5.5 metre project

[Pertsa]

It really worked fine, not suitable for any larger boats though.

Surgery of transom continues. I made test transom from foam to check dimensions needed for transom frame. Then it was time to prebend wood to make laminating process easier. Not much to say this time, but here are few pictures.

[Pertsa]

Well, that first try of transom frame didnt work out. It was OK, but not good enough so here goes new try. This time laminate is thinner to avoid hair cracks.


I also found supplier for high quality pine for deck frames. It is not easy to find quater sawn board which is sawn from slowly grown wood.

[Pertsa]

Some visible progress at last after lots of measuring. It is hard to make things right when you have just curved surfaces to all directions. Transom frame is now prefitted to hull, so I can start making 3 pairs of frames that were completely shot. Process of making these is easy, just take shape with soft copper pipe, draw line to masonite board, saw it, do fine fitting, make mould for laminating frame. After glue has dried it is just sanding and planing to make it fit properly.
Gaps that are visible are there because of shape issues still left on hull. When I finally screw to frames they should disappear.

[Hugh MacD]

Great work! What a lucky boat to have come into the hands of someone who genuinely cares.

[Pertsa]

Trying to do my best. Lots of pressure as it is not easy to match original professional work of this boat as hobbyist.

Tale of frames continues. Tools of trade, FXA is finnish "Harbour freight" quality brand of tools so I managed to afford 3x of cordless drills. Useful now so I dont need to swap drillbits all the time. So far I have been impressed about quality of these cheap tools. They seem to be made from proper materials unlike green bosch which had plastic gears. If these last at least half what milwaukee did I will be buing more.
I didn´t want to add extra load to bronze screws so I "pulled" frame to board with help of large washer and standard steel screw.
I hope second pair goes faster, this was my first ever pair of frames so I would guess there is room for improvement.

[Pertsa]

One piece at the time. Takes lots of time to make fit of laminated frame good.

[Mike1902]

One piece at the time. Takes lots of time to make fit of laminated frame good.

It does.
But there is a lot of satisfaction in knowing that you have done a proper job.
Keep up the good work.
Cheers,
Mike.

[Pertsa]

Progress is slow but sure. I found source of Iroko and Sapele for keelwork and for new planks.
Edit. I have to mention that not all frames are new. Many of them are old ones just bad bits replaced.

afgfhhk.jpg

[Garret]

Late to check out this thread - but what a beautiful boat! Really nice to see the good work you are doing.

[Pertsa]

Some time has passed, some progress has been made. All frames from stern to point where rudder goes trough keel are now removed, repaired and cleaned. I cannot repair frames near rudder because someone had made bad repair without holes for frames in keel. So I need to replace part of keel before I can continue. But anyway I can now start fitting of beam shelf, so I can continue by making deck frames. I need to do them before I can continue repairwork in keel as in current shape boat does not have required stiffness for major disassembly of keel.

Can you guess purpose of this measuring instrument? That upside down U shaped part.

[Harry Miller]

This is great. Thanks for documenting.

[Boatbum]

Beautiful work on a beautiful boat. keep us updated on progress!

[Pertsa]

Not dead yet!

So next job was to make sure that beam was correct. I think I might have mentioned earlier that Gullvinge was found to be little too narrow during official measurements of olympics. Issue was fixed by placing (ramming) beam at the widest part that pushed sides apart just enough to required 1,9 metres.
That beam was lost at one point of boats history so now when it does not have a deck it is easy to fix that issue. All started by making sure boat was level.
I measured it from multiple points just to make sure.
Laser level was nice tool for making sure of fore-aft trim. As I had found floatation marks before it was easy task. With laser it was interesting to see shape of waterline. As you can see from bottom paint old lady had gotten fat at some point. Now it is time to lose weight everywhere but from ballast keel.
On the bow there was black stripe just on original waterline, I would guess that it has been on dirty water at some point.
And finally after lots of measuring I found widest part of boat. It was slow task as 5.5 metre rule says that beam "Is measured at half height of freeboard". And for most of hull that is not widest part of beam.

[Pertsa]

I struck to small but irritating problem. 2/3´s of boat is nice and level, but aftmost part hull seems to be twisted slightly. Right side is approximately 1/3 inch lower than left side. Might have been caused by weight of snow in winter storage or been there since beginning. Anyway I would like to get rid of it.
Does anyone have good ideas how to fix it? After some thought I came up with plan:
-Add supports outside of boat to take twist away (lift one side and pull other slightly)
-Keep supports on place until beam shelf, deck frames, deck are installed and hull has been splined
-Hope that twist has been reduced.

