Eun Mara Gaff Yawl

[stromborg]

Inspiration



Truthfully, I've been sputtering along on this one since last winter when I cleared out the floorspace to loft the molds.


The previous winter I had done much the same for Iain's Wee Seal. A good learning project and much as I had thought Wee Seal was the right boat to build once I had her laid out on the floor I realized she wasn't the right one after all. After ordering a set of Eun Mara plans from Mr. Oughtred the Seal molds were reduced to kindling, her lines painted over and we started over again.



The whole process went a lot faster this time.





With the molds done I started thinking about the building frame. My shop is 21'x24' and the boat is 19'-9". Fortunately I managed to leave enough of the 24' span clear enough to at least get the hull planked up, once she is rolled over and all the bulkheads are in place I will put her on wheels so I can move her if the need arises. At any rate with the hull to be taking up so much room I decided to concentrate on other parts. To date, with the exception of the mainmast all the other spars are glued up. The inner stems are done too and waiting for me to finish truing up the building frame.

Next is getting the molds up and faired between now and the new year. In this case I've decided to forgo my usual start to the new year as the Winter Solstice and let it be January 1, mostly because I have some work to do so I can pay for a big stack of marine grade plywood.

[John Bailey]

My all time favorite. We'll be watching closely.

John

[JimD]

Oughtred's best.

[James McMullen]

Oughtred's best.

WHAT?!? Blasphemer! There is only ONE Oughtred's Best and her name is ROWAN!!!


haha, no actually I like Eun Mara plenty too. . Yay, Steve! Build that thang!

[Gerarddm]

I thought that in every artist's mind, the best work is the next design. ;-)

[almeyer]

I'd say that's some fine inspiration.
Eun Mara is one of my favorite designs also, will be watching this thread with interest.
Al

[andrewpatrol]

Beauty Steve, another Oughtred we should have a seperate page on this forum ! I'm watching your build for sure.
andrew

[Larks]

great inspiration indeed!



they must be children sailing her, she looks bigger than 19'9"

Good luck with the build, I'm looking forward to following it

[PeterSibley]

That cabin is perfectly proportioned , she sure is pretty !

[StevenBauer]

Have you thought about stretching her out 10%? That's what I was thinking of doing. An Aussie guy did and Iain seemed to think she came out fine.



Steven

[Lewisboater]

Have you thought about stretching her out 10%? That's what I was thinking of doing. An Aussie guy did and Iain seemed to think she came out fine.



Steven

I was thinking the same thing... up to 21 ft +/-. I did a uniform stretch in paint of the profile and when I saw it I went Ooooooh... Bingo!

[stromborg]

I met Ian and his wife (the folks in the picture) at this year's Port Townsend WBF. They aren't exactly statuesque but not pygmys either. We had a long chat about my stealing their paint scheme for Kayli Marie. There was a recently completed EM at the show as well, seemed like she had 4 good sized adults comfortably lounging in the cockpit with a couple more in the cabin all weekend.

As for stretching her? As of tonight the building frame is up and leveled with the stems clamped into place and the frames are staged to go up on Friday so I don't think she'll be getting any longer. If I thought adding a foot or so would help me hide and Airhead head I might do it but what is really lacking is headroom.

[stromborg]

A few pictures to bring things up to date.


One of the eight spars this boat uses. Yes, eight. 3 for the mizzen, 3 for the main, a boomkin and a bowsprit. Not all of them are birdsmouth, I think this is the mizzen mast.


Close up of my mast building jig. I like to make three or four of these stands, custom fit to hold the spar straight while the epoxy sets up. This was a test fit without any hose clamps involved.


Fore and aft inner stems glued up. I built them from dimensional doug fir, they are 2"x 21/2" laminating them felt like a lot of wasted wood. Not settled on which species of wood for the outer stems/keel yet but I am leaning towards something hard. Certainly harder than DF.


As of right now all the frames but #3 and 4 are up. There are a couple of laminated frames on 3 and 4 that need to get done up tomorrow. Once those are in I can finish up any fine adjustments to the molds though at this point all the time I put into lofting everything seems to be paying off. Molds 9 and 8 pick up the aft inner stem and everything lined up just like it was supposed too. 1 and 2 look like they will do the same. You can't see it in this picture but there is a batten tacked along the garboard lands and it looks really fair already. Pretty cool to finally have all the random parts together and looking rather boat-like.

