What it's all about

[Redeye]

This is the smile of a man building his first boat.





Seen here "steaming" stingers into place. a 60° twist over 800mm. That larche is only 12x12mm and not the finest grain I would have liked for the job, but still it's working.

[John Meachen]

What design are you building?

[S B]

Trade in the electric kettle for a heat gun, wet the rag and apply max heat,you will "steam "the board inplace.

[Redeye]

Trade in the electric kettle for a heat gun, wet the rag and apply max heat,you will "steam "the board inplace.

Nice idea, and will definitely give it a shot next time. The "fools steaming" with the electric kettle worked perfectly though, especially as the wood is relatively thin.

She will be a Paper Jet 14, from the board of Dudley Dix - a fourteen foot skiff. We'll use her here in Switzerland on the lakes close by. We're limited to 15 m2 working sail area, and as we never see more than 8 knts of breeze, we need a light easily driven hull with max sail area.

There will no doubt be many an occasion over the next few months where I will need to ask for advice from the collective experience of the forumites.

I look forward to learning from you all.

R

[Redeye]

Update

Now fully encapsulated in two layers of epoxy. Deck to glue down and then wings and mast-step...

[jgmarine]

Hi,
That's a lovely craft....love the extended wing side deck configuration,
Happy sailing!

Jack

[Sailor]

Seems you missed a few steps between steaming and encasulating! We like details and pictures. Lots and lots of pictures.

[Redeye]

oooooookkkk then

I'll upload some photos of intermediary steps to keep all happy...

[Songololo]

Which rig option have you selected?



Looks like fun to sail:



Lance

[Redeye]

Hi Lance,

We've selected the largest rig..... But I think I will get the main made with a reef (~35% maybe?) I think. Might add a little weight , but learners can have a go with less fear then.


I couldn't convince Bruno to build the mast as a single piece though.... I guess it makes it harder to transport then.

[Redeye]

Right,

Just uploaded a few more pics to picassa.

This is where we're building, The garage of my friend's mother in Zug, Switzerland.


Yes it was slow work getting the expoxy to set when we first started.

While my mate was down in the basement putting together the backbone for the forward sections


... i spent my time drinking champagne and admiring the positioning of the saw horses I'd built to take the building stocks....



Now of course as we're building in Mama's garage, the weekends often come with catering.... unfortunately Sunday lunches, well, all meals actually, seem to be accompanied by wine. This hampers the work somewhat...

meanwhile, down in the basement, the panels which form the bottom and topsides are butt joined with glass, epoxy, and bricks...


Eventually, when we warmed enough to brave the cold, we moved the pieces out of the basement and started to assemble the backbone and bulkheads, as well as the daggerboard box, and clamp them all in their correct positions on the stocks

[Redeye]

It took a long time to find somewhere in CH to buy this plane, but eventually I got it. For Bruno (seen here trying to injure himself) it was the first time in his life he had ever held a plane.


We also scarfed together our larch stringers, and here you can see one of the planking butt-joints.


Rather than screwing the bulkheads to the stocks, we clamped them, as one sees here


here is our version of the cunning arrangement (minus donkeys and flying monkeys) to help twist the stringers into the right shape

[Redeye]

Here's a nice view looking along the stb stringer as it passes throuhg bulkhead 2.

Another photo of the "steaming"

And the fit of the stringers against the stem

The dagger board box bottom bevel



And here is our "clamping" of the stringer into the transom. We included small gussets of larch to increase the gluing area to prevent the stringer cracking out of the bulkheads while moving the thing around before the planks were glued and filleted.

[Redeye]

Finally we start stiching on the panels,
in this pic we have bottoms and sides stiched, but we had to take the sides off again and scratch our heads a bit more



Eventually, late one night, we figured out how to do it. ahhhhhh the bow-transom needed to be glued on first!!!.... (RTFM)
The 3mm holes for stitching in the bottom panels, and in the backbone were predrilled by the CNC cutter and seemed offset by 5mm. Unfortunately, no matter how we wriggled and jiggled, how we huffed and puffed, how much beer we drank, or how many languages we swore in, we couldn't make it fit perfectly. We eventually decided to use copper wire and drill new 1mm holes to stitch the panels on to the forward pard of the backbone. Was a little tricky.


Dudley recommends drilling a row of holes along the line of the stinger and using screws to draw the panel and stringer together. As we still have a crazy idea that this might look nice if we bright finish it, we decided to drill 1mm holes and use blocks and copper wire to draw the parts together. The 1mm holes will be nearly invisible after epoxy coating and varnish.



After gluing the bottom panels to the stingers and to each other, and weighing them down with garden accessories and other important items, we got the side panels in place, and carefully filled the gap with epoxy thickened with silica.

