Side Work

After 6 coats of varnish, I was tired of that operation and needed to get the sides done. The plan was to do some paint graphics to hide some fiberglass reinforcement tape at the plywood butt joints on the sides and at the side to transom junction. The tape at the bow seemed to fade away sufficiently to ignor it. I tried to get a graphic designer to work on a design with me, but he must be busy as he was not returning my recent calls. So my wife, Vicky said "Lets grab some paper, colored pencils and work out our own design"....and so we did." I added a beer to the operation to loosen up the creative juices. Then we went to an art supply store to get some 1/4" wide artist tape to do the masking in the curved areas.

After the curved areas were done another pass of wider tape was put down and then some masking paper over all the varnish areas to protect from the roller and splatter. I used 3/4" wide tape to define the boot stripe and then masked above and below it and then removed it. The butt end of a x-acto knife was used to burnish the edge of the tape to prevent paint bleed. (This worked well but I would recommend that the burnishing be done twice as I had a few areas where I got some bleeding where I must not have gotten the tape edge down tight).

After putting down a coat of primer and sanding, a coat of white was painted on just using a foam roller. The bubbles did not pop as the paint can said it would, so after sanding, the second coat was applied with a roller and tipped off with a foam brush - much better. Then the blue portion was masked off and painted. I decided that the blue areas will probably be finshed off with a border of 1/4" wide white vinyl tape as masking off a consistent narrow band seemed impossible. The blue dried overnight and a second coat applied. Next day it was mask removal time to see what was under the mess of paint, paper and tape. Looks pretty cool I think.

Later when I talked with the graphics guy, he showed me how to mask out a border band so I could paint it so I would have a perfect color match. He showed me how to mask using 1/4" vinyl tape that he gave me that bends easily without puckering. A couple of hours later I had another white strip outlining the blue areas.


Final side work was a 1/4" red-orange stripe put on by the graphics guy and the word "Squirt" done in a 50s retro script lettering.

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First Mate Side Seat Rails

At the end of June 2011, I published a post about my idea for moveable side seating in cruising dinghies. The idea is that side seats can be used if prefered (although I like to sit down low in the boat with my weight near the windward turn of bilge) and can also be removed at a moments notice. Most importantly, if they are slid into the centre of the boat they make an excellent sleeping platform, well above the bilge water.

The Phoenix III built by Paul Hernes, showing the side seats in the standard location.............. 

...........and slid together to form a nice sleeping platform............

.....or removed altogether.

You can find my original post at this address

I am continuing to work intermittently on a First Mate in my workshop - she gets attention when glue is curing on other jobs. Last week I installed the rails to carry the removable side-seats/sleeping platform, and Im delighted to say that in First Mate, the seats are more than 26 inches wide at the upper part of the body when slid together. Here are a few pictures of the rails: -

Here is the seat rail glued and screwed onto the aft face of the midships frame. This frame is made from 12mm (1/2") marine plywood, with 38mm x 12mm (1-1/2" x 1/2") behind where the screws go through. The whole thing is very strong, and the seat rail would be fine with just a glue joint. However, the silicon bronze screws make it simple to position when the epoxy is slippery, so they may as well go in! The rails are positioned to carry a side seat which is 31mm (1-1/4") deep - these will most likely be 25mm (1") framing topped with 6mm (1/4") marine plywood.

A close-up of the aft rail, which attaches to the semi-bulkhead at the forward end of the stern seat (i.e. the "stern sheets"). The centre cut-away is just to allow positioning of the screw-in hatch to that particular buoyancy compartment.

Another shot of the aft seat rail with the rowing foot-braces on the floor below. These foot braces do double-duty as structural stiffening elements as well

This seating arrangement will make First Mate (and Phoenix III) very versatile cruising dinghies - my favourite type of boat bar none!

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Side Plywood Installation

Prefitting the side involved getting a 8 x 18" piece of plywood in place from the front of the boat back to where it ended just forward of the middle frame. Once it was bent in place and rough fit, a countersunk screw hole was put midway along the chine and one midway along the shear. These screws provided a repeatable location so the panel could be removed for trimming and re-fit in the same location. Once this piece was fit, then it was removed and put on the other side to determine if the fit was close enough to use as a template. The picture is of this trial fit on the other side of the boat. It was a decent fit, so it was traced onto another piece of plywood and cut.

