New Build, Caledonia Yawl

[TerryLL]

I made a little progress on the build this weekend. The third run of planks is now on and I am very much looking forward to hanging the sheer planks.

[Trebuchet]

Looking great! The CY is one design on a short list of boats I'd love to build someday.

[Sailor]

I think the CY is on alot of shortlists of boats alot of us would like to build one day. So many boats so little time.

[Lew Barrett]

Great thread by a skilled craftsman. Can't wait to see her when she gets her salt wetting in Puget Sound! You are going to bring her here when you're ready, right Terry?

[TerryLL]

Yes indeed. I hope to make the CWB show in July, my third showing there. And of course Port Townsend, where I'll invite the young James to go for a ride under OB power.

[TerryLL]

The scheduled task for today was sanding drywall, but I just wasn't into it. So a couple hours working on the boat build and I have the sheer strake patterned, and the stbd plank is scarfed and glued.


Here's a photo of the spiling batten nailed on:




A couple shots of spiling with a compass, simple and accurate.




The line that I'm spiling to here is the lap land.

[captsct]

Glad to see the progress. It helped remind me to go through and re-read the whole thread to remember what was said about the floors. I'm building the J II version of the Arctic Tern and as soon as I get the breasthooks in I'm making the floors and am now remembering I wanted to do them straight not curved. But first those breasthooks. I've only done one before, and it took me three try's to get it right. And this thing needs two of them. Wish me luck.

[TerryLL]

Good Luck.

The breasthook on any boat is a tricky it. The only way I've had any success is to cut it oversize and extra thick. I gradually remove material on the sides where it meets the sheer planks until it slides all the way snug against the stem. Then the underside gets scalloped out. The top gets crowned after it's glued in place.

Geoff shows how easy it is in WB 184.

[TerryLL]

I'm finally making progress on this build once again. She is fully planked up and all the holes are filled. Andrew at Denman Maine suggested I let the sheer plank run high at the ends and do the final fairing of the sheer after the boat is turned. So I let the sheer land about 3 inches high at the stern and about two inches high at the bow. This is a shot of the stern:




An overhead shot. It's quite remarkable how much more bearing the hull has in the aft sections, and how much finer the bow at the waterline.



I'm currently fitting up the outer fore stem. I laminated the outer stem right on top of the inner stem way back at the beginning of this project and they still fit together like a matched set.

[bloggs68]

Hi Terry,

She looks great. Always nice to get the planking out of the way.

We launched another one last Friday -





We also did some capsize and inversion testing which was really interesting. We'll be doing some more next week and will hopefully find time to splice together a short video of capsize and inversion testing of the CY. The watertight side benches make a huge difference and the level of water inside the boat after a full inversion is well below the top of the centreboard slot. The boat was also very stable full of water and the guys sailed her whilst lying in the "bath". Gets my brain gears thinking about a water ballasted CY??

Keep the pictures coming.

regards,

AD

[TerryLL]

Andrew,

Very nice indeed. I do like the sheer on your boats.

A couple questions:
Is that a through-hull on the stbd side aft?
I don't recognize your rudder hardware; are they custom made or readily available?

I'm toying with the idea of reefing the mizzen by rotating the mast and wrapping the sail around it, sort of a roller-furling arrangement. The sprit boom would have to be changed out for a jawed boom, or perhaps a deck-mounted boom, and the mizzen mast would require a luff groove for the bolt rope. Any thoughts?

[Duncan Gibbs]

It's an outboard well with thick, stiff plastic flaps that maintain water flow when the leg isn't lowered through.

Shhhhh! Don't tell McMullen!

I like the idea of the roller mizzen, but I'm not sure what the detail would be for the step and partners, as well as how the tack would be managed at the jaws when reefed. I'm sure someone's worked it all out.

[bloggs68]

[QUOTE=Duncan Gibbs;3155215]It's an outboard well with thick, stiff plastic flaps that maintain water flow when the leg isn't lowered through.

Shhhhh! Don't tell McMullen!

QUOTE]

okay Duncan - you win the prize. Do you have spies in my workshop?? An idea borrowed from the BayRaider and it works a treat, allowing the outboard to be tilted up whilst underway.