Got to remember to give Edensaw a call tomorrow and arrange for 10 or so sheets of plywood.

[StevenBauer]

I've had this pile in my garage since 2003, I got 15 sheets of 3/8" (9mm) Sapele for $30 a sheet.




It's stacked up next to all the molds and laminated stems for my someday Eun Mara project.

I've used some of it already, the bottom of the Nutshell Pram and the garboards of the Elf. I think I have 13 sheets left.


Steven

[paulf]

I'm glad I held off on the decision of what design to build. Im making a wonderful 17 'Matinicus, in the mean time. This thread will be watched for inspiration ...Thanks

[stromborg]

I've had this pile in my garage since 2003, I got 15 sheets of 3/8" (9mm) Sapele for $30 a sheet.




It's stacked up next to all the molds and laminated stems for my someday Eun Mara project.

I've used some of it already, the bottom of the Nutshell Pram and the garboards of the Elf. I think I have 13 sheets left.


Steven

$30 seems like it was probably a good deal even in 2003.

How is your Deer Isle Koster doing?

[StevenBauer]

Yes, less than a third of the going rate. I'm friends with the owner of one of the local hardwood stores. I just looked at Boulter's site, 9mm Sapele is going for $170 a sheet. Yikes!
The KDI project is stalled. While the builder is home from college for Christmas break we hope to get things organized and moving again.

Steven

[BBSebens]

That EM at PT was lovely. I think sumptuous is an appropriate descriptor. Love those curves.

[stromborg]

Stations 3 and 4 get laminated frames. They pickup most of the load from the deck-stepped mast. 3/8" DF steams and bends much easier than 1/2".



Build frame is up and ready. I will start running battens to check the layout for the planks this weekend. I spent a chunk of time boxing up the frames, with a maximum beam of 6'-8" the middle molds had a lot of flex in them. I'll run a batten down low next just to stiffen up the lower section of the molds before I start planking. Another diagonal or two will probably go in as well but I want to keep the inside as accessible as I can to clean up epoxy runs as I plank. Taking time to do that on Kayli Marie really sped up prepping the interior after she got turned over.

[StevenBauer]

Looks great. Tell us about that stack of plywood on the floor?


Steven

[andrewpatrol]

Steve, one thing I didn't do that I wish i had of, is to run battens to check lining out. Even though mr. Oughtred gives plank marks on each mould, discrepancies can creep in so it gives you that last 5 % of fairness that can make or break a lapstrake's looks.

[simonmags]

Looking good Sir, I admire you for being able to stop, after lofting the seal and then reducing what work you had done to kindling, that must have been an interesting day. Hope this boat goes far better for you Looks like your doing very nicely so far anyway All the best, watching with interest

[stromborg]

The plywood on the floor is 10 sheets of 9mm hydrotek waiting to become planks for the hull.

For those of you who are interested in building EM , there is a remarkable collection of wisdom to be found here: http://www.alistego.com/


This boat has quite a following in the southern hemisphere.

[StevenBauer]

Lots of good info here, too: http://www.quicktopic.com/31/H/2A2LGRxMzGR

Steven

[stromborg]

One of my kids stopped by and wanted to know why I was building an igloo in the shop.

It's been a good week, the keelson has been laminated and shaped so the backbone of the boat is done. I built the frames using the "loft one side, cut it out and route the other side to match" system so everything is nice and symetrical. The battens I've been using to fair the hull had been a mixed collection of douglas fir and western red cedar. I don't recommend mixing species of wood, they bend differently enough to throw you off.

After years of vowing to use only hand planes I treated myself to a nice power plane. What a great tool, dangerously fast wood remover especially if you have it set at 1/16" cutting depth. But used with care it removed the bulk of the excess keelson material in a matter of minutes as opposed to hours.

[JimD]

WHAT?!? Blasphemer! There is only ONE Oughtred's Best and her name is ROWAN!!!


haha, no actually I like Eun Mara plenty too. . Yay, Steve! Build that thang!

