Laminating the Chine

I half expected the boat to be engulfed by those little sandcastles that termites make when I came back to the boat shop this week after a nearly five month absence. No termites, thank goodness, just a lot of black mold. I welcome the mold. It comes with the incredible amount of rain weve received over the past several weeks. Rio Grande City is now a tolerable grassland rather than a post-apocalyptic dust bowl. 

NASA was wonderful. I developed some algorithms for optimizing medical kits for spaceflight. And met real astronauts. The whole experience was incredibly inspiring. Fresh off this NASA high, Ive re-committed to the boat project. This thing WILL GET DONE.

My brother came in on Sunday for a week of boat building. We actually spend the first few days battling the cockroaches (á la Stormship Troopers) that made themselves welcome during my long absence. We finally got around to some boat work on Thursday and will have the first layer of the chine glued in place by the time he leaves tomorrow afternoon.

This week at my house. Pro tip: Dont leave potatoes in cabinet for 5 months.

My mentality re the boat project has shifted. I was beginning to feel paralyzed by the sheer size of the project--  by all the work remaining and all of the things that could possibly go wrong. I am now thinking no further than getting the chine laminated. Then Ill think no further than cutting the notches for the stringers on the bottomsides. Etc. This seems to be a more effective mindset, as Im pretty sure Ill be able to get the chine in, and Im pretty sure I can cut a few notches.

An acquaintance from college sent me this poem written by a boatbuilder. While at the moment I cant relate to the romanticization of boatbuilding in the body, I was particularly amused/struck by the first line: 
And so it is, the boat has come to own you

Indeed, building Luna came to own me. I resented my previous self who thought building a gigantic sailboat in small-town Texas was a good idea. Time away from Luna was exactly what I needed to build up the guts to finish her. Looking forward to the next few months of boat work!

The not-so-little brother and I.

Slinging epoxy.

The first chine piece glued in place.

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Laminating the Keel

Once I had all the patterns I needed for the keel chunks, I assembled a cradle from 4x6s fastened with lag bolts and started laminating the pieces of keel from thinner stock. Several hundred board feet of Southern Yellow Pine 2x8s, 7 gallons of epoxy and 15 gallons of fumed silica later, I had my keel chunks laminated.

There were big lessons learned in the process:

1) I will need about 500 clamps to build this boat.

2) It would have been ideal to buy the construction grade lumber I used at the exact moment I needed it and no sooner. Even when stacked properly in a rather consistent climate (the desert), it tended to warp and twist and required all manner of cursing, cajoling, and sweet-talking to get it to laminate up into a straight chunk of wood. I guess its good to make due with what you have. If I waited for the perfect tools, the perfect materials, the perfect budget, and the perfect place to build, Id probably never get started.

3) Epoxy is not fun to work with. Laminating the keel with epoxy made the decision to plank the boat rather than use plywood easy.

As I laminated a piece, I traced the shape of the pattern on each face and cut them a little outside the lines with my Skillsaw. Then I took a chainsaw and cut down until I met the Skillsaw cuts on each side and then whacked off the chunks with a hatchet and chisel. A power planer was my best friend in getting the pieces true to shape.

 

Boat building in hindsight: For the next boat (a 50 ft. cargo junk schooner, perhaps?), I will definitely buy the timbers Ill need rather than laminate them from thinner stock-- it should be much cheaper and easier.

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