Douglas Ingram's glued lap plywood Whitehall sprit-rigged boat [Pictures] - created 06-20-2011

Ingram, Douglas - 06/20/2011.14:11:03
It is my experieince that gravity is erratic

The recent fishing thread showed some interest in seeing the fruits of this labour. This rowboat was inspired by the Bailey Whitehall in Mystic Seaport, but had a cross section shape inspired by the Rangeley boats for stability for fly fishing. Some sail performance was wanted, too, so some rocker was added.

I drew up the plans last January (I think...it all blurs together now), made the mold in February, started planking in early march. So many parts, trying to anticipate every circumstance, patterns, fitting, sanding,, varnishing, painting, research...I'm looking forward to building guitars again, they're so simple in comparison, not to mention smaller and lighter!

Glued lapstrake construction is how she rolls. 8 strakes per side. 16'8" LOA, 46" beam.

First a few shots of the finished boat, then onto some construction shots. The construction photos may take awhile to get up as I can only sit at the computer so long at any given time to tell the full story.

Its tough to photograph this boat well as you can't take it all in at once. And it really belongs outside on the water.

This is a lutherie forum after all, so here's a requisite shot of a guitar in progress. Mahogany/Spruce L-00 with Ziricote trim.

So what, you might ask, is a classical guitar builder doing making a steel string guitar? Not that I really need any excuse at all, but I am really tired of some of my guitar playing friends taking out their picks when playing my nylon string guitars! Usually I catch them before they can do any damage, but still...

This guitar is for them.

Shot of the tail.

A good rowboat needs oars. This one can take four of them. Fir, standard spoon blade, 8' with leathers.

Detail of the blades.

A shot to the stern. The rudder has a removable tiller Herreshoff style. This also allowed me to make a yoke tiller as well.

Yoke tiller. Ropes are attached to each arm and run forward. Sailing types will please excuse my use of the term "ropes" as non sailors will be less confused this way.

Rudder. Well, most of it.

Should have shown the oars leathers earlier. Here they are now.

Bow with deck.

Bow deck. Or breasthook if you're being technical. Luthiers would call this the headstock shot.

As this is primarily a pulling boat that will be occasionally sailed, something was required to keep it from being blown around. Usually a centerboard or daggerboard is fitted to the boat, this one is using leeboards. Here is the leeboard thwart.

One of the leeboards. There is one on each side, the inboard face is foil shaped, the outboard face is flat.

Detail of the leeboard bracket.

There was no room in the shop to set up the sail, so you will have to accept this as proof of the sail. 65 sq. ft. sprit sail. 8 stave hollow core mast. Both the mast and the sprit are 11'6" long.

The laps catch the sun nicely.

And away she goes.

There is SO much space in the shop now!

And so much cleaning up to do...

Oh my, that is an amazing boat. I know very little about boats, but I can see that there is

at least

as much to learn as in lutherie. (Good reason to stay away from it!)

Hope the owner paid you handsomely!

Wow! Impressive craftsmanship there! Congratulations.

Now please show us a picture of your bending iron! Or at least tell us how you bent the boards.

Lovely, Douglas!

Wow a true craftsman well done!!

I'm blown away, but I especially like the paddle with the hole in the middle.

Woa, that's a classy job. Awesome attention to detail. All the technical terms arouse my inner geekiness. I'm with Chuck, though: gotta keep some distance from stuff like that or I might be up to my ears in another hobby.

That is really fabulous! I wish I could have a ride. Great work.

Thanks everyone!

The boat started back in the new year with a large panel of MDF set up as a drafting board. Lots of grid lines were drawn on it, and then a bunch of curvy lines which represented the curves of the boat from each of three views, superimposed upon each other. The whole point of which was to have cross section shapes of the boat which all line up.

Took about a week till I was satisfied with the shape and its fairness.

Then the cross section shapes need to be set up on a strongback so that they all line up just right. Ribbands of clear lumber are then affixed to the stations to determine the plank shapes, as well as to act as a clamping caul for the planks to be glued together.

In this photo you can also see the keel and stem being fitted.

While it may appear that each of the planks is straight, they are not!

Step one was to take a rough shape off of the mold for each plank. I did this with long strips of cardboard. Yes it is a little floppy and inexact, but I just needed to get a shape that was close enough. And it was cheap and easy to work.

The cardboard patterns were then traced out on a sheet of 1/4" plywood in order to fabricate the final patterns. Imagine hoisting this up to the mold to take the tracings directly from the ribbands!

look at all the space that I have to work in. What a luxury! Guitar building has its advantages.

Then the plywood was rough cut to the line, offered to the mold, and the actual final shape was refined.

These are the patterns that would be used to generate the planking shapes on the 5mm Okume plywood that is the planking of the boat.

A fringe benefit was that by careful placement of the patterns I was able to substantially minimize waste, and I got all of the planking for the boat out of only 2 sheets of plywood.

