Updating from September 2018... Bulwarks

 My best buddy sidelined things for a little while, as life will, as we had to spend 14 weeks of surgery, rehab, revision surgery then more rehab to repair her knee.  Her name is Gracie and shes a very special girl.  She's the Nanny dog to my two granddaughters and a top-notch sock thief.  It wasn't easy on any of us and we spent 3 months sleeping in the living room on an air mattress next to her crate as she very slowly got better.  Thanks to the surgical center at Coastal Ortho and to Georgia and her wonderful crew at Fetch Canine for their focused rehab and the lovin' they gave Gracie.

Bulwarks - Let's start with Stanchions... about mid September 2018

Sometimes we get lucky.  The local HD stocks Douglas Fir 4x4's.  That's a big deal in Yellow Pine country.  I would have taken Yellow Pine, love it, but treated would have been a tough chore to pick through.  I milled these down to 3" x 3" because the frames are 1-1/2" and somehow I thought that it would be good that it was a multiple of that.  Not sure why I did but it seemed right and thought it may pay off making things fit better later.

I basically squared the Bulwark stanchions off the floor timbers and marked the angle as they fell across the frames.  I used lags to secure them.  Ceramic coated lags that I'll slather the heads with epoxy before final paint if not buried behind other subsequent timbers.  All of this under a canopy yet to be constructed.

The scantlings are heavy I know.  I intend that they be.  This is a slow cruiser.  She'll do hull speed and that's it.  I have a 9.9 Suzuki Hi-Thrust (same displacement as the 20HP but choked down to a max 4500RPM) so I think that it'll do all it needs without much waste.

The bulwarks themselves are 3/4" pine that is sprung to the stanchions and screwed in place.

At this point I had lowered the floor and removed the raised floor timbers.  Those are seen standing in one of the photos here.  

The inside of the bulwark is lined with pine that has been chamfered and hot dip galv nailed in place.  By the way... I used a DuoFast siding nail gun for this.  I used it primarily because the DuoFast brand of hot dipped, ring-shanked coil nails are some of the best, most corrosion resistant gun nails I've ever used.  I found this watching them weather (or not weather) for the past 10 years at our Rome farm before we moved.  I thought... "why not?"

At the fore end of the bulwark I decided to build a little curve into this.  It actually evolved a little further (as you will see) as I started thinking about the boat's helm which I am building as far forward as I can for visibility.

 I also made a few "slack-belt" hand sanders to smooth out the curves that were basically built of segments, like barrel staves.

The inner ceiling, as the lining is sometimes called, stops about here for now.  Benches will lay over these so I didn't want to waste material to just be covered back up.

White oak was again used as a bulwark cap.  I just used a nice straight joint and the boards were wide enough (and the run gentle enough) that I only needed one joint midway.

I'll state this now as some of you may have reservations about my using smaller strips with obvious joints between to be caulked as they open... 

I know, going in, that this is a wooden boat.
Wooden boats, like all boats, require maintenance to seal the seams, protect the wood and prevent nature's course. 

I also know this about myself... I like building them and messing with them as much as using them.  

I know that maintenance will be ongoing and this boat (as well as others to come) will have its share.  I gladly accept and welcome this with a smile and a lighter heart for the joy in it.  

She is a living, changing thing to me... a pet, my responsibility to keep "healthy".

 - Mike

Time for an Update...

Hello all.... anybody out there?  My blog has gone dormant but the project is far from it.  It swung a little sideways for a while but, reviewing the last post, the project has tracked pretty close to where I left the faithful...

Circa - June 2018... 

I won't spend a lot of time and post recounting the decision to spread my shop into what was a boat shed, but it was a wise decision.  I found myself fighting the weather (or anticipation of it) and always either stopping too early for a squall that never materialized or having to madly dash outside on one of those 0% chance of rain coastal Georgia days covering everything as rain pelted down.  I did install (at the recommendation of a co-worker and friend (thanks Bo) LED UFO high bay lights that have been great.  This involved hand digging a trench from the house to the shed with shovel and laying PVC conduit.  Love the lights and the decision to put everything in the shed with just a few tools and materials left in the garage.  I will say that mildew is an issue down here and spraying bleach water is part of life.  I opted to stop with spending money on the shed and instead spend it on the boat, so, the shed is open and rain will blow.  Its not bad in the summer though.  It isn't stagnant and I'm not sure that the right idea in the deep south might not be to build an over sized canopy and work in the middle of it.

Okay, rolling back to April 2018 I started getting the new white oak decks in.  The idea is to bed them in PL Roof polyurethane and create a wider deck that will have a 2" un-manilla rope rubrail.




So far I really like the PL S30.  It is tough, really tough, and sticks like crazy.  I have torn out "bad ideas" bedded in this and it has to be cut out.  I didn't want to install a sprung deck so I used a scarf joint and worked my way around the curves.  Just a jigsaw and sander.









The procedure was to layout the shape using a template, cut the next board  a set distance previously marked along the deck and  lay that on top.  Then, with a sharp No #2 Ticonderoga I marked the shape of the next board and cut and sanded that to match.

I used a similar thickness board to transfer the shape accurately.












The joints are fairly tight.  They are beveled slightly with a chamfer bit in a router  so that caulking (more PL 30 ) can seal the seam.  The PL states that fully cured, it is paintable.  We will see... I plan to epoxy coat the white oak with CPES and then may just paint.  I could skip the CPES altogether with the paint but a few of the boards could use a little stabilization.

Note the floor timbers for the initial self draining deck plan

 


























Note this (and you know how things are liable to change) but I really grappled with the idea of providing a self draining deck.  I liked the idea but I could not make the idea work in such a small boat and worried about stability or, at least, perceived motion setting up that high.  I was probably silly but they were eventually lowered.







One thing that REALLY bothered me about the self draining deck was that it needed to be sealed.  I hated that idea.  I could imagine water or vapor finding its way in there and creating a nasty mess. I did not want to have sealing hatches or a big fiberglass slab for a deck.  I considered using some sort of floor covering but everything seemed anachronistic, and in a big, obvious way.
What was the biggest challenge here?  Removing the 22 drum liner bags of 2 part foam.  The more I read about this, the more I hated the idea of it being on the boat.  The only place I still have it is the engine well area. That seemed like the most well sealed and beneficial area to leave alone structurally.  I am not required to have flotation foam per USCG regulations but I am probably going to incorporate EPS foam along the underside of the deck behind the benches.

Forepeak Deck... August and September 2018

The forepeak was handled in the same manner as the deck.  Lots of PL and screws.  You probably see those bulwarks in place so I'll get to them in the next post.  This is a little out of sequence, but it made more sense to include it with the deck.