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plans Blog (May 2009 - August 2010) Blog 3 (April 2010 - ) Contact
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Starting by the keel
Even though no jobs on the whole project are quite
the same, we do pick up tricks at each step that help with the next.
It is good then, when
it is possible, to start by the easiest and end by the harder
tasks.
The plating started on the keel, I appreciated
starting by flat, easy to
trace surfaces. I got to warm up my hands with the plasma cutter on
strait lines and find out how to move plates around with not to big of
pieces. Getting the keel fully plated and welded up before plating the
rest of the hull also allowed us to fill it with lead from ground level.
Just A few pounds of lead
Who
wants lead soup? Ever seen rocks float? Lead melting is always a lot of
fun....the first ten minutes...than...it's a chore. It's a strange
thing the first time you lift a ladle full of lead, you
realize how conditioned your brain is to certain things as you expect
the usual weight of a ladle full of soup, not lead.
Alien? No just some fool cooking very
heavy and toxic stew
Dealing
with the lead is the second on going nightmare (after
sandblasting...but before welding, grinding and painting). First, one
has to find it, then buy it, transport it, store it, melt it, mold it,
stack it...and whatever... complain about it. Luckily it's also the one
part of the boat that keeps increasing in value without extra
work!
 
Stacking
a first load of ballast: 4600lbs of freshly baked lead ingots. I
(Murielle), am taking all the credit for the great idea to install all
the lead we already had in the keel before plating. Based on a few
basic
physics concepts (potential energy gain and loss, efficiency, laziness)
this decision saved us much, energy and time, hence: work.
We
filled four compartments with 10 in of lead and caped it with a welded
lid. Unfortunately that's still not it for integral ballast and some
more ballast will be removable for the road transport and trimming.
Sandblasting - Phase two
More
sandblasting fun! As I mentionned previously we are sandblasting all
the inside surfaces prior to assembling with the hope that it will make
the final blast faster and make for a better prepared surface. An other
reason to proceed this way is that a lot of the plating area is hidden
behind the longitudinal frames and ribs, and will not get blasted when
the boat is all built. Those areas also won't be as well protected by
paint as they are somewhat unreachable. By pre-blasting the plate we
guaranty the steel is clean of the mil scale, reducing risk of
electrolytic corrosion.
Sandblasting
has been an issue we started thinking about early before starting
building the boat. It represents a lot of work and requires big
equipment (bigger the compressor, the better), we were concsient it
could well be our main logistic nitghmare. We tossed many ideas: buying
gear, renting it, bringing a contractor in....all had there pros and
cons but non satisfied us until we found our awsnser no further than
down our road.
We were walking the dog when a familiar white noise cought our
attention. Sandblasting, we were hearing serious sandblasting coming
from behind "Terry's restauration shop".
We have come to some very convinient and flexible agreement with Terry
and do all our blasting with his equipment.
The hull required 27 steel
sheets
5x10 ft and 25 sheets 4x8 ft, that represent a lot of surface. Blasting
it all at once would of made it a nitghmare, so we decided to go by
bareable loads. Terry offered we get our plates delivered to his yard
to limit the transport of steel up and down the road and our friendly
farmer neighbour offered his wagon for the few times we would need it.
These
sorts of helpfull offers have made our project come along much
smoother.
On s'amuse encore avec du
sablage! comme je l'ai deja mentionne sur une autre page, on sable
toutes les surfaces intereur prelablement a l'assemblage en
esperant qu'ainsi le sablage final se fera plus vite et en
resultera une surface mieux protegee. S'ajoute une autre raison pour
proceder ainsi. Une surface importante de la coque est cachee derriere
la charpente et ne serait pas sablee une fois la coque assemblee. En
plus, ces surfaces sront les moins protegees par la peinture. En
sablant prealablement on guarantie au moins que l'acier n'aura plus de
croute de carbone reduisant ainsi les risques de corrosion
electrolytique.
Le sabalge est
un probleme auquel on a commmence a penser tot avant le debut de la
construction. Sabler implique beaucoup de travail et requiere de
l'equipment lourd (plus le compressor et gros, mieux c'est). On etait
conscient que ca pouvait etre notre principal cauchemar logistique. On
a joue avec plusieurs idees: acheter l'equipment, louer, faire venir un
contracteur....toutes avaient leur avantages et inconvenients mais
aucune solution ne nous satisafaisait, jusqu'a ce que l'on trouve notre
solution au bout de natre rue. On prenait une marche avec le chien
quand un bruit familier a attire nottre attention. Du sablage, on
entendait un chantier serieux de sablage derriere "Terry's restauration
shop"
Terry nous
accommode donc avec une entente flexible et pratique pour faire notre
sablage avec son equipment.