[Redeye]

lifted from the building stocks - a great day,



and filleted and taped inside

[davebrown]

1. interesting build and superb photos.
2. "...unfortunately Sunday lunches, well, all meals actually, seem to be accompanied by wine. This hampers the work somewhat..."

you mean some people build boats without wine?

[Redeye]

"

you mean some people build boats without wine?

I can't imagine how.....

One Sunday, after a particularly grueling Sat night at something called a Spanish bar about a mile away, we rose from our deathbeds at 11am to find three courses, creamy lemon chicken, smoked salmon with dill, fresh hollandaise on Spargel, safran risotto, and far far too much wine. Unfortunately there were other guests, so we just had to buckle down and get on with the job at hand...

[ThomRose]

you mean some people build boats without wine?

Yes, of course. You can use beer or whiskey instead. Whiskey is probably the better choice because you don't have to leave the boat work for bathroom breaks as often.

[Redeye]

Here we have the wing frame beams fitted but not glued. Two of the frames are glued to the bulkheads, while the intermediate two beams sort of float on the edge of the 4mm ply topside/gunwale edge. They are later glued to the inside of the deck. It's kinda scary how flimsy it feels, but I have faith it will all brace up as the rest of it is glued in place.

[Redeye]

As you can see,

We've used plenty of beer, and at 8.5% with Duvel there is less time wasted in the bathroom... There is unfortunately more time wasted in the mornings....

Carpe post meridiem!

[Redeye]

here are the under deck mast compression posts

There are two positions for the mast. The forward position puts more rake on the mast, and is for sailing mainsail only.

[mcdenny]

R,
Beautiful job so far - looks just like a big model airplane kit.

[John B]

I was following your thread on crew Red, and wondering if you'd be here somewhere.( I missed it )
Fun sort of project you've got going eh.

[Redeye]

Thanks John,

Yes, it's a hard life having two online personas, as well as two yachts in different hemispheres. This one is certainly coming along better than the other one. I would like to post a string of photos on crew but get all hung up trying to make them small enough.

It certainly is fun building over here in swiss land, and getting a handle on the different timbers and availability of tools and so forth is certainly interesting. Yes she's a fun project, and hopefully soon she'll be in the water.

R

[John B]

What sort of boat do you have here red.. another racing dinghy?

[Redeye]

Hi John,

No I have a keeler. She's quite an embarrassment to me at the moment. Needed to come out of the water over a year ago when I bought her for resto (or recycling ), but I had to leave on short notice for this position here in CH, haven't been able to get back yet to sort it. Have a man on the ground there but he's dreadfully busy and aside from telling me "she hasn't sunk on the mooring" he hasn't had time to manage the shift for me.
She's a constant source of worry at the moment, I really have to get it sorted.

[Rich Jones]

On your original post, I didn't know if that was a smile or a grimace from pouring boiling water on your fingers! The boat looks great. A terrific job from any builder, let alone a first timer. You're in for some wild sailing on that boat. Keep us up to date!

[John B]

What sort of boat is it ,Red?

[James McMullen]

That is what it's all about! I want one too.

[Redeye]

It's a Van de Stadt Buccaneer/Primat. You may have seen it floating and hosting marine life. Really need to sort it

[Redeye]

Time for an update:

We now have the Hull almost complete - only need to add a beam near the bow, and paint.

Here are a series of photos:

Here we now have the wing leading edge laminated, faired to the appropriate curve, and glued into position. You can also see that the decks are also laid.



Turning her over here the wing bottom skin is glued and filleted to the hull. I'm about to trim the wing leading edge with the Skilly:



Here are a couple of the inner layer of the gunwale, larch, being laminated on, and the X-frame which forms the bracing to take the mast partners is also in place and filleted.





Finally recieved the sail... was rather expensive, and no fancy material either! 114 sq ft

[Redeye]

Here, what appear to be floor joists for some outrageous deck house are some clamps I made up to clamp the Sipo wing edge capping.

Others have tried this with complicated systems of ropes and straps. Clamps seemed easier to me and they only cost 20 CHF to make.





Here the top of the X-frame/deck/mast partners is being let into the gunwale top edge. You can also see the Sipo we laminated outside the Larch gunwale.



and here the Sipo wing edge and leading edge faired into each other. The timber behind the leading edge is cedar.

[Redeye]

Here you can see the hole in the bow "transom" and the guide to take the bow sprit. The Dude with the pentagonal head has an aversion to his image being on the intertubes...



From this angle one can see how wide and flat this boat will be.


here is the stock for the spars. Douglas...those are centimetres, btw.

[johngsandusky]

Looks fun and fast (sailing). Thanks for sharing.

[Redeye]

new photos