Ad

[bloggs68]

Terry,

I weld my rudder gear up from 316SS - simple but effective. Regarding the mizzen, I would keep it as simple as possible. Firstly sail the boat in stronger winds with the main reefed down and see if you actually need to reef the mizzen before you make any mjor changes. In normal sailing conditions up to around 20kts I have found that the boat is still pretty balanced with the main reefed. As it is designed, it is pretty simple to reef.

AD

[Duncan Gibbs]

Do you have spies in my workshop?

Yeah! This fella called Andrew! You'd better sack him before he gives away too many other trade secrets!

[chill]

great looking boat.

[Jlaup]

Nice work. I hope the rest happens faster than it took me on the Indian. Although, I think you are already working at a steadier clip than I did.
John

[Y Bar Ranch]

We also did some capsize and inversion testing which was really interesting. We'll be doing some more next week and will hopefully find time to splice together a short video of capsize and inversion testing of the CY. The watertight side benches make a huge difference and the level of water inside the boat after a full inversion is well below the top of the centreboard slot. The boat was also very stable full of water and the guys sailed her whilst lying in the "bath". Gets my brain gears thinking about a water ballasted CY??

I'm interested in seeing the videos. It's always been my one concern about the open boat. Glad to hear your configuration works.

[TerryLL]

A bit more progress. The fore stem and the fore outer keel are now glued on. I'm currently working on the aft outer stem, skeg and deadwood. Here's a photo of the patterns for the aft stem and skeg:



There's a tricky little piece of deadwood that fits in that empty triangular area. I've been thinking about that little chunk for a few days.

Here are the patterns laid out on the 8/4 sapele I'm using for the keel and skeg. The big advantage of making patterns for each piece is that the patterns can be nested on the stock for the best yield. The sapele I have on hand is a glorious load of 4/4 and 8/4 quartersawn that I just got in from Edensaw. This particular slab of 8/4 is 9 inches wide and 13 feet long.

[TerryLL]

The aft outer stem, the skeg, and the deadwood chunk are now fitted, and glued on. The patterns were fairly close, but each piece required a bit of whittling. Here's a couple photos of the three pieces just glued on:







The skeg and aft stem are 2" thick where they meet the hull, but taper to 1" at their outer edge, so quite a bit of planing is in order to cut that bevel over the 6-plus inches of the skeg width. This was definitely a job for the power planer.



I have a love-hate relationship with my power planer. It's noisy, dusty, imprecise, and invariably shoots a ton of prickly shavings down my shirt collar. I hate it, except when it saves me hours of planing in awkward positions. The sapele I'm using for the skeg and aft stem is not the nicest stuff to plane by hand, as it has a lot of interlocking grain, but the horrid power planer made short work of the job.

[TerryLL]

Oughtred provides the option of planking the garboard in either 9mm or 12mm. But if planked in 9mm he specifies a stringer at about mid-span to strengthen the gbd. Putting that stringer on the inside of the gbd is a bit of a problem, because four floors need to be notched for it, additional limbers need to be cut, and it will still want to dam up any water running down the hull toward the bilge.

I decided to put that stringer on the outside of the hull where it would also function as a hull guard. I laminated it in place on the hull using three lams of 3/8 X 1-1/2 fir, using a sheet of plastic between the stringer and hull so the stringer could be removed for planing.

Here's a photo of the stringer just after glue-up:




I've been using 1" blocks under the temporary drywall screws to reduce the risk of snapping off the screws on removal. They work particularly well when the dw screws are long and penetrate several lams.

My method is to drill a 1/2" hole through the blocks:




After the glue has set and the lamination is ready to remove, I break the blocks apart with a pair of vise grips:







This leaves the shank of the screw exposed. About 5 seconds with a propane torch on the shank is enough to break the bond, and there's no scorched wood to deal with.




Here's the hull guards, cleaned and planed and ready to go back on:

[Duncan Gibbs]

I love your workshop Terry! And that CY is going to be a real beauty!

[TerryLL]

I love your workshop Terry! And that CY is going to be a real beauty!

Thanks Dunc,

My last shop was 800 sq. ft. and the one I'm in now is about 1500 sq. ft. Next Spring I'll be looking for new lodgings and hope to move up to about 2500 sq. ft. There's never enough room. As it stands now, I can only build one boat at a time.

[TerryLL]

Been a while since my last update on this project. Since then I've worked sporadically on the build as other obligations permit. Also took off a chunk of time to move all my dump into a new shop space. I'm currently working on the sheer rails.








