Wei's boatbuilding blog: Small Craft Building: Week 2

This is the second week of our small craft building program. In this blog, you can find following contents:
- Review of the week 2 (video included at the end of the review)
- Looking forward to week 3
- Extra: Using Router to make the fillet edge of the laminate midship section (video) and marking gauge (video)

Review of the week 2
Monday
The first task finished on Monday is to glue the laminated stem,as last week we already fixed the stem to shape it.Vaughn showed us how to make the glue. Get yourself a icecream container, and then you can start to make glue: first, mix two liquid following the proportion of 1:5 (this is already set by the machine, so you do not have to worried about it, just push the pump and get what you want). Then, you mix the liquid from corner to corner until they are well mixed. After that, put powder in, and mix again. Notice do not put too much powder, it may smoke. Once you get your glue, you can start to spread it on those lamina of the stem.

Shaped Stem

Making glue

Jade and I spreading glue on lamina of the stem

After finishing spreading glue, we put all lamina together and use cramp fix them on the board again.Use hammer ( you do not want to crack any of these lamina, so when you hammering, use a piece of wood the protect them) to make all lamina flat. Then all you need to do is to wait for the glue go hard.

Laminating the stem

Hammer with a piece of wood

In the afternoon, we just draw the cutting plan on the wood from which we will get our skegs, thwarts and gunnels.

Tian and Kenny continued working on setting up frames.

Tuesday
We tried to cut the dory's bottom and transom out of the plank. According to the plan, the plank is really full used. Some of edges of transom and bottom are so close to each other, there is no enough room for the blade (another team, Hory Dory, does not have the same problem, as their plank is little bit bigger than ours, they have enough space for everything).It took us lot of time to figure out how to get everything we need from the plank. Chris (tutor) came and helped us for the planning. As the size of the plank is not big enough, he suggested us divide the transom into two parts, and scarf them. Then this solved everything (at beginning we thought we should strictly follow the plan and should not divide transom into two parts, hehe). Notice that you should leave enough space for the forward part of the bottom side for scarfing.The ratio for scarfing should be 1:8 (the ratio can be 1:6, 1:12 or sometimes even 1:4, in this case, the ratio is 1:8, which means that as the thickness of the plank is about 12mm, we should have 76 mm longer for scarfing)

Cutting plan for bottom and transom on the plank

Two parts of the bottom side

We also cut lamina for midship section. Steam them soft and shape them according to the plan. Later in the afternoon, Tian and I glued one of the midship section as another one needs more time for shaping, so we decided to leave it for Wednesday.

Wednesday
In the morning, Sebastien, Tian and I finished glueing the second laminated midship section. Kenny and Jade was working on the bottom side scarfing.

Kenny working on scarfing the bottom

Chris showing us how to use plane to make the scarf

Finished scarfing (Good job! Kenny)

After finish the scarfing, we need to glue these two parts get our bottom. The glue is the same used for laminating but without powder. And we need to spread glue on scarfing surface twice. The second time spreading glue should be when the first layer of glue become little bit hard.

Me spreading glue on scarfing surface

Putting two parts together is a task that requires skills and experiences.Film is used to prevent the holding wood being glued with the bottom. In order to make sure that the bottom parts are glued strong enough, we first need to crump them on the table), then, use some long sticks (see picture below) to keep pressure on the scarfing surface.