With the intent of an overall inspection, I removed the rudder yesterday.  Turned out to be pretty easy, oddly enough. :)

I'm going to brush the layers of bottom paint off of the bronze fittings to see them, remove the paint from the cheeks, and see if those are salvageable.  There's a bit of damage inside of one of them, but it might just be surface-level and fixable with some penetrating epoxy.  Also planning on putting new UHMWPE washers on the pintles and gudgeons.

Well, it's been forever since I posted here, but my Falmouth Cutter is now in New Hampshire!  Here she is sitting in the yard, with a bit of fog.

All of the chainplates, save for the bowsprit stay fitting, need replaced.  This is a shot of one of the whisker stay fittings.  Note the cracks radiating from the bolt hole.  I'm pretty sure I'm going to either go with round holes, or ease the holes on the new ones.

The forepeak area was pretty crowded when I bought her, with a propane-powered fridge, storage racks, sailbags, fenders, etc, etc, etc.  I've emptied a lot of that stuff out, and removed the ~30 year old carpet that was doing not much more than absorbing water and odors.  Here's an in-progress shot that shows what some sanding can do to remove old carpet adhesive.

I've also removed the bowsprit.  It has some insect damage, and a little bit of rot around where the pulpit screws in, but it's salvageable.  I bought some "Git Rot" penetrating epoxy, which seems to be working well.  I'm going to follow the original finish schedule of a painted rear half with a bright finish forward of the bitts.  Here you can see what it looked like after some work with my sander.

Speaking of sanders, I have to put a plug in here for the Festool RO 90.  It's rather expensive, but (depending on mode) can be either an aggressive rotary sander, a random-orbit, or a random oscillating detail sander.  The small head size (90mm, ~3") is a downside when doing large panels, but a definite benefit when working on a small sailboat interior. Festool makes abrasive disks for it, but Klingspor sells some that are also highly rated, at about half the price.  Either way, if you hook this thing up to a shop vac, you get almost zero dust when sanding.... VERY nice in a small space!

Hiya all.  Wow, it's been a long time since I posted here.  In the intervening time since my last post, I have...

A Undergone a separation
B Quit work on the Pathfinder (Due to "A", above, and its effects on garage access)
C Transferred to a new work location in Canada
D Been promoted
E Been accepted for a new role in New Hampshire
F Arranged most of the move to New Hampshire (See "E")
G Bought a Lyle Hess designed Falmouth Cutter 22

So, what does this mean for the Prairie Sailing blog?  Well... it means that it will be poorly named, as I will be living in New England (not a prairie), but considering that I bought a boat that is almost ready to sail, the "sailing" part of the blog name might soon become more accurate.  My plan is to post pics, posts, etc about my new boat, work I do on it, and (soon!!) sailing on it.  This is how the boat looks now, sitting forlornly in Cortez, FL, waiting for me to buy a trailer and bring it north:

Stay tuned, as there's more to come!
Jason

And yet more...

So, let's see...

Centerboard lammels laminated.
Bottom panel cut out.
Building jig spacers cut, but not placed.

That's all for now.

Bit o' Progress

So, again, nothing terribly photogenic to report. I've been working on getting bits and pieces glued together, but nothing boat-shaped has occured yet. I got the stem laminated together this weekend, and got the chine doublers stuck onto Frame 1.

One task that's been intimidating me for a while has been the centerboard. Getting it shaped properly is going to be a bit of a job, and even getting the lammels all glued together seemed like a mountain to climb. This weekend I realized that I didn't have to glue all 23 strips together at once, so I started with gluing 6 together, and it seemed to go all right. I'll glue the other ones together similarly, then glue 6 to 6 and 5 to 6, then finally 12 to 11.

(By the way... made a rookie mistake. When I was coating the lammels with unthickened epoxy, I laid them down on a sheet of plastic atop some plywood to cure. Well, all the extra epoxy dripped down and pooled under them, leaving 1/4 thick nubs of plastic all over the place which I then had to remove with an angle grinder. Would have been smarter to lay them on top of wooden dowels, or even leave them on-edge rather than on the flats. Something to remember when I put the rudder together.)

I saw where someone on the Welsford builder's board made a negative template of the centerboard profile out of a scrap of plywood; basically cutting a foil-shaped hole in the middle of it. They could then slide the template onto the board while they grind/sand/plane away at it to see where the high spots are. This is what I'll probably do.

I've found that if there's a task in front of you that seems like a big deal, it slows down the whole process. I've been intimidated by the whole centerboard/centercase assembly for a while, but I have to have it finished before I can start making the boat look like a boat. Now that I have a plan in mind for how to actually do it, I think my progress speed will increase.

I heard from Gary at CC Fasteners this past week. They had to have some of the screws I need custom-made since they don't normally stock #8 and #10 silicon bronze screws in 3/4" length, and I need a bunch of each. Turns out the screw threading machine at the manufacturer is giving them trouble, so it's going to be another week for my screws. Okay by me, as I have other glue-related tasks to finish. :)

So, to-do list:
Finish centerboard laminations
Get some 9mm somewhere I can draw/cut on it, build centercase.
Finish putting 20x20 and 20x45 bits on the frames
Drill / cut drain and ventilation holes in the various pieces.
Find a long enough batten to finish tracing the outline of the bottom panel, then cut it out.
Clean up scarf joint on bottom panel.
Make up bottom panel spacers, attach to building jig. Attach bottom panel to spacers.
Get lead for c/b weight. (This thing is going to be HEAVY. 45lbs of lead on top of the solid oak centerboard.)
(a miracle happens)
Launch boat.

Piece of cake, eh?

Welsford Builders on Google Maps

This is short, but I figured it deserved a post of its own.

I started a publicly viewable and editable Google Map to show where builders are around the world. The Google Maps customization is good enough that you can add photos, links, etc in your location pin, so I figured it would be a neat thing to try.

Here's the LINK.

More progress, and pictures!

So, it's been a few weeks. I took a long weekend this week to see if I could get some more accomplished, and it seems to have worked well.

First off: Scarfing pics, for those naysayers out there.

This is what the scarf looked like after cutting and planing...


And this is what it looked like right before the epoxy went on... (I was by myself, so no pics of the actual epoxy application.)



Last weekend I cut some stock down to have 20x20, and managed to get an "action" shot of myself doing it, with Alex's help. Also ran into town to exchange some System 3 Gel Magic that was defective, and pick up some discount clamps.


So, this weekend... what did I do? Building jig time! (For anyone interested, the knife on my hip is a Bark River Pro Scalpel II. Very handy little every day knife.)


In addition to putting the jig together, I also moved the bottom panel ply onto it, then cut out some miscellaneous 12mm pieces from the edges. You can't see it in this pic, but I've transferred the measurements from the plans to the panel. Have to wait until I have another person to hold battens for me to draw it.



Turns out that I should have bought a few more clamps last weekend. I keep hearing "You can never have enough clamps when building a boat," but I wimped out and only bought 8. Shoulda got more while they were 40% off!

That's frame 5 going together. What I now realize I should probably do is to get together all the bits and pieces that I need, whip up a batch of unthickened epoxy, and paint the mating pieces all at once. Then the next day I can come back, mix up some thickened resin, and put them together. Also, I should drill some tiny pilot holes and use nails to align them while clamping. I was a little panicked putting frame 5 together trying to line everything up. A few nails would really help with that.

And finally, last big thing that I did this weekend was that I got the stem pieces cut out!


The big problem I have now is that I want it to start looking like a boat! It's still mostly looking like a pile of cut-up plywood and oak, but at least you can see the size it will end up being via looking at the building jig.

Signing off for now. :)