La construction
de la coque a necessite 27 plaques de 5x10 pieds et 25 plaques de 4x8
pieds, c'est beaucoup de surface. Tout sabler en une fois aurait ete un
cauchemare, on a donc decider de proceder en quntite plus pratiques.
Terry nous a offert de de faire livrer les plaques dans sa court pour
reduire le va et vient avec nos plaques d'acier, et notre gentil
fermier voisin nous a offert d'utiliser son chariot pour les quelques
fois ou on en a besoin. Ce genre d'aide rends notre projet tellement
plus facile a realiser.
 
On the
evening before a sanblasting day I would bring the wagon down the road,
lay as many plates as possible without overlapping and roll it all
under the sandblasting cover-all for the next morning. I'd always
sandblast at sunrise to take advantage of the coolest part of the day,
by ten in the morning it would become to hot and sufficating in the
hood. By getting up at 4am I would be done painting before noon and
back to bed after lunch. Heat is the worst enemy of boat building in
the summer, just like cold is the worst enemy in the winter.
La veille d'un
jour de sablage j'emmene le chariot de chez le voisin d'un
bout de la rue chez celui a l'autre bout. J'etale autant de plaques que
possible sans chevauchement sur le chariot et roule la charge a l'bris
de la rosee pour le lendemain. Je sable toujours des le leve du jour et
prends avantage de la fraicheur du matin. A dix heures la chaleur se
fait sentir et ca devient trop suffocant dans le casque. En me levant a
4am, je peux finir de peindre avant midi et retourner au lit apres mon
dejeuner. La chaleur est le pire enemy de la construction du bateau en
ete, tout comme le froid est le pire ennemy en hiver.
Plating order
It
was tempting to start by the deck as it was obviously the easiest
plating to be done. For the same reason as we placed the deck
longitudinals in first (locking the frame) we considered starting
there, but we also considered the benefit of having
a top
open to lift plates into place with the gantry. So the deck would be
last.
Next
question was if the round chine was to be plated before or after the
upper and bottom plates. We opted to keep it for the end. First and
honest reason, I was so scared of plating the round chine I was happy
to justify some procrastinating. Better reason: having
the other plates in place would give more edges to fassen the round
plates that we were to force into place.
The
stern plate had to come in before any plate reached the back as it was
easier to trim six small edges to one long than the long side edges of
the stern to the six small ones. I may not explain myself so well, in
clear: it seemed much easier and logical like that.
Seems
like we started by the bottom and top plates....
Templating
Before
templating we had to define our edges. For each plate the edge matching
the round plate is not obvious but we need an edge to template against.
On each rib I made a mark where plates meet and then tacked a 1/2 in
square bar along the marks, the square bar worked as a batten defining
the missing edge.
For
the templating we used some 4 inch strips of 1/4 in cheap plywood
chopped at varried length. Picking the accomodating length we would
clamp strips to the boat following the inside boudaries of the plate to
be. Being too close to the edge would not be helpful, we are not trying
to get the exact shape with the plywood. At first, spring clamps are
holding the template together, when we are satisfied with the position
of everything we get the hot glue gun out to work and glue the strips
together without taking anything off the boat.
Down to step two of templating, taking marks along the boundary of the
plate to be. How to explain this clearly? Hummm...I won't try to get
into all the different ways and trick, just how I did it, then with
enough imagination anybody can adjust a technique for the best of his
situation. My higth tech marking tool was a small (about 8 sq in) piece
of thin stainless steel shaped as a mouse. I didn't shape it like that,
I just pick up a piece of scrap that suited my need and it turned out
to look enough like a mouse for us to call it "the mouse". The
important part of all this is that the mouse was a very irregular
shape. My second tool, a color marker, I kept changing color for evry
template so I could re-use my plywood strips without mistaking
markings.
I would go along the template with the mouse, tracing the mouses
outline on the plywood strip with the nose of the mouse always against
the edge of the plate to be. I would later know that when I position
the mouse within it's outline the nose would be marking a point on the
edge of the plate. I would use common sens to decide how many points I
needed for each edge.
Final step, trace the plate. This is where we realized how some
kindergarden lessons were not a loss of time. With the template clamped
to the plate, as we don't want it to move half way threw tracing, I
started putting points down on the plate where the nose of the mouse
ends when the mouse is placed in it's traced outlines. Remember kiddy
school, putting shapes in there outline? What about match the dots?
That's an other early age lesson. Once all the dots are made, that's
what we did, match them. If the line looked a little broken, I'd use a
batten to average it into a smooth curve. Tadada!! There's the plates
outline, ready to cut. I had amazing results with this technique,
surprising accurate plates, maybe to accurate. I ended up having to
groove a spacing between most plates for good welds.
