(Entry 9) I want my baby back RIBS...

I'm not sure if it's a canoe, or a hairy caterpillar...to be honest, I'm not sure I care.  If the beast floats, call it by what ever name fancies your tickly-place.  It has been an eventful six days since my last post, allow me to run you through the festivities.  First I needed to figure out which type of lumber I was going to use for the RIBS (if you haven't guessed, I've managed to get all of the ribs in the boat).  Then I needed to borrow a table saw, and then of course cut them to appropriate dimensions.  Next, they then of course need to be bent, glued, clamped, measured, twisted, and every other damn thing you could think of (I think a burning cigarette to the eyeball may be more enjoyable).  So there you go, you're all caught up!  Good day folks.   

Okay, only joking.  Seriously though, that is probably the most time consuming and possibly irritating job I've had to do on this project yet.  If I were to do it all over again, I would definitelyforsure100% source green lumber for the ribs.  If you remember my last post, you'll recall me mentioning "green" lumber for the ribs, well I decided to be a tit and cheap out...I decided to use some lumber I had recently sourced that was now just laying around.  Table saw now borrowed, I call up my brother (thanks Ryan) to help me run the Cherry lumber through.  Knowing full well that this cherry is kiln dried and will not take a steam bending (according to many-a-internet forum folk) we proceed to cut the ribs to half their thickness to later be laminated and put into position. Okay, perhaps a word on lamination before we continue.  If you have two thin pieces of wood (in this case) and you glue those two pieces of wood together, bend the wood into position, once the glue between the layers of wood dries the wood will be forever bent into shape.  There, a very quick blah-dibbity about laminating wood.     

So we cut all of the lumber to half the thickness of the final rib size, but double the actual width, which was incredibly stupid.  The finished rib dimensions were supposed to be 1/4" thick, by 1/2" wide, so now we have about 40 pieces of lumber cut to 1/8" thick (half of finished thickness), by 1" wide, can you detect an issue here?  I can, and I won't even go into the issues I had trying to laminate the ribs into the canoe at double the width.  So after I figured out that the double-wide (reminds me of Eminem's home from 8 Mile) ribs were forcing the canoe out of shape during lamination, I had to figure out how to cut an 1/8" thick strip of cherry on a table saw without having it rattle and jump straight off the table and into my face.  Turns out that two days later I'd have the answer, and after about an hours work the strips were now reduced to half their width, which is the correct width.................

I can see this is getting confusing for you, your eyes are closing and you are falling asleep, you are getting sleepy, very sleepy, veeerrryyy...  Okay, so enough of that long-winded mindless babble, enough of Mr. Boring talk.  The ribs are in (all but one on each end, these need to be cut in half as they won't bend into place), all frikken' 18 of them.  Funny story, the plan calls for 18 total, but I will actually have 20 in total since I decided to reduce the spacing of the ribs by 1" so that I could avoid them landing on a station mold, haha, super funny leg slapper eh!  I love creating more work for myself, why didn't I increase the spacing to get the same result with less work?  Dumb-ass...  

Anyway...tomorrow I will hopefully have all of the zip-ties (they work great as clamps) off and the boat flipped, yay!

Blabbity-blah, until next time folks, cheers!  

(Entry 8) What did you do today?

Ladies and Gentlemen, I'd like to welcome a wonderful lady by the name of Curvy to the stage.  Well, she is coming together as you can clearly see.  I've got all the stringers on this end of the canoe cut and glued up, it was a bit of an adventure.  Again, the instructions from the "how-to" manual are extremely vague and disappointing, or maybe they're great and I just forgot how to read.  Either way, I winged it all today.  I don't have the slightest clue as to what I'm supposed to be doing, I just know what I want her to look like and that is what is driving me.  I'm a little scared, I won't lie.  The stringers are now glued into place on this end, on the other end they are full length and still need cutting and gluing.  What happens when I rush it and cut a stringer short?  Whoo waa!  Roasted marshmallows Batman, that's what happens.  Either way, I'm impressed with the way she has turned out so far.  It has been an exciting experience thus far, and I'm sure it will continue right on through to the bitter end.

I need to go to a lumber yard tomorrow and get some "green" lumber (freshly cut from the tree, not air or kiln dried) for the ribs.  I would have purchased the rib material sooner if I had known I'd be at that stage of the build already, it has gone pretty quick.  I shouldn't get too excited about ribs and such, as I still have a days worth of work to do before I can start laying them in, and who really knows what types of mistakes can happen due to my craftsmanship before then.  

