More pics of my Penobscot 14...interior construction showing stern and bow seats, oarlock chocks, breast hook.

Moving along on the build

I think I became too technical in previous posts on the build. So I will move along a little more quickly and focus on how i solved problems in building my first wooden boat. I planking the boat I found that making the gains went easier if you used a drmeml tool equipped with a smalll circular cutter to make the initial kerf cut to start the gain. Arch suggests using a saw to make this cut but I found this cumbersome and inaccurate so I used the dremel tool to make a nice controlled cut. I then used chisel and rabbett plane to form the gain which would allow for the plank above to blend in with the one below as it approachd the stem.I had good success making these gains which were 16 inches long. I love the way the planks at the bow blend into a coniuous flat the merges with the stem.

The garboard planks were both glued and screwed to the keel and lowest stringer. You use System 3 epoxy that comes in a kit. The epoxy glue is mixed 1 part resin to 1 part hardener. I used the medium#2 resin, designed for moderate climates as we have here in Virginia. The glue is mixed with silica particles to thicken it to a consistency of oatmeal and then applied to the stringer. The stringer and plank edges are 'wet down' with expoxy before the glue is thickened. There is a working time of anywhere from 40 minutes to an hour before the glue hardens to a point that you cannot freely apply it. Watch out!...it gets hot as the chemical reaction between the resin and hardener releases energy. 3/" #8 flathead stainless steel screws were used and counerset into the plank to a depth of about 2 mm....be careful not to drill the counterset to deep or the screw head will go right through the plank when you do the final installation with glue. Then you have the awful job of scraping off the 'squeeze out' which is the excess glue that emerges from the joined surfaces. You have to get under the boat to get this off and you must get it all off or a white streak will show up later on your planking. I used acetone soaked rags to wipe down the plank afterwards so that all traces of excess glue were gone. Two days later the glue was cured and I mean CURED. It is so strong that you can't break the bond before the wood just cracks or breaks. The screws probably aren't even necessary. I forgot to mention that the screws joining the first plan to the stringer are removed after 24 hours as you will be overlapping the next plank on top of the upper 3/4" of the garboard and don't want underlying screws to be in the way of the new screws thgat will go through the next row of planking, the top edge of the garboard and into the first stringer. This overlapping of planks gives you the so called 'lapstrake' appearance that distinguishes this boat and gives it its nice lines and curves.. It also allows for the round bottom of the boat as the planks change direction towards the vertical as you continue the build. The top edges of the garboards were planed down to be even with the edge of the stringer.
              The second row of planks were then added. This time the planking was started towards the bow so that the scarf joints alternated . the second row of planking was shaped by putting an excessively wide piece of planking on the top edge of the garboard and overlapping the next stringer. This would be a dry fitting so that you could trace the shape of the plank by going under the boat and making lines on the new plank using the tops of the lowest stringer and next stringer. You then take the plank off and add 3/4" to the line you drew for the bottom of the plank. You also have to cut the gain in the fron of the boat so that the second row of planking blends into the stem and is even with the garboard at the stem. Arch describes how to measure and cut these gains. I found a dremel rotary tool fitted with a metal cuttin wheel to be invaluable in cutting into the edge of the gain...much easier than using a hand saw to make this cut which involes the front 16 inches of the garboard top edge. You then chisel out the gain and also use a rabbet plane to make your gain. The bottom of the plank you are about to install also needs to be cut along the lines previously drawn, except where the gain is. That part is tricky. I screwed the plank back on the boat and gradually planed down the edge of the plank that is to fit into the gain. I found this the easiest way to be accurate as I would just plane off a little at a time until I could just fit the new plank into the gain. It is quite nice to see the front of the next row of planking blend into the stem, even with the planks adjacent to it.

The build continues!

