I was facing the prospect of about two pumps worth of waste.  I hadn't done the benches yet, so I scrambled to mix in the thickener and glass bubbles that would allow that. 

The somewhat gloopy bench fillets.  Since the mix
was so wet, I won't be able to remove the tape
until tonight at the earliest.

Of course, my trusty recipe was off because I was starting with an unknown amount of resin (after applying some to the pads).  So I ended up with a somewhat drippy mix that produced a nice, curved fillet but dripped down the sides a bit.  Cleaned it up with a paper towel as best I could, but I expect there will be some remedial sanding required to fix the drips when it's all cured.

All in all, a very productive weekend.  Looking ahead, there's a bit more filling and sanding to do on the fillets, then I'll be fairing the outside of each, and then (finally) it will be time to fiberglass them.  But I'm almost out of glass balloons, and getting low on epoxy, too.  So I will probably need to place an order for some supplies first. 

Bilge Fillet Complete-ish

Nice weekend weather gave me a window of opportunity to finish up the center seam on my canoe.  I remembered to use the tape trick this time, and the line came out nice and clean (except for the horrors of the frame fillets).  Considering that I don't intend to paint the interior, I think I can live with the result.

The reason I describe it as "complete-ish" rather than "complete" is that there's a sanding and fiberglass taping step still to do.  One smooths the top of the fillet out into a graceful curve, then epoxy and glass tape are applied to protect and strengthen the joint.  Combined with the filler and glass tape on the exterior side of the joint, the result is sort of an I-beam structure that gradually blends into the plywood.

Also, there's a bit of remedial filleting to do before we can glass over it.  Towards the bow, my mixture was a little thin and didn't fill as high as the wire stitches, as you can see in the second photo here.  The glass tape really needs to have a smooth surface to sit on, or else you get bubbles of air beneath it.  So I'll have to fill that in a little, too.

But I think I'll fillet the chines and the outsides of the joints first - that way, I can do my glassing all at once.  Hopefully, that will give me a chance to get "good at it" and produce a better result.

The weather man says that our unseasonably warm temperatures will continue for most of this week, so there should be some good opportunities for filleting in the early evenings.  More news as it happens....

<SARCASM>Oh, How I've Missed This</SARCASM>

It's been a really, really long time since I had anything to report on the boat building front.  I let a week of warm temperatures slip by without resuming the project, because I was finishing up a car project (not a Land Rover, but sort of close: a 1987 4Runner) during that time.  But the 4Runner is finally sorted & registered, and I seem to recall stating a spring 2012 launch goal for this canoe, so when the temperatures rose to epoxy-curing levels again, I knew it was time to put the excuses aside and get to work.

I lowered the hull, swept and vacuumed the dust out of it, and mixed a big batch of thick fillet epoxy to do the semi-vertical stern joint with.  Found that a cat had urinated in the boatbuilding supplies box, right on my dust mask, so I had to mix without a mask.... Had a little trouble getting the mixed epoxy into my ad-hoc applicator system (the Ziploc bag with a corner cut off).... Accidentally spilled epoxy on my table saw table.... And proceeded to make a fair mess of the work, to boot.

When the spills were cleaned up, and all the epoxy had been coaxed into its rightful place (more or less), I straightened up and surveyed the carnage.  To be fair, the stern looks better than the bow, really, and both of these places will be covered by the decks when the boat is done, so I should stop complaining.  Despite the hassle of filleting, it really is good to be back at work on this project.  As long as the weather holds, I'll be working to meet that launch goal, and I'll keep you posted.

Videos Are All I Can Offer When It's This Cold Out

Greetings, loyal reader.  Between the frigid weather which keeps my epoxy from curing, and the long list of home maintenance/repair tasks I've been working on lately, there's not much new here in Coastal Colorado.

BUT there are a few exciting new videos to share.  First, Austrian builder Tom Puchner has posted a well-made video of his beautiful Melanesia "Velella" under sail in force 3-5 winds. Velella has admirable finish quality, and I'm especially jealous of his bamboo spars, kiato and hiking poles.

Not only is it the best Melanesia sailing vid on Youtube at the moment, it's also the first one with a decent view of the steering and sail-handling work required.  The video is shot using a GoPro HD camera lashed to the outrigger pole, providing a good view of what's going on.  A few particulars I'd like to point out:

• Tom's wearing a wet suit, and with good reason.  The Melanesia is a very wet boat - it comes from a culture that never really had cold weather to contend with.  
• He moves around a lot when sailing it.  Crew weight placement matters a lot in the Melanesia.
• There's a tacking sequence that starts around 5:30 that gives an idea of how snappy these things are through the wind.  Tom lifts the paddle from the water and sets it in the hull, then scoots forward to encourage the stern to slide around.  He tries once or twice to complete the tack by handing the sail across to the other side, but that doesn't work, so he paddles the bow through the eye of the wind and sheets in.  Elapsed time is close to a minute.  The former casual monohull racer in me cringes at the idea of a tack taking longer than 15 seconds.  I wonder if he'd do better with some ballast stored in the bow?  I've read that can help with this problem. 
• Compare all that to the jibe at around 0:55.  Just point downwind, flick the sail over to the other side, disentangle one's self from the sheet, and you're done.  Clearly, jibes are far easier than tacking in these, and there was no violence to the transition like you'd expect from other sail shapes.
• I wonder if it would be better to mount the mainsheet lower on the spar, and lead it to a point a little further forward, out of the ?  It seems to be causing Tom some trouble.
• In a strong breeze and when the wind's on the hull side (as opposed to the outrigger side), the outrigger float ("ama") dives and throws up considerable spray.  I happen to know that Tom's using a very sleek and buoyant homemade foam ama, so when you notice that happening, imagine it being much worse on a boat with a timber ama like the one I'll probably use.  

What else do you see in Tom's video?

Next up, another, much briefer Melanesia video from an unknown francophone builder.  This one offers a few still shots of the canoe strapped to a van roof and being assembled on the beach, then cuts to some footage taken from inside the canoe while under way.  The camera's POV is too close for the kinds of insights that we get from Tom's video, but there are some good views of the sail lacing and steering position, and the canoe scoots along nicely with two adults aboard. 

The final video I have for you is the launching of James Wharram's latest design, the Melanesia's big sister "Amatasi."  Like Melanesia, Amatasi is a design that carries strong ethnic influences.  It does not use crab claw sails, but it does use the steering paddle and the general hull shape is very similar to the somewhat smaller Tahiti Wayfarer.  The video doesn't really show the craft under way, but it does offer a chance to see designers James Wharram and Haneke Boon in a moment of triumph.

That's all for  now.  I hope to be able to bring my hull into the house for a couple work sessions after the holidays, but until then there's not likely to be much to write about in this boat building blog.