[Slacko]

I think your plan is good.
If you had done this while replacing the frames as well, you could have eliminated it already.
This is a common problem.
I've observed this being done 2-3 times in my local yard with similar age yachts.
Fitting offset engines and marconi rigs exacerbates the risk.

[Larks]

Lovely work Pertsa, I’m enjoying following this project very much.

Regarding the twist, hooking a few of those snatch straps from the gunwale to the keel in strategic positions on opposite sides would also help to gradually bring her back into shape, adding a little more tension to the strap bit by bit over time. Make up a wooden, steel or aluminium channel or sleeve of some sort to slip over the gunwale to protect it so that you can get some reasonable tension on the straps without crushing the gunwale timbers. As Slacko said, it’s a bit of a shame you didn’t catch it before fitting the new frames but you should still be able to fix it in hindsight.

[Pertsa]

Good point with frames, I did not think of that. But that change is not lost yet as it is not _that_ big job to remove some of them again. I think correcting it when changing frames would not have worked too well (with my skill level) as I would have had way too many loose ends at that point. After all at the beginning stern was asymmetrical and beam was not equal. Now when those are fixed I think it will be easier to handle twist even though I might need to do more work. It is first time for me to do work with this long and narrow boat so I like to take it easy.

Good thing is that not much force is needed to correct issue. I can bend stern with my own hands enough to remove twist. What I am worried is that does steps I mentioned before keep it away. How would you recommend to counter it with frames?
Would it work if I first look for a spot where most of the twist is, then remove few frames from that area, twist hull to correct issue and put frames back? Together with all the steps I mentioned before.


Running backstays in this boat are quite far forward which is good thing. I have seen some boats of this same class where they are much much further aback. Designer probably knew that this kind of narrow stern does not like to hold twisting forces of backstays.

[Mike-in-Suffolk]

I can't help you.........but I can applaud you. Lovely stuff. This is a wonderful project and a great thread.

[Pertsa]

Thank you, trying to save this piece of history as best as I can.

Ended up doing it like this. I just screwed board on side of boat and placed beam there which pushes one side up. Crude but worked perfectly. Now maximum deflections are +/-2mm which is more than good for woodenboat this age. Now it is time to start fitting beam shelf.

[Pertsa]

How many clamps you want?
Yes!


As someone might have noticed I constructed beam shelf from two parts by laminating. That is because hull without beam shelf is very flexible and bending (even steamed) massive beam shelf would have distorted hull. That wasnt issue for original builders as hull had probably jig at that point.
To keep two pieces of board sliding around I put one screw in bow end and tape to aft end to allow movement when bending board. Whole thing was packed into plastic wrap to keep glue from leaking inside hull. Now it is time to go sailing for a weekend and wait.

I added clamps gradually starting from bow end to both boards in same time. Just to make sure that if there is some distortion of hull it will be balanced.

[Pertsa]

Today I started final shaping of beam shelf. Work that must be done carefully, I don´t want to end up with ruined 5 metres long board. I also bought small bandsaw for easier cutting of deck beams. Seems to be quite OK piece of kit.

When I bought Gullvinge I got 2 sails with it. 1 cotton spinnaker and 1 ripped silk one. Silk one is nice piece of history. It seems to have belonged to 5.5m L-20 Inga-Lill XXXXIV built in 1959. As it is marked with date 1960 it is probably first sail for it.
L-20 was designed for himself by grand old man of Finnish boatdesigning Gösta Kyntzell. L-20 is considered to be best of Finnish designed 5.5´s of classic era.
https://www.classicsailboats.info/kyntzell?lang=en

[Hugh MacD]

Nice bits of history there!

[Pertsa]

I don't know if these updates are "too small" to be interesting. But today I finished scarfs of beam shelf. Dimensions of them are exact copies of original scarfs in beam shelfs. Tools used were bullnose plane, chisels and japanese style saw. I think resulting join was quite good. I need to constantly remember myself that you cant see these parts in finished boat unless you kneel, push your head under deck and look upwards.

Original joins in beam shelf are little short of unbelievable, but builders of this boat were professionals.