For anybody who would wonder, it is a duck. Coco was there every day to
help with the tracing, I highly recommend duck supervision for such
task....it makes an otherwise repetitive and slow process a little more
amusing.
Clamping
There
are many different ways to build a metal boat but all require a lot of
clamping. I include in clamping any methode to hold a piece in place.
This requires a lot of imagination because nothing is square, no
situation is exactly the same, as the boat comes together there are
less edges to grab on, we're not always being helped by gravity and the
ground is not always close enough to help, often pieces may need to be
stable but still mobile....I have designed and modeled this boat but I
would rather associate moments I have really felt smart with some nifty
ideas to lift, hold, or pull some of those heavy plates in place. For
anybody who likes puzzle, this is what can bring the hull building to
be fun.
My tools: clamps, hydraulic jacks, X jacks, chains, plate clamps, fire
logs, rope,my husband,block and tackle, scrap steel, chain block,
framing lumber, steel
beams, gantry.... and a few fabricated tools.
Before saying anymore, I'd like to make an important point about
clamps. Don't be cheap, there are many things we can cheap on, not
clamps. It takes a lot of them, it takes a lot of different
ones but mostly it takes some good quality clamps. We had
bougth a lot of clamps that we beleived were good ones and we did make
good use of them. But...There are times they were just not strong
enough, a better swivel would of done better or they didn't quite hold
those non parralele surface well enough.
Mark showed up some day with an 18 inch Bessey Clamp, one
of the best ones with the fancy swivel nose. It became my favorite
tool, to the point I gave it a little name. At a hundred dollars a
piece we were shy of buying more but did end up getting an other one,
and one more, and a couple more....I absolutely love them, but will not
get into explaining what makes them better. You want to build a boat?
Go buy one, you'll get more :)
Saying that, only heavy besseys would not be good neither. I still like
having lighter clamps around of different shapes and types. Diversity
is the
key, good quality is a necessity.
The
best way to share some of our clamping tricks is probably to explain or
comment some pictures. Isn't an image worth a thousand words.
I
welded
all sorts of loops and
brakets directly to the plate. It does make more work to cut them off
and grind everything clean when done using them but saves much more
time by making the job simple. I
lifted all the plates into place by hoops. The hoops were localized so
I
could also use them to pull and position the plates against the frame.
With a couple chain blocks I became the queen of plate balancing.
Some edges like the top of the radius plate to the top plate were not
strait forward to pull in as there was no edge to clamp around.
Brakets solved the problem. I would used a short piece of lumber
postioned across two longitudinal or to ribs and clamped up to it.
Things
to notice on the last picture: All the different clamps we used. The
short pieces of lumber across longitudinals to clamps against. The
standing lumber wedged between the ground and plate, and along the
keel. The small stacks of lumber over the beams across the boat, the're
holding the plates corner.
Pushing from the ground up against the frame was really handy and gave
more control on the plates shape than on would think. We also made up a
"jack post" that we used when the wedge lumber wouldn't quite do it.
The jack post was simply a pipe with a hydraulic jack that we welded on
the top of it.
When we started plating the upper parts and mostly for the
round plates
we had to get creative.
We started using the cars xjacks (we desrtoyed 2), the hydraulic jacks
dont work out of position.
On the next pictures we didn't have any edge to clamp the front of the
plate. By pushing against a well secured chain with a jack we could
tack a spot and move on a little further.
On the same picture, the horizontal pieces of lumber are holding the
plate up close to it's final position while we do the final positioning
and clamp it.
 
We used the chain and xjack a lot
and came up with all sorts of ways to secure the chain. If we would of
had to, we wouldn't of hesitated wrapping the
chain all around the boat but always found better ways. I don't have
any pictures of the work on the upper and round plates as when we would
start clamping we would work until the plate was tacked in.
The last pushing methode I can
think of is tricky to described. We used a long and strong pipe at the
end of which we welded a stopping hook. At the top of the boat we would
secure a chain along the deck pipe. By slipping the hooked end of the
pipe under the chain we obtained a lever arm. Where we wanted to push
we would position a block on which Mark would push with the lever arm
until I weld a tack on. We read about this trick in Tomas Colvin's book
Steel boatbuilding.
The deck plating is fairly strait
forward. Working on
a somewhat flat surface with the help of gravity is refreshing. I
scribed the edges on the plates strait off the boat and offset the
curves appropriatly to cut the plate just on the inside of the middle
of the deck pipe. The longest step of deck plating was clearly the
welding and grinding.
And up goes the cabin
top.
Putting up the bulwarks. That was
very fast visual
progress. After having seen the boats shape without its uper shear
line, we had to get used to it. It made the boat look huge...
We traced and cut the shear line
on the bulwarks after they wer all tacked in place.
All the plates are on!!
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