A view of the transom at this early stage.

This project was originally supposed to be a much simpler boat, and that is how I priced it, but it just kept going. One decision led to another and before you know it you're really in it. One of those decisions was to pull out my plans for the Bailey Whitehall. The Bailey is just one of those boats whose shapes are pure poetry. Well, you can imagine the rest...

Each plank required two scarf joints to get the 8' panels long enough for the 16 1/5' boat. The usual practice was to scarf joint across the entire end of a sheet of plywood. I don't know about you, but getting a good clean joint clamped well across a 4' distance just didn't seem easy. So I cut the panels to size and made the scarf joint only across the width of each plank and clamped them as smaller pieces.

Then the planks get glued into place using epoxy. I was only able to refine and fasten on one line of planks, and scarph up the planks for the next days work in one work day. 8 days of planking.

The edges of the planks needed to be shaped to receive the next plank. Along the length of the boat there was a rolling bevel about 3/4" wide. At the stem and transom I needed to shape a kind of ramp for the planks to lay flush at the ends.

That's all for today, folks. I gotta get out to the shop and make some money.

Enjoy!

Cool! Show us more!

Cool! Show us more!

Give me a chance!

So not only did you build this boat but you designed her too? Drew up your own plans at least.

Mark,

Yes. I was inspired by the Bailey, but added some width, depth, rocker, and stiffness (flatness) to the bottom.

It would have been cheaper to spend $100-200 on a set of plans instead of a weeks worth of work. There are a lot of good plans out there, and lot of not so good ones, too. I've designed a number of canoes, this was not any harder, just twice the work as you have to draw out the boa AND the stern. A canoe is (usually) symmetrical, so drawing out one half is the same as the other.

OK, on we go.

Once all eight strakes are on, the fully planked hull can be lifted off of the. This is the point where all the work starts to feel like a boat.

Now I can put the mold away and start to clean up all of the glue joints inside and outside. That is a few more days of work. Once that is done, I can fit the gunnels to give the structure some rigidity.

The floors are fitted next. This is a complex shape, so I make some cardboard patterns first, then arrange them on the wood and cut those to shape.

The hull structure itself is actually quite rigid, but the bottom can always be stronger. Floors can be cut from solid lumber, bent, or laminated, I choose to cut from solid lumber on this boat.

A traditional lapstrake boat would have full length bent ribs, but as this boat is of glued lap plywood, those "ribs" are built into the plywood. Also, each lap is double thickness, and there will be other structural pieces added.

Floors fitted and glued in place with epoxy. There are limber holes for water to move between them so as not to get trapped.

The floorboards are shown fitted, as well as the lengthwise riser on which the seat/thwarts will be set.

This is how you glue in place that riser without screwing it into anything. The riser is screwed to a series of blocks which are what is actually glued to the hull interior, but to get them all lined up just right, the best way was to have them on the riser and glue them in all as a unit, then unscrew the riser and remove it for finishing.

So, I braced the hull to prevent it from spreading and used a whole bunch of horizontal go-bars.

Time to make the deck. Its actually called a breasthook, not a deck. A deck is something that you can walk on, but most of my work is with canoes and we just call them decks.

Mahogany with the grain running parallel to the gunnels, glued with epoxy along the joint, and braced with a series of small cross grain pieces. I'm patterning this deck off of the decks used on traditional cedarstrip canoes. There will be a small cap over the glue joint, as well as a coaming to cover the end grain.

I could have bent the coaming, but its hard to justify firing up the steam box for just one small piece, so it is laminated from Birch.

The trim for this boat is either mahogany where it is part of the hull, Fir where it is large and I need to save weight, or Birch where it needs to be stronger.

The deck being fitted. The coaming covers the end grain and there is a small notch, kind of triangular, where it comes to the gunnel so that there is no awkward join there. I couldn't find a photo of that so you will have to use your powers of imagination.

The outside gunnels are being fitted in this photo, too. I am doing them canoe style, where the outer gunnel has a rabbet shaped into the inboard side which allows the top of the gunnel to cap the top of the planking.

You might also notice that I have figured out how to size the photo to 50kb and not shrink it. I wish that I had figured that out at the beginning of the thread.

The brackets for the stern sheets being fitted. One of the interesting terms in boatbuilding is that this stern seat is called a stern sheet. Oh well...

Next time that I build this I will continue the stern floor up to make the first bracket. I was figuring this out on the fly and couldn't go back and change it.

And the stern sheets being fitted. And showing the progress on my L-00. At that point I was fitting the bindings. I needed a break from the boat so I was doing something simple; nothing is as nice and relaxing as fitting bindings, right?

There are small bilge keels for the boat to rest on when on the hard. These keep the finish on the planking from experiencing excessive wear and tear.

First coat of primer on the hull.