For a good 4 to 5 months I worked on installing the stringers, each one getting easier as I gained experience and got closer to the top most stringers(which, in the photos, are towards the bottom, because the boat is started upside down). The last couple of rows of stringers had less twist and torque and were easier to glue, clamp and screw to the stem, bulkheads, frames and transom. I really took my time though because these were the frame for the boat and, as go the frames, so goes the boat. So I worked hard to achieve symmetry and fair lines.
Finally, I was ready to plank. I chose African Okoume 1/4" 5 ply plywood, marine grade. Arch ordered this for me through his supplier in Florida. I ordered 6 sheets of the 8 x 5 ft. sheets instead of the recommended 5, allowing for mistakes and knowing that more is always better in boat building, when it comes to wood supplies. Planks were started at the bottom of the boat, the first of which is called the garboard plank. It is fitted to the false keel and the first stringer. The keel had to be beveled first though, so that the planks would overlap at the bottom properly and curve upwards towards the first stringer. Beveling took a lot of time and rechecking. I used my block plane and files and obtained nice bevels on both sides of the keel. I was especially careful at the part of the keel that was widened to accomodate the slot for the centerboard. I had already cut this slot after gluing a short strip of fir wood to the appropriate site on the keel. When I was satisfied with the shape of the bottom of the keel I started measuring and cutting for the garboards. Since the plywood sheets were just 8' long I had to scarf the ends of the cut pieces of plank to get the necessary 14' length. Not so hard , the scarfing, really. Again, I used the block plane and at the edge of the planks to be joined I made 2' wide scarfs so that the wood came to a sharp, triangular feathered edge. These edges, once the planks were installed would overlap and be secured by glue and form a full thickness 2 " wide overlapping bond. Getting the planks shaped properly to fit between the keel and stringers was the next challenge and required dry clamping the oversized planks to their ultimate destination and tracing their shapes from underneath the boat. This done, the plank, was taken off and cut to a size closer to the final width it would be at. A note about planking a curved round bottom lapstrake boat: these planks are not what they seem. They are not just straight pieces of plywood. Rather, they are weirdly shaped so that they curve properly up and down and from side to side.Most of them look like trapezoids once cut to size. Arch does a great job of describing how to get the shapes right using the under the boat tracing technique, with the stringers as guides. The edge of the garboard plank facing the botttom of the boat was fitted and glued and screwed to the starboard side of the keel first. The other (topmost) edge was glued and screwed to the first with the edge about 1/4' proud of the edge of the stringer. This extra bit of wood would later be shaved off to perfectley match the edge and curve of the stringer. Once the starboard garboard was in place, allowing for 2 days of drying time for complete curing of the glue, I made the bevel of the bottom  most ege using files and a sanding block so that the port garboard could overlap it perfectly. This done, the port garboard was fitted, with both edges about 1/4" proud of the starboard garboard beveled edge and portside bottom most stringer. I should add that I was putting on the aft parts of the garboards first, with the fore parts to come next as the boards were not long anough and there would be a scarfed on botrh boards to join them. The fore parts of the garboards were installed with the scarfed ends of the already installed aft plank being overlapped by the fore plan scarfed edge. In reading Arch's manual and watching his video you get excellent instruction on how to do this. I did obtain other resources to read about wooden boat building. By doing a search on Amazon.com I found a number of helpful references.

