raising the grain

I have just finished with most of the sanding on the outside of the hull. After planing down the edges of the strips I power-sanded with 80-grit paper on the random orbit sander. There is a bag to collect the dust, but it only catches about half of it. The rest ends up covering me and just about everything else in the garage. At least the plastic sheeting kept most of it off our neighbour's stuff. After sanding I could still see several gaps between the strips and I decided that I better fill them in with epoxy and cedar dust. Otherwise I could get air bubles under the fibreglass, which would be a disaster. So then I ended up sanding with the custom-made sanding blocks I put together (two blocks of plywood clamping together the edges of a sheet of sandpaper and tightened with a bolt and wingnut) and more power-sanding. Leaving on extra epoxy could cause the finish to look splotchy after I am done glassing so I had to balance getting off all of the extra epoxy and sanding the wood down too much.

Finally, after all of this I was able to wet-out the hull with a water-dampened cloth to raise the grain for final sanding. Wow, it has a great colour and the grain looks amazing! And the wet cedar smelled terrific. If I actually wore cologne I would want it to smell like that. Too bad the boat won't smell that way after it is encased in fibreglass and epoxy!

From boards to a boat

I've been working on building this canoe for almost 10 months and up until now I feel like I have just been putting the pieces together in the shape of a boat. In the last two weekends though I have started to turn the collection of wood strips into a real craft with flowing lines that will actually someday grace the water. Last weekend I shaped the rough-cut outer stems into the aerodynamic leading and trailing edges of the canoe. It was some of the hardest work so far as it was a lot harder to use the spokeshave on the cherry hardwood than it was for the softer cypress and I had to be careful as I blended the stems into the hull not to damage to the edges of the cedar strips. Then, this weekend I completed the tedious, but gratifying task of pulling all of the staples - about 700 of them. I was just slightly worried that this step would result in the boat springing apart, but that did not happen. With that done I pulled out the block plane and shaved off all of the rough corners on the canoe where the edges of each strip come together with it's neighbours. It left a mountain of cedar shavings on the floor. While the hull is still rough it looks better already with the rounded edges. Next step will be to fill in the narrow gaps between some of the strips with colour-matched epoxy. The strips come together pretty tightly over much of the hull but there are some fair-sized gaps that need to be filled where the strips turn around the bilge amidship. I tested out the random orbit sander with 80-grit paper on the first two stations on one side to collect some cedar dust to mix with the epoxy.

Exterior Stems

Finally done with the strips, I have been fitting the exterior stems over the past couple weekends. I had steam bent these pieces out of cherry at the same time as the inner stems back in March or so and they've been waiting for me since then.
First task was to cut the stems rougly to length, then taper the keel-side end slightly so that it would not be wider than the inner stem as I cut away the cedar strips to allow it to fit. Next I cut a mortice into the hull starting roughly at the point where the stems turn sharply toward the bottom of the hull and ending about an inch shy of the end of the inner stem. Going too far would result in a hole through the hull! I used a 1/8" chisel, a sharp utility knife and a narrow sanding stick for this job and constantly dry-fit the stem to make sure it fit as perfectly as possible. The tedium paid off with a pretty good fit on both ends of the hull.
Next task was to epoxy the stems on. Canoecraft recommends using no.6 screws to firmly secure the outer stems while the epoxy dries and then to remove them and fill the holes with plugs. I wasn't confident in my ability to do this skillfully and I have read about other people simply strapping the stems down instead of using screws. This has the benefit of not having to remove the screws and plug the holes. I picked up some heavy duty rubber straps from OSH and tried a dry run. The straps seemed to work pretty well holding the stems in place securely so I decided to go for it. I am slightly concerned that the straps might be too tight and squeeze out too much epoxy, but after the fact I don't think that is the case. I covered the hull with painters tape and plastic too prevent most of the epoxy from getting on the hull. Then I brushed a few layers of unthickened epoxy on the stem ends to allow them to soak it up while I mixed up another batch of epoxy thickened with microfibres to the "consistency of peanut butter". This was painted on one of the mating surfaces and the stem was strapped down. I'll have to wait till tomorrow to see how well it has worked out...

Touchdown!

The long weekend was spent finishing off all of the stripping and "closing the football" on the bottom of the boat. To fit in the last piece I planed the cove edge off of the penultimate strip and planed and sanded the final 3-piece strip down to fit into the remaining slot (after a lot of measuring and marking). Tracy was there to take a couple photos as we fit in this final piece. It fit like a glove (with a couple short fingers). I imagine this is what hammering in the last spike on the trans-Canada railroad must have felt like! I am pretty pleased with the way things look.

Actually, I am far from done. The book Canoecraft says at this stage I am only about 1/3 of the way! It seems like it must be more than that. I think maybe they don't include building the strongback. Hopefully. Still, I can't believe I've made it this far. The most common question I get from the neighbourhood stoppers-by these days is "Looks good, how long have you been working on that, when is it going to be done??" My new estimate is "some time in the Spring". It sure feels good to reach this mile stone though.

filling in

I'm almost done with the strips! Today Tracy helped me bend the three final strips on one of the lower strips (without glue) so that I can fit the pre-made piece into the final gap tomorrow.

Centreline

This weekend I cut the centreline. Like a lot of the steps in building this boat, this was a step that I kind of dreaded but it turned out to be pretty easy. That said I'm pretty tired now. It gets hot in that garage, especially with two 150W lightbulbs shining on me for several hours. This step is needed to trim off the edges of all the strips hanging over the centre. It went like this:

Mark a line about an inch off the true centreline and chisel down to it. Then mark the true centreline using two methods: transfering the centreline on each station mold to the outside of the hull using a little measuring jig and stretching a string between two nails tacked on to the no. 6 stations. Once the line was drawn on in ink I got the chisel out again and shaved the strips down to about 1/8" from the line. Using the chisel is quite satisfying and quickly results in a big pile of cedar shavings on the floor. At this stage, the book suggests using a rabbet plane to bring it down to the line, but an online check of woodcraft.com showed that one would cost me about $90, so instead I used a series of sanding blocks, 60, 120 and 200 grit, which was free. Maybe a little more work this way but it sure resulted in a perfect vertical and straight cut.

Next is another step I've been dreading: fitting in the strips on the other side to "close the football".

Back from Brazil

We're back from our month in Brazil. It was a nice change of pace from working all day, if not exactly relaxing. We covered lots of ground and saw lots of stuff. Tracy put some captions on some of our pictures. They can be seen here:

http://picasaweb.google.com/smcclennan/Brazil

Now we've been back in Mountain View for two weeks and I've been trying to get ahead on the canoe. I have just about all of the strips on one side on now, except for maybe one or two. I've been able to do it by myself by bending the strips into place carefully and clamping them down with L-shaped clamps at 3 stations, allowing me to put the staples in at the other stations to secure each strip. I only had help on one when Scott (another one), who lives around the corner, came by to talk while I was in the middle of a strip. It was definitely easier with another set of hands. He is an interesting guy, with a lot of the same interests. I went over to his garage today to check out the little 16ft "pocket cruiser" sailboat he keeps in there. Maybe some day this fall he'll take me out for a sail!

Next step on the canoe is to trace the centre-line back on to the strips and cut along the line, as perfectly straight as possible.

Here are couple of the latest photos as well as an old one showing the L-shaped brackets held on with C-clamps.