Brooklyn Mower Dory Build

[kiliantics]

Hello all,

I've decided to start a thread for my dory build for anyone that's interested to follow along. I posted some thoughts before while planning and choosing a design and there seemed to be at least a couple potential followers.

This is my first time building a boat and I decided to choose the 1911 version of Mower's 21 ft Massachusetts racing dory. I'm going for a traditional build, at least as traditional as is reasonably possible these days. I realise this is quite ambitious but I've spent a good while now roaming around these forums and perusing through some of the classic books on wooden boat building so I feel pretty confident about pulling it off. Hopefully with the wisdom of this community and some trial and error, it will make it to launch!

The build was a little slow in getting started -- getting space, lofting, making decisions and gathering materials -- but I think it is pretty much in full flow now so I will start posting my progress.

First off, I decided to assemble the transom, which is three boards of white oak held together by riveting to some oak cleats:

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I may add some cheeks to the lower half, where the bevels get very broad and thin, so as to have some more meat to fasten the first strakes onto.

Unfortunately, a gap of about 1 mm has appeared between the boards since fastening, probably from further drying after being indoors for a while... I am trying to get the boards to swell back up with some linseed and tung oil in the meantime. Hopefully the gap will close up enough for whenever I get around to caulking.

Next up, I assembled the bottom, screwing some white cedar boards together with white oak cleats. You can see it assembled here in a kind of "scaffold" I built for the setup of the boat skeleton, where I can attach the cross spalls of the knees and top of the stem once I get the remaining parts cut to size. I am very lucky to have friends in Brooklyn with a backyard that have allowed me to use the space to build!

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Unfortunately a couple of the cleats had some minor splitting when I screwed in these thick bronze screws. I tried to pay close attention to sufficient pre-drilling as I've seen many warnings but, alas, I still have to get the knack of it! They don't seem to pose any catastrophic risk so I think I'll just fill the cracks at some point, maybe with some kind of linseed compound.

You can also see some of the knees that just arrived from @jwswan which I plan to be working on in the coming weeks.

So I hope there will be some more updates before long as I proceed with the setup. I welcome any and all comments and feedback and am happy to elaborate on details of the process if anyone is curious!

[xkdrolt]

Your timing is exquisite. I just reposted the link to Thad's (Danielson) article on the Mower dory on a FB thread:

https://smallboatsmonthly.com/articl...t1f5OFhfYY4SKc

Dan Noyes here https://www.facebook.com/groups/1981...32860076969339
remarked that the Mower dory appears in Gardiner's book (I just bought a copy).

Finally there are these to put you in the 1908-1909 frame of mind:
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and
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The photos are from the Historicnewengland.org website but can be found by searching via DigitalCommonwealth.org using dory as a keyword. I believe both of these photos are from the Nathaniel Stebbins collection from 1909 and 1908 respectively. I'm looking fwd to your progress.

[Jamie Orr]

I have the same shrinking issue on a dory skiff that I've been stalled on for some time, gaps have appeared between the bottom planks. I'm debating whether to add splines or just rely on the cotton caulking - the planks should shrink back most if not all the way once she hits the water. I expect it will leak anyway whenever out of the water for a while, until it takes up each time. (I think I just talked myself out of splines!)

When you come to drill for the garboard to bottom fastenings, I recommend drilling for each fastening as you come to it. I drilled four or five ahead, and found the plank shifted when I hammered the nails home, just enough to misalign the next holes. After two or three fastenings were in the misalignment was enough to make the next nails bend and wander. A couple of them broke through on the inside of the bottom plank. Not badly enough to make it worth digging them out (bronze ring nails) but I'll have to make a cosmetic repair. Yay for paint!

Jamie

[Thad]

The 1911 plan shows an oak shoe under the bottom board, with this carried out over the lower edges of the garboards. In 1911-1921, the bottom board would certainly be one piece, two pieces with one seam is easier to keep tight than three with two, but good caulking bevels are important with the planks as tight together inside as possible.

[timo4352]

Oh yeah! Count me in.
I love those Mower dories.

[Woxbox]

Cool project. I'll be following.

[johngsandusky]

Thanks for sharing, I love those Mower dory plans. I sold my last sailing dory last summer (never owned a Mower).
When she's ready, I'll trade you sailing days. Come out to LI and sail on my ketch, I'll drive in and be rail meat for your dory.

[kiliantics]

Nice pics, @xkdrolt, definitely inspiring! And Gardner's book is great, every time I look through it I learn something else I seem to have missed the last time.

And great tip Jamie, I'll keep that one in mind. Good luck with finishing your skiff! I'm definitely banking on seams swelling shut so I hope for both our sakes you're good if you skip the splines.

The 1911 plan shows an oak shoe under the bottom board, with this carried out over the lower edges of the garboards. In 1911-1921, the bottom board would certainly be one piece, two pieces with one seam is easier to keep tight than three with two, but good caulking bevels are important with the planks as tight together inside as possible.

These are some of the scantlings for the plans I got where apparently Mower is calling for pine. I was thinking of using cedar for the false bottom, would I be better off using oak? And I was also hoping to get the bottom out of two boards but then I read somewhere, maybe in Gardner's dory book or in Greg Rossel's book, that one should try to have the centerline land in the center of a board. They might have said something about the centerboard slot. I can see how fewer seams is preferable though, I already feel they have added up to a lot along with the transom.