I started working on my Penobscot 14 in the early fall of 2007.  After a careful study of the building guide book, plans and video I was ready to start. First things first, and that meant building the jig or platform that I would frame and plank the hull on. You see, the boat is initially built in an upside down position and this required a large rectangular structure made from inexpensive pine. On top of this I placed the molds and the fore and aft bulkheads. Each of these was placed at a particular station, the stations being certain exact distances from one another. Once these were in place I installed the stem,  which forms the very front edge of the boat, the transom frame at the back station , the keel which extended from the bottom of the stem to the transom and the sheer clamps which ultimately become part of the upper rails of the boat's sides. Before I go on, a word about the lumber one needs for the boat itself. As mentioned, I was able to use cheap pine to construct the building platform. This was easy to get at Home Depot. However, the actual lumber that goes into the boat itself has to be better than pine, clear(free of knots), and carefully milled. This type of stuff was simply not available at Home Depot or any chain type hardware store. I was able to find what I needed at Siewer's, a specialty lumber company here in the Richmond area, and they were able to provide me with the necessary(and expensive!) wood that I needed. the list included 16 fir stringers(each 3/4"x3/4"x16ft), one 4"x3/4"x16ft fir boards for the keel, four 2"x3/4"x16ft fir boards for the sheer clamps, a 7"x1"x10ft fir board for the deadwood(keel under the boat). This gave me what I needed to start  framing the boat. Later I would need to order 6 sheets of marine grade okoume mahogany 1/4' thick plywood(Arch has a supplier for this that I used, as this was not available locally and had to be shipped to me). I also needed stainless steel screws of various sizes that I obtained by ordering online from West Marine. You cannot use just any type of
wood screw...they must be stainless or copper and, hence, rustproof..and these too, were pricey. Finally, a kit containing marine grade epoxy glue, clearcoat,  and special fillers from a company caled System Three. While these supplies cost me some money, I knew that if I was successful with this venture that my investment would pay off, as a new Penobscot 14 built by someone else, or  a similar wooden lapstrake boat would cost about $10,000! And newly built classic wooden boats are hard to come by in Virginia...just see if you can find one at your typical boat vendor.

         While I had fairly easily succeeded in building the building jig and installing and linking together the backbone of the boat(stem, false keel, and transom frame) I now faced the daunting task of installing my first stringers, the long 3/4' x 3/4" strips of fir that would become the frames of the boat, and the platforms for the planks. No matter how many times I read the book, watched the video, studied the plans, I could not get comfortable with the idea of installing the first set of stringers because it required so much precision and lots of bending and twisting of the wood and I feared failure in such a tricky process. In imagining how it would go I kept arriving at these images of the expensive wood stringers snapping into pieces or not adhering to the bulkheads and stem and that,  if I failed at this next step then the building a boat venture would be over all too soon. I felt like I had to jump into a pool of ice cold water and kept postponing, postponing.
             And then one day, feeling confident I went for it and, with much effort installed the first set of stringers, the hardest part of which was screwing and gluing the stringers to the stem, where the twist and forces of bending were tremendous. But I did it! And 2 days later I took off the clamps and found that the screws and marine epoxy were working and that the stringers were firmly in place and solidly adhering to the stem. And so, for the next several months I installed the remaining sets of stringers, 6 total, the last few sets being easier as there was much less twist towards the top of the boat.

    