You mentioned a steam chamber. Did you steam the strakes before bending them into place?

No, they are pretty limber. And wrapping them around a boat hull lengthwise is a pretty easy bend, even when the have to twist a the same time. This is a pretty easy hull to plank up, actually.

Arrrrr, there be so much nautical jargon in this tread I fell off the stern sheet onto the hard!!

I love it! Being in San Diego, I'm pretty sure I could change hobbies quite easily ... Na!

The primer is aluminum paint?

Really nice build. It makes me want to build one, but we don't have that much water here unless it floods our nuclear power plants here in Nebraska.

There are never enough nautical terms being used! And that ain't just pirate jibber-jabber, neither.

Everybody should build at least one boat in their life. There are plenty of good boat plans available and lots of resources, too. Not like when I started out. One key element is to choose the right boat to build, which depends upon your local water conditions and what sort of boating you will actually do.

The primer is Epiphanes. No aluminums were consumed in the production of the paint. It is grey because grey works best to give good colour saturation from your paint.

Anyway, back to the program.

The mast is 11'6" long and is almost 3" in diameter, tapering to 1" diameter at the tip. It is also hollow and made of 8 staves in order to keep the grain uniform along the length.

Step one is to cut eight pieces of your chosen wood. In this case I used Fir as I could get good stock at reasonable prices. Spruce is preferred, usually, for its lighter weight. Tap tone and projection is not a concern.

I am using a birds beak style of lamination. Two 45 degree cuts are made into one face to make a corner. You'll see how it fits together in upcoming photos.

My little table saw will not allow a full 45 degree blade tilt due to a non-moveable obstruction over the motor, so I used this little sled which holds the wood at 45 degrees to the blade. Router bits are now available to do this and are probably preferable as their cut will be a perfect 90.

The pieces look like this:

And fit together like this:

When all of them are together they look like this. Almost round. Already 8 sided and ready to be 16 sided, then 32 sided, then sanded round.

This is just a dry fit, I still need to make a plug to fill in the hole at the bottom. The clamps are just hose clamps. The fit is much better when the clamps are tight.

This is the plug, and it needs to be eight sided. Yes, I could run it through the saw, but...

...its just as easy to run it through the thickness planer on this little sled. Close attention will reveal that it is the same sled previously used to cut the corners. However, this is the purpose that it was originally made for.

The leeboard thwart is patterned off of those use don sailing canoes. The bracket is usually brass. I did a search for buying some, but could only find very expensive antique ones. Being frugal by nature I made them out of wood and fiberglass. The wood basically forms a simple mold into which I laid in a bunch of 'glass.

Clamp nuts are integral to the system, but you can't find them at the local hardware store. I found these stainless steel one on line, and not very expensive, either.

Trimmed, the bracket looks like this. It will be painted black.

Are the square sides tapered to make your tapered mast, or is it made uniform - and tapered later?

Which makes for a better sound?

I'm moving this discussion to the Winds section. That is one heck of a a didjeridoo! :)

Question on the stave mast construction, Doug: with the grain oriented as pictured, it makes sense as the final product results in grain lines radiating from the center of the assembled mast (shown well in post #55). But it also seems like the "beak" opens up an opportunity to split the stave as the neighboring nesting piece wedges into it. Could this be a problem? Or do all the glue surfaces and the geometry of the thing keep it together, regardless of the grain orientation in the staves?

Jason, there really isn't that much pressure being applied. I can't imagine how much clamping pressure would be required to split these! Certainly far more than I could ever apply with the hose clamps.

Chuck, the flat side is tapered. I made a straight taper, but upon review of the finished piece, a more parabolic taper would have gotten me a smoother shaped taper. There was still a lot of wood in the mast wall for shaping, so no big deal.

Properly prepare joints and glue like epoxy fill provide nice tight joints that do not require significant clamping pressure. Using birds beak joints increase the glue surface are and keep everything aligned while doing the glue up.

I think that I've pretty much covered the project. There are a few more photos of making the oars, etc. I have to track them down and prepare a small file for uploading.

Thanks, everybody, for looking.

Thanks for the show (and tell). I really enjoyed it.

That's really lovely Douglas, thanks for showing us.

Just received this photo. Looks nice on the water. There are still some shake down issues as this boat is way beyond the owner's experience. If you look closely as I did, you can see why the oarlock chains are breaking on him. The lock is overboard while sailing!

And another. Couldn't help myself...

Gorgeous!!

An elegant vessel.

Thanks, Deb. From a Mainer surrounded by beautiful boats, I automatically double the value of each of your exclamation points. (So that would make 4...)

Thanks, Chuck. You should build a boat.

Oh, by the way, he finally found the snotter that he couldn't find before. It was in the bag with the rest of the lines. He didn't know that there was this bag...

OK, snotter is not a very polite sounding word, but that's what its called, and its the line that holds the sprit up on the mast.