Installing the blocking for the slotted inwales.





At the new shop. More room, better light, lower rent, cheaper utes, better neighbors. All the blocking is done and the first inwale lamination is on. The hull was quite flouncy before the sheer rail went on, but stiffened right up when that first inwale went on.




Here's a shot of the underside of the slotted rail taken from the keel. The very inner lamination next to the planking is a thin strip just 1/4" thick. Its function is to provide a clean line between the painted hull and the bright sheer rail.




The second inwale lamination finishes off the sheer rail. Five laminations plus blocking. All edges will get rounded and contoured and a sacrificial outwale will be added.




Aft breasthook and slotted rail. That breasthook could stand a bit more whittling on.

[jsjpd1]

That sure is nice work Terry!

Jim

[Duncan Gibbs]

Nice to see you progress Terry! I have to say I'm jealous of that Powermatic mortiser I spy in the background.

[TerryLL]

Nice to see you progress Terry! I have to say I'm jealous of that Powermatic mortiser I spy in the background.

You're welcome to come any use it anytime. It's a sweet machine for sure.

[TerryLL]

I looked at a lot of slotted inwales before deciding on the relative proportions of blocks and slots. Iain doesn't provide information on the inwale, other than a standard laminated rail without slots. My search for the perfect slotted inwale convinced me that the slots should be about twice the length of the bocks.

So I started with 3" for the blocks and 6" for the slots. After several iterations of lining out the dimensions on the rail, I ended up with slots that were 5.25" and blocks that were 2.75, not far off from the 2:1 ratio. That was a good size for the blocking because there was no need to round the faces of the blocks to get them to lay fair against the inwale. I settled on 3/4" for the slot width, which seemed adequate for most any line I'd be likely to tie to the rail, and also wide enough for a decent hand-hold.

The method I used to cut the blocking was quick and simple. I ripped 3/4" blanks out of 8/4 sapepe and used a 1.125" Forstner bit to cut the curved ends of the block sections. The block height is just 1.25", so I didn't need to drill all the way through the blank. I then ripped the blanks at just over 1.25", freeing the blocks from the blank.

Here's a photo of the drilled blanks:




And the completed blocks:




Here's a photo with all the blocking glued on and the first inwale lamination on:

[Ed Armstrong]

Did something happen to the album? I'm just seeing a bunch of broken links.

[John How]

Lookin real good Terry!!!

[Ed Armstrong]

If John is seeing them, it must be me. Maybe I need a Photobucket account?

Nevermind -- it's a firewall issue. Our network admin has been playing around with website filters.

[Pfdill]

The disposable wooden blocks are brilliant!
Thanks so much for taking the time to describe and illustrate your work - it's really helpful.

[TerryLL]

Did something happen to the album? I'm just seeing a bunch of broken links.

There are a couple photos posted by others on this thread that appear as broken links, but all my photos are still here.

[John How]

If John is seeing them, it must be me. Maybe I need a Photobucket account?

Nevermind -- it's a firewall issue. Our network admin has been playing around with website filters.

What!!!, now they want you to work at work?

[TerryLL]

I finally found a bit of time to put in on the boat build these last few weekends. Got the forward bulkhead in last weekend and the task today was the mast step. This boat will carry the gunter-yawl rig, so only one forward step is fitted, with the step mortise just aft of the bulkhead. As drawn, the step is quite long and spans most of the distance between two stations, and passes through the bulkhead. Of all the step options drawn for this design, this step is by far the most robust, which seems odd, as the gunter rig is stayed and the stress on the step is much less than the steps for the lug version. No matter, I'm happy to have the thing overbuilt.

The step started out as a chunk of 8/4 sapele, 4" wide and 18" long. The first task was to cut the mortise for the mast tenon. I don't get to use my mortiser very often, and was happy to have it for this job. The mortise is 2" square and 1-1/4" deep.







Next step was to drill for the cross bolts. For this I'm using 1/4" bronze rod, threaded both ends with nuts and washers. The nuts needed to be countersunk because the step has to slide through a notch in the bulkhead.




Here's the finished step. I'm waiting on some outrageously expensive 12X3 bronze screws from Hamilton Marine. Those things used to be $8.00/100, now they're more like $100/8.