Next thing coming is deck beams. I have few of them which I can use as approximate models, but as I did some corrections to beam of boat they all are now little too short. What you think, if I draw new deck beams with this classic method would I succeed well enough. After all 5.5 is narrow boat with flat deck so results of this method should be pretty close?

deckcrown1.jpg

Here are few pictures:

[Hugh MacD]

Nice! I have yet to try a nibbed scarf, but I'm certain nothing I do will be that good

[Crazer]

No such thing as too small an update! Brings warmth to my heart to see this project moving along. Great work, as usual.

[Mike1902]

Obtaining the deck camber with the method you described is a tried and true way to do it. You certainly have the space.
If however you would like to do it in a more mathematical way then try this link http://www.joliebrisemodels.co.uk/tenth/calculator.html
It would save you a lot of climbing up and down.
Just an idea.
Keep up the good work.

Cheers,
Mike.

[Pertsa]

Well, this is the better side, luckily other (upper) side will be hidden under deck. Anyway, I tried to keep in mind that this is "working" join, so no idea to spend too much time to make it look perfect when its purpose it just practical.

Thanks.

As I need to measure beam from multiple places anyway I think it is easiest to me to measure beam from each deck beam position and then draw deckbeams on floor. That calculator is good, but as this is rather narrow boat, I think it is just fastest way to draw deckline with that tool. I would be spending way too much time making sure that I measured every point correctly if I do calculated method

Today I put beam shelfs on their place with screws, now whole beam shelf sits on its correct place and I can do final shaping. This is kind of extra step, but by this way I can make sure that everything fits properly.
I will hand plane upper edge to correct level and angle compared to hull boards. Then I will check if any shaping is needed in lower edge of beam shelf and remove it to be able to round lower inboard corner as it was in original beam shelf. (Maybe I should round all edges, class rule allows it, weight savings you know )
Old round bottom plane found from flea market got its blade sharpened so it is ready when it is time to make new boards in distant future.

[Pertsa]

Few more pictures to you to watch. Beam shelfs were thinned 3 mm. I originally left some extra wood to allow fitting, so it had to go. At this point I understood why compass planes exist. Sadly cost/usefullness ratio is not there for me. Maybe I could get sponsorship from Kunz or Stanley planes Luckily it was manageable with cheating by planing in angle.
And finally lower inboard edge was rounded. I thought of rounding other corners aswell as sake of weight savings ( ), but original beam shelf did have sharp corners so I just took edge off from them.

[Pertsa]

Lasershow - I am starting to make final checks of dimensions.
I measure beam at each measuring station in drawings, at all 18 of them. Took lot of thinking how to get correct positions marked, but finally I think I found pretty good way.
First I marked each station to steel wire and put it to centerline of boat. Then I use my laser which I line with wire to draw correct measurement positions.
Bad explanation, but hopefully pictures make it clearer.

[Pertsa]

So it was time to make new tool. This time there was no need to invent anything "groundbreaking" as you cant beat this method. This is used to draw curvature of deck (as most probably know). 5.5´s have super flat deck so it is funny looking thing. Maximum allowed is 7mm for 305mm width so at maximum beam it is just little over 40 mm.
And bang, first new deck beam has appeared. Still some final fitting to be done as it stands about 3 mm too high. Class build rules require beams to be dovetailed to beam shelf. Also rule specifies minimium dimensions of 22 x 22 mm at the ends and 35 x 22,5 mm at the middle.

Then I got little ahead of things, but I thought I need to get suitable mast stepping coin. What would be more suitable than this silver coin? It was 1952 olympics Gullvinge was built for. There is also 1951 coin which would have better for build date, but those cost over 300€a piece. I think boat is happier if I spend that for example to good winch.

[timo4352]

Don't know how I missed this thread, but consider me subscribed!
Keep up the good work.

[Garret]

The coin is great & agree 100% that the boat would rather have a winch than a "fancier" coin.

As an aside, my mom saved a half dozen silver half dollar coins from my birth year. One of them is under my boat's mast.

[jamieduff1981]

Hi,

I only just found your thread here but I love it. Keep up the great work you are doing.

[Pertsa]

Few pictures more. Not much to say, but learning dovetail making slowly. I am doing prefit to every beam and do final fit when all of them are ready. After that I will shape bottoms of beams to final dimensions. Thats because I guess I have to do some fitting and shaping of beams when I testfit deck. Class rules are quite strict about dimensions of beams and for weight reasons they must be at minimium dimensions.

Edit. And thanks for all nice words.

[Hugh MacD]

Very nice! Your work there is sterling!