 I will also have to have cut the piece that will make up the "cut-water" (The strip of wood that will go on the bottom of the boat from one end to the other, after the Dacron has been applied...It will help protect the covering, plus it will help the boat cut through the water and track straight).  It needs to be cut from the green material also and shaped prior to putting on the covering, so I can attach it with clamps until it holds the shape of the stem.  Once it holds shape, it will come off and it will get set aside until the boat is done, it is the final piece.

I'm actually very excited, once I get the stringers glued in and the ribs set, I can take the boat off of the molds and finally flip her over.  So, until next time...Cheers!    

(Entry 7) Back to work, finally some REAL progress

 Santa-Frosty in the background there, he's the supervisor in charge here on the night shift.  Well, I'm finally back to work on moi boat de la pain in de asz.  After the shotty lumber selection, and some good ole bad luck, I'm hoping all of the problems are behind me and we can set this project into drive, err paddle.

Well gee Brad, what's that there in the picture to my left?  Well O' faithful reader, you see that is the "stem", there is another one exactly like it on the other end of the boat.  If you take a look at the next picture you'll see that the boat looks kind of weird, well that's because I'm building it upside down (true story).  Anyway, enough of the "next picture" business for now, lets finish with this one.  That C-clamp is just holding on a brace that just so happens to be holding the stem piece in the right position (funny thing, I really think it's the right position, but I really have no idea).  I finished applying a good coat of thickened epoxy (epoxy with sawdust mixed in) to hold the keel (the strip of wood shown in the picture here, and below that runs the length of the boat) to the stem, and the stem to the keel, and the keel to the...shhh, enough!

Those plywood critters are the station molds I've mentioned in previous posts.  They are the magic behind the entire operation, they work extremely hard holding the boat in shape.  They were very difficult to setup, especially with the set of instructions that were attached to the plans.  Who would have guessed that for a 17 or so paged instruction booklet, important steps like "setting up the molds" would have been discussed in length.  I know I would have guessed that, but apparently the author of the instructions booklet decided to write about things like glue selection, and how-to's on epoxy mixing, and what type of wine goes best with chicken.  Hmmmpff!  What am I going to do now?  Well, as you can see, I'm going to do it my way.  Forget the manual, forget what everyone else says, I'm going for it on my own terms.  After all, she is my damn boat and if I want to sink, I should be able to decide that for myself.  To the bottom, rock bottom, here we sink, together my friend!

That there to your left ladies and gentleman is a picture of the keel, in long view.  Just follow that straight ish' board to the back of my shop, look up and slightly right, you'll see a nest of mold.  Yummy in my lungy.

As you may have noticed the little notches on the station molds (not the same mold as in the back of my shop), that is the location of the other boards, stringers or some such bogus name.  On the very bottom of the molds you'll see a larger notch, that will be the gunnel or gunwale, I'm really not sure if there is a difference or not.  Either or, it will eventually be the top sides of the canoe when she is finished.

The game plan for tomorrow is, fill in all of those station mold notches so she actually starts to look like a boat.  Well, that's the plan, who really knows what type of funny business will actually happen.  Check back later for the fire report, cheers folks!

A special thanks must be sent to Greg and Jenn Porter of "Dream Home Cabinetry" (www.dhcg.ca), located right here in the heart of Palmerston, Ontario for cutting my lumber to spec, and on such short notice.  Without them, I might have lost a couple of fingers trying to rush the lumber cutting process myself, again...  Thanks guys!  

(Entry 6) Day one of actual work - Strip cutting

Today was a long day of work, and also quite productive I'm starting to see some real progress.  First off, if you read my earlier post you'll notice I managed to build the strong back today.  What I also managed to get done today, I should say start today, is cutting the strips of wood for the canoe to their rough dimensions.  To the left is my strip cutting-jig.  Initially I was going to borrow a friends table saw to cut the strips, but the idea of trying to support 16 feet of lumber on each side of the table saw was intimidating, so I built a jig for the handheld circular saw instead.  It worked out amazing, quick, easy, and very accurate cuts.  