[Jlaup]

Beautiful mast step. I always got a little sad on the Indian when I'd fabricated a pretty piece out of nice wood and then slathered paint all over it. My mast partner is reinforced with transverse bronze rod, but it's all buried under the deck and painted light gray. Same with the rudder. Nice mahogany with 8 or 10 bronze drifts slathered up with bottom paint.

How much are you planning on leaving bright?

[TerryLL]

Beautiful mast step. I always got a little sad on the Indian when I'd fabricated a pretty piece out of nice wood and then slathered paint all over it. My mast partner is reinforced with transverse bronze rod, but it's all buried under the deck and painted light gray. Same with the rudder. Nice mahogany with 8 or 10 bronze drifts slathered up with bottom paint.

How much are you planning on leaving bright?

This step will get the same treatment. Paint will cover all. The only bright wood on the entire boat will be the sheer rails, breasthooks, and a bit of trim. I hate to varnish.

[jsjpd1]

Very nice work Terry, I always look forward to seeing your progress. I like the look of varnished rails, but realized I'm no good at keeping them up. So my rails got painted this year.

Jim

[Jlaup]

I hate to paint and varnish! But, at least paint lasts a bit. Same here, as you saw, rub rail, c/b trunk top, and coamings is all that is bright. Well spars, too. But, they might get painted once they get beat up.

[Yeadon]

Helluva mast step. Lovely.

[TerryLL]

Thanks guys,

I went back to the shop after posting those last pics and glued that sucker in place. So there's no more wishy-washy indecision about which rig to fly. It'll be a gunter-yawl by golly. I'm sure I'll have second thoughts about not going with the lug rig, but if I'd chosen the lug I'm sure I'd've pined away for the gunter. If Iain had any compassion at all he would have offered only one rig.

[JimD]

Beautiful work, Terry.

[TerryLL]

Progress has been slow but steady the last few months. I'm aiming for a Spring 2013 splash date.

Here's a pic of the mizzen step just before it got glued and screwed in place. The top of the step is parallel to the waterline, so getting the rake of the mizzen just right will be fairly easy.




The deck framing is complete. Next chore it to seal and paint the inside of the compartments before the decks go on. Both decks will have a generous rectangular hatch, plus access plates in the bulkheads, plus stoppered drain holes.

[Jlaup]

The good news is that the below decks painting doesn't have to be the first quality job. Looking good! And thanks again for the Indian sail plan. She is sailing very nicely.

[JimD]

Looking very excellent, Terry.

[TerryLL]

The good news is that the below decks painting doesn't have to be the first quality job. Looking good! And thanks again for the Indian sail plan. She is sailing very nicely.

And where are those sailing pics????

The below decks painting is where I unravel all the sealer-primer-paint mysteries. I figure if someone takes the time to stick their head way down inside the hatches, they should be rewarded by the sight of some less than perfect joinery, and some sloppy paint work.

Edited to add:

Just saw your new posts sailing the gaff Indian. I am jealous beyond words. I'm thinking of burning the Caledonia Yawl and starting over with the Indian. What was I thinking???

[Vernon]

Most excellant Terry. I plan on varying from the plan and going with the open rails on my ST.

[TerryLL]

Most excellant Terry. I plan on varying from the plan and going with the open rails on my ST.

When the boat first came off the molds it was a flouncy quivering thing. You could give it a little tap at one end and it'd jiggle like a jello mold. As each layer of outwale and inwale was added it stated to firm up. Once the spacer blacks and the first inwale were added it started getting pretty rigid. The second lam of the inwale really firmed up the entire hull. Adding the deck framing has stiffened it further. Still to come are the bench seats, which will be carried right out to the planking and land full on the bulkheads. Each little bit stiffens the hull a bit more. I have no doubt that this will be a very stiff yet very light hull. I'm hoping the hull finishes out at about 350, and I plan on at least 200 pounds of ballast.

[jsjpd1]

I plan on at least 200 pounds of ballast.

I don't think you'll need that much Terry. I settled at 150 after starting at 200, even solo the boat is very well behaved.

Jim

BTW- your boat is coming out beautifully.

[TerryLL]

Thanks Jim,

I'll be sailing solo most of the time, so I'll start with the 200 pounds. The nice thing about internal ballast is that it can be easily adjusted for crew size and loading.

Terry