The Idea to Build a Wooden Boat

Old boats and ships, meaning ones made of wood have always fascinated me. Not being able to afford the expensive wooden boat kits during my early teenage years I would, instead, try to build something from scratch. First I tried the Bounty, and, at age 13, with nothing more than a few scraps of wood from my Dad's workbench and some dowels I bought, I made what I thought was a reasonable attempt of the ship that Fletcher Christian took from the sadistic Captain Bligh centuries ago. My interest in the Bounty came from a complete reading of the Bounty Trilogy  by Nordhoff and Hall and a subsequent viewing of the theatrical version starring Marlon Brando as Christian and Trevor Howard as Bligh. The boat I made was rather pitiful but it was the best I could do given that I had almost no materials  and no plans, just a picture of the ship from the book. This was followed by a somewhat better attempt at the Cutty Sark, the famed British clipper ship, involved in the China tea trade. I based my model on pictures from a book about the Cutty that I had read. Both models were lost during a move from Boston to Florida that took place after my first year at college at University of Virginia.
During my years at medical school at Tufts in Boston, I sailed dinghies with a classmate out of a public boathouse on the Charles river.I had always loved sailing, having learned how to sail sunfish and small dinghies at summer camps that I attended from age 8 through 15.
Then came residency in internal medicine back in Virginia, a place I had missed terribly after those 4 years at U. Va. had ended. Boston was just too cold. During residency a bout with cancer, 6 months of chemotherapy, 3 months of radiation treatments. Then my first marriage and two sons born ,the chemo having successfully given me a lasting remission and , surprisingly, two sons despite the claim by oncologists that my fertility might not survive the cancer treatments. 4 years ago some complications related to the cancer treatment(yes, 20 years later!) developed which made it difficult for me to be active in exercise and, more importantly, playing golf, which was what i did with my free time, usually with my youngest son.
What to do? Well, I happened to catch a viewing of Mel Gibson's 'Bounty'(not my favorite...I like Brando's better) on TV and thought about building model ships again. A WEB search revealed a number of vendors of wooden ship model kits and I ordered Occre's 'Albatross' a reasonably easy to build double planked wooden ship graded by the vendor as being in the 'easy' category. I thought my youngest son would like building it with me, something we could do together in lieu of the now impossible golf, and, for a while, he helped, but quickly lost interest(too tedious Dad, he said). So I built it my self in 4 months and had a great time and success. What a difference from the roughly hewn improvisations I had attempted as a teenager!
I was hooked. I re-read the Bounty trilogy and decided to get a 'Bounty' kit made by Artesenia Latina, a Spanish company specializing in realistic ship model kits. This would turn out to be a much greater undertaking as this version of the 'Bounty' was 40" long and 34" high at the main mast. This particular kit also left the starboard side of the hull open so that each floor in the ship, with contents could be seen, even down to the numerous pots of breadfruit plants that were in Bligh's cabin for the never completed trip from Tahiti to Jamaica. In two years it was done and came out beautifully.
I built a small simply designed ship of the Golden Hind next, then a solid hull version of the merchant
ship 'Newsboy'from a kit by Model Shipways. And now, I am about 4  months away from completing a 46" version of the USS Constitution, also by Model Shipways, this kit being very much at the advanced level. Ashley, my best friend and wife, has been most supportive of the time I spend on these pursuits. She too, has hobbies, and I am always very happy when she sits down to her Creative Memory scrap booking(she is awesome at it) while I work on some part of a ship, with a movie playing in the background.
Throughout all of this, I devoured books on maritime history, focusing primarily on the tall ships from the 1600's through the 1800s up to the Gloucester fishing schooners of the early 1900's. I couldn't  get enough of it and the building of the models became nearly an obsession but one that allowed me to forget what had become a painful repercussion of my cancer treatments.
And then it hit me. Why not build a REAL boat, one that could take me back to my days of sailing but also one that would allow me to build a real old fashioned style wooden boat similar in style to the models I was building. Google took me right to the Arch Davis Designs website. Arch, a man originally from New Zealand, who now resides in coastal Maine, has designed a number of beautiful do it yourself wooden boats. Two of these, The Laughing Gull and The Penobscot 14 caught my eye. I emailed Arch, describing my interest in these 2 boats and also explaining that, while I was an accomplished ship modeler, my macro carpentry skills were just average and had not been tested in some time. He reassured me that I could and should build the Penobscot 14, describing it as a lapstrake boat with extremely pleasing lines  and a delight to sail. He said with the help of the comprehensive builder's manual, 1 hour long DVD instruction video(which is VERY good), numerous pages of plans, and patterns drawn out on mylar sheets that I would be able to build this boat and be quite happy with it. If I wanted, a head start kit for the penobscot 14 was available which included all of the previously mentioned materials and also the stem( an important and difficult piece for an amateur to engineer), the 2 bulkheads, the transom frame, and all of the station molds for a very reasonable price including shipping. I went for the kit and am glad that I did as I received  a perfectly engineered stem, station molds, and bulkheads. I invested in some required hand tools I did not have including some planes and a a set of chisels from a Woodcraft store and had them hone and sharpen them for me as well as purchasing sharpening stones to keep my hand tools sharp(a MUST according to Arch). A jigsaw, and a high quality rechargeble drill and electric sanders(a Black and Decker Mouse and a larger orbital sander). I also ordered the required System3 epoxy kit suggested by Arch and the various sized stainless steel screws from West Marine. I was ready to start the project and building adventure of a lifetime.