Going back to the first side, towards the rear of the boat, 4 x 18" piece was fit and aligned to match up to the 8 long piece. An angular cut was made to establish a butt joint between the two pieces of plywood. Lines were traced onto the back side to show it locations along the chines, shears, transom and stem. Then the pieces were removed and laid out on a long make-shift table. Screw hole locations were determined for placing screws every 3" along the chine and shear. Location holes were drilled from the backside (which had the traced lines) every 18" or so. Then the pieces were flipped over and the final holes were marked on the face side and all holes drilled with a countersinking bit.

Butt joint bonding: A piece of plastic was put on the table and then a piece of painters tape adhered along the underneath side of the joint to prevent epoxy from flowing everywhere. One side of the board was screwed to the table using the predrilled holes, the second piece was butted tight and also screwed in place. A liberal application of clear epoxy was applied and a 4" wide strip of fiberglass tape was laid into the joint. After sqeegeeing the epoxy, a piece of plastic sheet was laid over the whole mess, a plywood piece of wood laid on top and clamped down.

The next day, after removing the clamps, the area over the fiberglass tape was fairly smooth but other areas had too much epoxy needing sanding. The second picture is my second panel for the other side of the boat and it did not come out as nice as my first one. It took quite alot of hand sanding to get this one smoothed down, but eventually it started to look better. Then I flipped it over and applied epoxy and fiberglass tape, but kept the tape shorter so it would not interfere with the fit to the chines and shear. A little more squeegee action and tighter clamping helped smooth it out. The whole surface of the plywood was epoxied as it will be on the inside of the boat and this is the easiest way to get it coated. This inside surface is the one shown in the prior picture showing the butt-joint clamping.

Securing to the boat: It was a marathon session gluing and screwing the plywood to the side of the boat. After mixing up a batch of epoxy, the frame surfaces and bonding area on the plywood was rolled and brushed with epoxy. Then a colloidal silica filler was added to the epoxy and this thickened goo was brushed onto frame members back to the middle frame. The panel was located to the frames with the previously mentioned locator screws. I rigged up a chain from the ceiling to support the rear of the long panel while I began clamping and screwing the front portion.

After clamping forward to the stem to ensure proper location, then clamps were placed adjacent to each screw hole and redrilled to put a pilot hole into the frame member and a #8 7/8" long silicon bronze screw was screwed into the hole. Progress was from the front of the boat rearward, removing clamps from previously screwed areas and re-clamping and drilling and securing three screws at a time. When I got to the middle of the boat, another batch of thickened epoxy was made and applied to the frames from that area rearward. In the forward and rear portions of the boat where the wrap is severe and a screw head may have pulled through, small blocks of wood were used with 1 5/8" drywall screws to secure the plywood in place until the epoxy cured. After 100 screws and almost two hours of non-stop action it was done. I worked up a good sweat and needed a beer.

The next day, the screw blocks were removed and replaced with a silicon bronze screw one at a time. Everything held in place. The overhanging plywood was trimmed off with a hand saw and planed and filed smooth with the chine, stem and transom. The portion along the bottom of the pictures will not get trimmed until the boat is flipped over. The last picture is at the transom after trimming off the excess side panel and sanding smooth with the surface of the transom. The way the side of this boat twists and rolls into the transom ("tumblehome" as its known in the auto and boat design community) is really cool. Since the boat is upside down, this roll is towards the bottom of the picture.

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New Website Currently on the steep side of the learning curve

For those of you who may have subscribed to the new website, I have an uncomfortable feeling that you may have been deluged with "New Posts" as I have been progressing with the process of learning the new software characteristics.  If so, please accept my sincere apologies.

The good news is that Im reading and experimenting diligently, and progress is starting to take place. I hope to get the Designs section and the embryo Shop looking more professional in a few days.

Concurrently, Im working on the construction of a new mast for a customer, and it promises to be a major step forward in home-workshop-buildable masts and other spars, without the need to cut Birds Mouth profiles. Many people dont understand that very small errors in the setting-up of the saw or router for Birds Mouth staves can have a huge effect on the diameter of the finished spar. Also, unless you have a very well arranged table-saw or router table, the potential for disaster is substantial...

They say that, ..pride comes before you end up with mud on your face..., but Im quietly confident that the prototype mast Im making will be faster, safer, and easier to build, and will have one REALLY substantial advantage over a Birds Mouth spar in that the wall thickness as a percentage of spar diameter will remain constant over the length of the mast. In the case of a Birds Mouth mast, the wall thickness (in percentage terms) increases as the mast tapers towards the tip - so much so that many masts become effectively solid towards the tip - not what is wanted at all! We need to keep masts light - especially as we go higher.

More to come when I get through this website business.

Ive got a number of boats under construction or repair, but design will dominate before too long.

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