In that case, I shall rephrase: Oughtred's best non rower.

[stromborg]

Ack! One nice long post gone in a blink of a 2 second power outage!



Quick repost.

The garboards are spiled and ready to be scarphed. A bit of fiddling with the keelson/stem transition and I'll be ready for some epoxy work.

[stromborg]

The power should stay up now so I'll add to my last post. Yesterday afternoon I was probably one of the few people in the area not paying attention to how the Seahawks were doing.

I spent a few days working over the keelson and stems, this allowed me to avoid tackling an aspect of this project that had me more than a bit worried.

Spiling.

I sort of understood the principle but couldn't quite wrap my head around how it all came together. As it turns out, as in lofting there is no teacher like experience. I tacked a few 1/4" ply battens together, got out my handy trammel points, struck a bunch of arcs and then transfered all that information onto a sheet of 1/8" plywood. It works. Not only that it works better and easier than I thought it would! Interesting where sticking points develop along our respective learning curves.

So now I have a pair of garboard planks to scarf (scarph?) together and epoxy into place once the keelson/stem transition is finalized. The aft end of the garboard is pretty easy to fit but the forward end is another story. There is a lot of twist along the 40 or so inches from station 2 to the inner stem face and the 4" wide keelson also gives way to the 2 1/4" wide stem between stations 1 and 2. I got it fairly close with my 1/8" plywood template but material that thin bends different than the 3/8" thick planking stock. It is an interesting and somewhat contemplative exercise, one that makes me glad to be doing this for myself as opposed to a client. A couple of hours with my low angle block plane should get it sorted out then it's a question of gluing the plank up on the frame or off?

[andrewpatrol]

Steve, i found wrapping the end of plank in towels inside plastic thenpouring on boiling water helped bend troubesome planks.

[stromborg]

I can see where that might come in handy on the aft end, they take a pretty tight bend back there.

[andrewpatrol]

On my Grey Seal I had to do it on about the first three planks at stern. Pretty much the same shape as Eun Mara

[stromborg]

Garboard planks on, epoxy curing. Six more sets to go and the boat will be 25% done!

When making up the garboards I simply used a full 8' length of plywood for the center section and added what was needed to get the rest of the plank out to the stems. Since the middle 10 feet of the hull has relatively little shape to it I figure on staggering the scarfs by about 6 inches. This should keep any notional hard spot in the plank from being too obvious and each joint will be backed up by a solid section of ply at the lap. The power plane is going to make quick work of flattening out the keel section, if I get that done and the gains cut tomorrow I could have the next plank glued up by Sunday night.

[D. Handron]

Steve, I managed to plank up my Eun na Mara without resorting to any steam/heat/moisture encouragement. I used 9mm meranti plywood. That having been said, I had to work pretty hard to wrap the middle planks around the stern. It's a sharp bend with a twist for extra fun. I don't think the plywood could have bent any tighter than that. You might give it a try, but if your plywood is any stiffer than mine, you may want to use andrewpatrol's towel technique.

[stromborg]

Plank #2 in place and the flat for the keel assembly is close to finished. Fortunately I built the frame with the idea that I might have to climb on the hull to do some work. I should have started the planing process from up there, the power plane erases wood really really fast. None of the errors are fatal though, any dips will be under the keel or at the very least covered by the fillet but still, reaching out over the hull with the plane running? Not one of my better ideas. I'll go up with a hand plane and a level before to fine tune the whole thing at some point.



Final sighting-in of the next set of planks.

The staves for the main mast are under the boat, this afternoon I realized they now have epoxy drips along their length. Glad my shop isn't any smaller.

Interesting how some of the tasks that seemed so daunting a couple of boats ago have become much less so. After taking this picture I scribed the lap line, cut all 4 gains and marked up my spiling batten over the course of a couple of easy hours. As a denizen of the greater Seattle area I am going to have to do some Superbowl-related activity tomorrow. Bah

[Andy Mcconkey]

Looking good. That's an awfully pretty hull.

I used doorskins for templates once and I found that because they bent so differently is was hard to trust them as the absolute shape.