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Have you sourced the plank stock yet? I'm particularly interested in how you deal with the GBD plank.

Haha, I am interested to know how I'll deal with the garboards myself... I have a decent pile of white cedar that I got for planking and some of the boards are quite wide so hopefully I'll manage to pull it off.

Thanks for sharing, I love those Mower dory plans. I sold my last sailing dory last summer (never owned a Mower).
When she's ready, I'll trade you sailing days. Come out to LI and sail on my ketch, I'll drive in and be rail meat for your dory.

That sounds amazing! I would definitely take you up on the offer.

[jim_cricket]

Hey Kiliantics,
Nice to see your dory, and great to see another boat coming together in Brooklyn. I just left Brooklyn after 35 years. Built quite a few boats there, some in Williamsburg, some in my Navy Yard shop, and the last one, a Point Comfort 23 out in Canarsie. Wherebouts are you?
I'm a dory fan in general, and love that Mower boat!
Cricket
Now in White Stone, Va.

[kiliantics]

Just a quick update pic for those interested. I'm getting closer and closer to finishing Gardner's "stage 2". With the setup complete and everything aligned, I'm now on to final fairing before moving to the planking stage. Here's the bottom with all the frames screwed down and transom and stem bolted in place:

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@jim_cricket was that out of a shop in Brooklyn Navy Yard? I was looking for space to build and got approached by a couple with a millwork there trying to share their workshop and they said they knew someone who had built a boat there before, maybe this is you?? It didn't work out in the end -- freight elevator would not have fit this boat haha. So now I'm working out of a friend's yard in Crown Heights.

[Michael_Owen]

Awesome! I used to live on Park place and Washington Ave. Some of those back yards are not too bad. (Ours was gross.)

Love this design and the traditional build al fresco. It looks like you're making good progress.

I'll be following along.

Mike

[Kapiteinterzee]

Hello kiliantics,

Count me in among those who are interested. . . and of course we've been following your thread - who wouldn't(?)

A New Yorker building a boat in his backyard, with little experience in the shipwright trade. . . heck, a better script couldn't be written!

Keep posting and we'll keep following your excellent progress!

Stay safe, stay healthy.

J.

[johngsandusky]

Looks good!

[kiliantics]

Hi everyone!

It's been quite a while since I posted an update but I haven't given up on the project just yet! I had a lot going on last year and actually spent a lot of my spare time working on this other project which maybe some of you would find interesting:



In the meantime, I've managed to progress with some planking and I'm nearing the end of stage 3:





So once I have this last set of strakes done there will be just the sheer to go and I'll be on to the next exciting stage of the build. I have a good idea of how that will look but I wonder if any of you might have some input on things I'm uncertain about. My plan is to get some green oak to steam bend for the false stem and the intermediate ribs between the larch frames and after that I'll need to attach the gunwale/sheer clamp. (In the plans, Mower calls it a gunwale as you can see in the scantlings I posted before)

I have a nice long seasoned piece of white oak that I think I could use for the gunwale if I made it continuous but it's not clear to me that this is the right way to go. The plan calls for deck beams to hold the partial deck fore and aft and in the drawings it does look like it is intended to be a continuous piece with the deck beams let in somehow:



However, since it will be covered by a deck, it seems I could do it another way, as shown in Gardner's dory book here:



It seems the tricky thing in the alternative case would be a continuous cap instead. My plan is to have a kind of covering board for the deck, probably in pieces of oak, with cedar for the deck, so I think I will go for the continuous gunwale approach in which case my next question becomes how to connect the frames and deck beams to the gunwale/clamp. I don't have a good sense for how a bent piece like this gunwale would respond to different notches being made into it. I could just screw it down into the heads of the frames but I would feel more secure with a proper joint rather than just relying on the screws so I think I will make small tenons in the frame heads that notch maybe a half inch or so into the underside of the gunwale (where the mortise does not extend into the edges of the gunwale).

The gunwale cross section is pretty small, at 1-1/2 x 7/8 inches so my real concern is with how it should support the deck beams. I get the feeling that something like a half lap joint could really affect the gunwale strength so I am inclined to try something like this instead, maybe with a dovetail/half-dovetail to help with holding the sheer in place:



So I have a decent idea of how things should go but since there is some uncertainty I thought I'd get a sanity check here to make sure what I'm thinking is not totally mad.

Hope everyone is doing well and happy to provide some more details if there is any interest!

[Thad]

Happy to see this project progressing.
All I have for the 1911 drawings is what was published in The Rudder, small scale, and the beam/gunwale joint is not shown. I would not be a afraid to put a beveled notch in your white oak gunwale, straight or half lap. When Crocker drew the Indian in 1921 he added a clamp/beam shelf against the frames.

[StevenBauer]

That post and beam cabin doesn’t look like it’s in Brooklyn! Looks more like Brooklin to me.

[shickey]

Some of your latest photos aren't showing up for me. Please repost since I am very interested in your project. I am building a dory in my backyard in Somerville, MA. It is a surf dory from Lowell boat shop plans which were pretty rudimentary measurements of the skillet,stem,transom and two frame sections. So the lines were further developed in CAD and using Gardner's book as guidance.
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