I will still have to borrow a table saw to cut the rough sized strips down to usable width (they are all proper thickness at 3/8").  Some will be 3/8" X 3/8", others will be 3/8" X 1", etc... Now that the strips weigh about one pound each and they're extremely flexible, I'm sure they'll be much easier to handle on a table saw, or at least that's the theory.  I managed to cut about 4 strips too many, which will obviously come in handy if mistakes are made.  I do have enough uncut stock from the original 2X10 to cut more, but I'm hoping there are enough, and then some.  I'm also now convinced the shop is terrible for photography with my little point and shoot camera, so I do apologize once again, and will try to rig something up that will illuminate the scene more for the next series of photo's.

If you look closely, you might be able to make out a pile of saw dust on the floor.  Apparently when you cut this much lumber you manage to make a ton of saw dust, the pile by the saw is about 6" tall.  After having cut all of this lumber, I have one very important tip...Wear a DUST MASK!  I've always been a touch stupid when it comes to NOT using safety equipment for work.  My excuse for not wearing a mask is that my glasses tend to fog up and I can no longer see, I wish there was a solution for this, but I have yet to find one.  If life goes my way, I hope to borrow a table saw for tomorrow and get the rest of the cutting done on the strips.  I also hope to get the station molds copied from the plans and transferred to the plywood for cutting, and finally for attaching to the strong back.

I guess first thing I'll be doing tomorrow morning is clean up my mess, again!  If only I could learn to work cleaner, the jobs I do would probably take a lot less time.  Have a good one, we'll see you the next time!  

I should mention that this lumber was not used for anything other than the floor boards and stem pieces in the canoe.  It turned out that I selected a piece of construction grade lumber (trying to be cheap) that had some knots that compromised the strength of the lumber.  Instead I ordered a piece of Poplar as a cheap, semi-straight grained, knot-free alternative.  I also think it is important to note that Poplar is NOT a very good choice of lumber for boat building, it's heavy, ugly, and has no natural resistance to rot (not that spruce, pine or duglas fur have much either).  If sealed properly and stored inside out of the elements, it shouldn't matter what type of wood you use for the construction of this particular boat.  If I were to do it all over again I would select a piece of White-Pine (CLEAR, no knots) to use.   

(Entry 5) My back is sooo strong. Here's my Strong-back/Box Beam

Before I start talking about this picture, I'd like to apologize for my photography skills and how retched they are.  Having said that, in my defense the object in the picture is 15 (yes, fifteen) feet long.  Welcome to my garage Miss. Box Beam, together we're going to rule the world.  Blah, blah.  This is the Strong-back that will eventually hold the station molds for me to start applying stuff . Yeah that's right, I don't know the name of the parts of a canoe so I'll call it "stuff".  Sooo, the next part is cutting the lumber for the canoe.  The 16 foot 2X10 in the background laying on the floor will eventually become the canoe, just regular ole construction-grade spruce.  Surprisingly enough the plan calls for spruce, pine, or Douglas-fur.  I was going to upgrade to cedar, but the spruce was about $15 and the cedar would have been in the $40 range (and I needed a saw blade more, shhhhh don't tell anyone that I'm cheap).  The piece of ply-wood in the background is called mahogany underlay in these here parts there boy, and that is what the station molds will be cut from, it was a whooping $15.  My bill for the day was $60, the plans and materials (Dacron, kevlar, heat n' bond) cost me a small fortune at $142.50 + about $30 to have it shipped from the USA, and the waterproof Varathane ran me about $20.  I've got about $252.50, plus a few odds and ends here and there, that's a pretty cheap canoe if you ask me (but please don't ask, I've already said it).  Anyway, next step is a nap, oh yeah!  Cheers.

(Entry 4) The SnowShoe14 - What it will hopefully look like when she is complete.

Shhh, don't tell anyone, I stole this image from gaboats<dot>com to show everyone what the boat should look like when I'm complete.  I guess you can call it a sneak-peak, a preview, or whatever you're in the mood for today.  I would like my readers to have an idea of what is going on, as a bunch of pictures of my garage don't seem to look anything like a boat, weird.  So there it is, I just hope mine turns out,  and I can show it off like this person is doing.  If all goes well, at the end of this I'll be proudly holding my boat high above my head to show it off like a trophy.  If it doesn't go so well, I'll probably be at the bottom of the lake somewhere as musky bait.  If I manage to escape with my life, the boat will be tossed by the side of the beach and I will set'er on fire!  Oh ya...Roast some marshmallows on that b__c_ and dry my clothes after spending a day in the water with my non-floating boat.  Tune in next time folks.  =)

(Entry 3) The workshop - After.

