Building the West Mersea Duck Punt (Episode 10)

A boat builder can never have too many clamps...

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Series by Rusty Knorr

Or enough, either. Ahhh, clamps. If only I had a hundred of each type! I STILL wouldn't have too many. There is always some little thing you need to clamp that takes a special type of clamp, or one that reaches a certain depth, or is affordable. OK, we all know that clamp doesn't exist. Let's be real...

My apologies for being SO slow with this next post. To be honest, summer finally came to Seattle, and as any Seattleite knows, you enjoy it while you can because in a matter of weeks it is gone and it is back to gray, rainy, cold, wet, misery. So, I have been enjoying the summer instead of boat building, not that boat building is not fun, but...well, anyway. Let's get caught up!

I needed to find something relatively simple to tackle since doing the sheer planks was the next major step and I needed cooler weather for the major amount of epoxy involved in that process. The thole pin planks still needed doing so that was next. I picked up a big chunk of ash and since I don't have a table saw I went to the trusty track saw to cut the laminations. It was a huge cut, barely manageable by the blade depth available, but I made it work and gave the saw a good workout.

The track saw set up for cutting the laminations.

Some of the laminations cut out.

The ridiculously complex glue-up for the thole pin plank laminations. It was already partially cured before I brought it in and set it on the hideous carpet!

Another smaller, but important, step I needed to tackle was the mast thwart. Below you can see the thwart being test fit before the glue up. This is a compound angle and plenty tricky to get it to fit "light tight." Totally unnecessary, but sometimes the cabinet-maker rears his ugly head and the tolerance of a joint becomes an obsessive compulsion. Once in a while it is OK to just go for it though, so I did!

Once the placement of the mast thwart is marked out and it is cut to fit, it is a simple matter of epoxying the thwart in place, as well as the supports fabricated to fit below. 

No, this is not a seat! How many times have I been asked that since I installed this piece? Geez!

There is an arched support piece which gives bracing to the mast thwart. The easiest way to cut the arch is with router on a radius jig. First, you mark out the radius on the board using a huge compass called "trammel points."

Then it's a simple matter to make shallow cuts with your router until you have cut the arch out of the support. 

While doing these other projects I was doing test fits of the sheer planks and checking clamping set-ups in preparation for attaching the planks.

I need more clamps!!!

The time finally came with a weather window in the 60s at night and I mixed up enough epoxy to coat the side of the boat. I decided that it would be easiest to control the process if the boat was on it's side, and I had marked out the edge of the sheer plank so I would know where to apply the epoxy so I wouldn't have excess all over the place. This step had to be done very quickly so all you see is the final product! Things went surprisingly smoothly considering the size of the job.

Naturally, the bottom edge of the plank needed the benefit of my now skillful filleting.

Tonight I am going to go pull the clamps off and put the boat back on its belly. The next step will be marking out the actual sheer at the gunwale and rough cutting the sheer with the jig saw. Then I will fair that curve, round over the frames, attach the gunwales and fair again. Then attach the thole pin planks and drill them, attach the mast thwart arch support, build and attach the mast step, and plank over the bow and stern caps. The last step will be to glass the bottom of the hull, sand, and paint it. The maiden voyage is not too far away on the horizon. Stay with me and we can get there together! •SCA•