The Arctic Tern Project

Volume 7                           Issue No. 1                        January 2010

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Happy New Year

Bring on 2010.  Now this must be the year that this boat launches.  Fingers are crossed.  Offerings have been made.

Relieving the Toerail

Alright, another small detail that’s been on the list for some time is to make a relief cut in the toerail in way of the chainplates in order that the rigging turnbuckle toggle pin be accessible.  This is only necessary for the lower shroud chainplates because there is such a severe inward bend that they end up too close to the toerail to fit the pin.  Here’s how I did it.

 

Naturally, I start off by trying to figure out some way I can use the router to do the job; or at least part of it.  It’s not that I don’t trust my hand-work…well, ok maybe I don’t.  But I really don’t want to mess up these rails and I’d like some consistent, easily reproducible way to make the cuts. 

 

I’d like the depth of cut to parallel the angle of the chainplate and the edges of the cut to follow the sides of the chainplates so I make up this little guide that attaches to the chainplate with a machine screw and t-nut.  The arrow marks the direction I need to move the router so it’s cutting action will hold it close to the guide.

 

 

I use a core-box bit in the router, set the desired depth and then go at it.

 

 

Then I flip the guide around and do the other side.

 

Then I pull off the chainplate and finish things off with a rasp.

 

 

A finer rasp..

 

And finally, sandpaper.

 

 

The results are good.

 

More Interior Work

Ok, then it’s back inside for more interior work.  Egad.  Alright, I decide to make the trim around the cabin sole in Honduras mahogany.  Despite having bought several boards of this stuff I haven’t successfully made anything out of it yet (oh, except for the mast step).  Berth front trim, bulkhead trim; I’ve started off making it out of Honduras and then decide it isn’t working out and make it over again out of something else.  No fault of the wood, it just seems to be cursed.  Anyway, I decide to fly in the face of this curse and make the cabin sole trim out of it.

 

 

 

All those little rectangles of Doug fir are offcuts from the stuff I’m going to use to overlay the sole.  I use them as spacers while I dry-fit this trim.  I leave the aft bit of trim a little proud of the sole so the raised bit of sole under the bridge deck will act as kind of a shelf.

 

Ok, the next thing I do is trim out that battery storage area under the bridge deck (as well as it’s mate on the other side).  I use Doug fir here planed to the same thickness as the overhang of the berth fronts.

 

 

I borrow a laminate trimmer and trim back the cut-out to be flush with the trim.

 

The next thing I tackle is the door to the battery compartment.  I decide to up the standard a bit and use lap joints on the door frame rather than simple screwed but joints like I did on the electrical box door.  I make up a jig so I can cut the lap joints with the router.

 

 

This works quite well.  Not perfect but not bad.  Depth of cut wasn’t right-on but they came out nice and square.

 

Then I glue them up on the only flat surface I have (the table of my RAS).

 

 

The results are good.  I then route out the back to accept the plywood panel (but I didn’t take any photos of this).

 

The next thing I do is make up these little door stops.

 

 

And relieve the top corners of the door to match them (because the door fits partially inside the cutout) using the RAS and then the router.  You can see the plywood panel in-place in these photos.

 

 

Then I cut reliefs in the lower trim piece for the hinges. 

 

I mount the hinges in this lower piece and use tape to help position the hinges on the door before fastening.

 

 

Et voila!

 

Thanks to my boatbuilder buddy Mitch Burns for the idea of how to make elegant vent holes.  Start with a large central hole and then drill progressively smaller ones as you move away from center.  I think this looks fantastic.

Bonze Casting Demonstration

Around this time I start getting cranked up for a bronze casting demonstration that the Silva Bay Shipyard School

(http://www.boatschool.com) had asked me to co-host with my friend and colleague Quill Goldman (http://www.boatschool.com/posts/bronze-casting-demonstration).

 

I already had the patterns made for in-the-rail chocks that I wanted to make but I also took a stab (again) at making a pattern for a bronze “nose cone”.

 

 

 

 

 

Lots of fiddling around but I still wasn’t happy with the results so I thought I’d let it percolate for a while.  Meanwhile, it was demo time!  Quill and I got set up on the Saturday morning down at the Shipyard School site at Silva Bay.  The demo was to begin at 1pm and I had hoped to do a bit of a practice run before the crowds arrived just to refresh my memory since it had been a couple of years since I’d done any casting but as it turns out I didn’t get that chance.  When I started packing my first mould there were about half a dozen people milling around but then suddenly I looked up and there are 30 people looking at me and asking me questions.  Jeez!  Anyway, I slipped effortlessly into instructor-mode and things went well.  Nobody got burned by molten metal and the castings turned out really well (http://www.boatschool.com/posts/bronze-casting-demo-pictures).  In fact, the chocks turned out so well that on day-two of the demo I sold the two chocks that I cast on day-one and got an order for two more.

 

 

 

 

 

Re-working the Nose

During the process of trying to make a nose-cone pattern I realized that I really needed to do a bit of reshaping on the nose of the boat and so mould some thickened epoxy on there using a plastic sheet and taped-over piece of wood.  The result gets shaped with a rasp and sandpaper.

 

 

Ok, that’s better.

Brass Inserts

The next thing I face is installing brass threaded inserts for fastening the brass strips that the companionway hatch slides on.  I thought these were going to be easy but they weren’t.  It’s absolutely critical to countersink heavily around them otherwise they’ll tear-up the wood and, because they thread into the wood, if you don’t have them exactly square to the hole they’ll happily screw themselves off into whatever direction they’re pointed.  Eventually I got them in ok and epoxy them in place.

  

 

Another thing to remember, if you don’t put them slot-side up when dry fitting you’ll never get them out to glue in.

Next Time

Install chocks, more interior work.