Orchard & Monterey

With all the births I have had lined up for the summer Karl and I haven't gotten to spend as much time in Monterey as we wanted. However, last week I was able to go and we are hoping to go again soon when I have another break.

Driving to the cottage equals a little over 3 hour trip and Karl generally naps the whole way there. This trip, however, I decided that we'd leave earlier than nap time and stop at an orchard an hour away. It was wonderful and we wandered around eating peaches, apples, and berries.

Here are some highlights from the orchard

We headed down to the mountains after a quick trip in Waynesboro to see Mom & Dad. Karl loves Monterey because we walk everywhere and there is a stream that runs through the town that we can follow. Banma (grandma) look him on long long walks and introduced him to everyone in town. Besides the walks Karl played in the back yard, watered plants, and climbed all over the playground at the Highland Center.

It was a wonderful trip and I can't wait to go back!

Screw-you Yankee Workshop!

So I was doing some brainstorming today about how to finish my bow and stern with stem pieces ( probably with Jatoba, a really hard purple Brazillian cherry ) and how I'd finish the keel when I run out of Spanish cedar, which will be soon. I saw that the New Yankee Workshop with Norm Abram was on and thought I'd get some inspiration. They still show it a lot on PBS even though it's only reruns now, it ran from 1989 to 2009. There was an interesting bit where he made a jig to make a long angled cut with his tablesaw...

But the whole show was totally ridiculous. Even the guys I know that have enormous home woodshops don't have the tools at this guy's disposal, and probably some professional shops would love to have some of this stuff. It still took him 2 days to churn out a crappy table even though he's got drill presses, band saws, table jointers, mortise chisel presses and what looked like at least 2 industrial table saws. Even the mitre-saw he used had like a 20 foot extension on either side with perfectly measured out stops. How about some tips for how you'd do this without 30K $ worth of equipment and 2000 sq foot of floor space?

That's all well and good. I guess if I had a 20 year show and an annual budget for tools that was probably 5 figures, I might get a little lazy too. But then this jerk goes to attach the base of his table, and makes a big deal about how smart he is for not lining up the bias of his joints, but doesn't center it before attaching it! By the end of the episode he was polishing a table that was clearly off-center. For some reason I found this offensive. Maybe it's because us Joe's have to make do with a 40 year old hand jig saw and a 20$ table router to build a freaking boat.

Don't be discouraged from starting this project on your own though, those tools were really the most heavy duty things I needed for this project. Mostly I'm using a razor saw, sandpaper, glue and a staple-gun. Meanwhile looking at this guy's project gives me both inspiration and a feeling like I'm a curious george run amok with some wood-glue.

The Keel

I decided to take a day off work for a little three day weekend. I've been working a lot lately, and I'm starting to think I won't get my boat done in time to use it before winter hits. So I convinced Claire to let me move it back into the basement. With the extra room I was able to put 15-20 hours into it since Saturday. I'm proceeding very slowly with the work now, and it's gotten very painstaking. The good news is that I've started to form the keel of the hull on the stern. I'm only a few strips from the keel on the bow, which is taller so the boat can cut through waves an keep water off the deck.

Here it is before I started work on Saturday. I pulled it off the supports for the trek around to the back of the house, a tricky job in it's own right..

It looks so cool already. I finished the angle section of atlantic white cedar and switched back to the red spanish cedar. This is an upside down view from the stern to show off the color contrast:

And for good measure, the bow, which is all spanish cedar. The clamp on the bow is for the latest finger joint, which needed a bit more coaxing and glue drying tonight.

The cedar is really starting to deal with some pretty severe curves, so it's really challenging to measure, cut and fit everything, and then even more challenging to glue, clamp and staple. A 14 foot bead of glue into a 1/4 inch cove is starting to be more challenging now that my strips are starting to lay horizontally. I haven't quite figured that one out just yet.. Any suggestions?

Of course, "measuring" a curving piece of wood is just not going to happen. This work is so painstaking because every piece is specially fit into place, often sanded for a perfect joint. Even then, I'm going to need some filler or cheater pieces before I cover it with fiberglass. Here is one of my scarf joints.

I needed more of these around the shear line, since the curve of the boat meant my 14 foot strips weren't long enough to make the trip from bow to stern unbroken. I've found that I can now use a single piece for the length now, but curving a piece into place along the length of the boat is tricky work too. This clamp on the stern is due to the hard angle putting stress on seam.

These are the stern finger joints. It looks pretty rough, but it'll eventually get trimmed down and capped with a stem piece. I haven't decided what type of wood to use for my stem piece, probably the spanish cedar?