After...What more can I say?  Today was a busy day, but it was very productive.  As you can see from the BEFORE pictures (in one of my previous posts), and these here, the transformation is very noticeable.  The wooden box against the wall on the right-hand side is going to disappear tomorrow afternoon, and magically turn itself (okay, I might be involved a little) into a Strong-Back for the canoe molds.  Most of the unwanted stuff I put on the side of the road out front has disappeared from this morning, hopefully tomorrow there will be very little, if any left over for me to take to the dump.

I'm not sure what I did to the camera (shh, please don't tell my wife) but the quality of photographs seems terrible today, could be the lack of lighting (I hope it is).  You'll notice the black garbage bags up by the door, there is about six of them in total.  They are filled right to the tops with anything and everything I could put in them today.  You name it, kids toys, old lumber with nails, broken glass, cigarette butts (from the good-ole days), and just about everything else you'd normally find in your average pack-rats garage.  Hey look, my extra washing machine/shelving unit is alone in the corner with noting on top of it, poor guy.  =)

 Whoo-hoo!  I received my canoe kit complete with plans the other day.  There are two sets of plans, the one you can see is just general information, dimensions, and views, etc...The plan you can't see (it is boring), has full-size images of the canoe molds that need to be transferred to poster board (so I can keep the original plan), and then transferred to some thin plywood to be used in the building process. Next task, finding carbon paper to make the transfer to the poster board, I'm pretty sure it's extinct. These plans were drawn by hand in 1984, a fact I found quite interesting. I wonder how many people have actually built these boats, there are a few pictures kicking around the internet, but not a whole lot.

In the bottom right corner you'll see the Dacron fabric that will be used to cover the framework of the boat, and then varnished for a (fingers crossed), watertight finish.  It is actually very heavy, and fairly thick compared to what I had imagined.  The yellow roll above the Dacron is Kevlar roving (or so they have named it), it is applied on a 45 degree angle across the framework of the boat to stop the boat from twisting, I suppose it ads torsional strength.  The two rolls to the left of that are Heat n' Bond, basically hot glue in a roll.  It will be used to apply the Dacron skin to the framework of the boat before we shrink the Dacron.  They also included a set of generic instructions, I'm a touch upset about that, for the amount of money I paid I would have been much happier with plan specific instructions.  Most of the information in the booklet doesn't apply to my build, or does it?  I'm not sure, it doesn't specifically point out that this paragraph is for my boat or for another, we'll see how it goes.

That's about as much as I can muster for today, tomorrow we should see some progress and maybe I'll be a touch less exhausted and able to write.  Toodaloo!

(Entry 2) Tool update/progress.

So just a quick little update type thing.  I started cleaning up my shop a little bit tonight, and just thought I'd share a bit about some tools, some awesome little tools.  I bought a bunch of these 3" nylon clamps the other day at KW Surplus, ten of them to be exact.  They were 88 cents each, how can a guy on a budget refuse such a beautiful price on something that cost so much more in other stores?  They have a ton of clamping pressure, they were cheap, and they'll come in real handy for all types of duties around the shop...Right, sure they will, they will come in real handy, as toxic-kindling for my rocking chair fire that I'm having later tonight.

 I decided to rig up a little organizer on the wall to store these beauties.  A thin board screwed to the wall so these could be clamped to it, that should do the trick.  Simple enough plan, or so I thought.  Apparently, 88 cents buys nothing but shrapnel in KW Surplus.  I know they're an old military surplus retailer, but come on guys, get real.  I think I may actually talk to a lawyer about this, I'm sure I have a case.  The clamp on the right (in the picture) shot off of my wall mounted clampo'ganiza so fast, it nearly took my head right off.  The clamp on the left, suffered a much less dramatic death, it just popped, that was it.  I figure if I can't get a clamp that works for 88 cents, I should at least get a good show, no?

Wooohoo, what ya got there Brad?  That is my second failed attempt at my other hobby I'm working at.  Wooden trout nets.  Turns out that if your spoke-shave isn't sharp, it takes massive chunks out of the wood instead of nice ribbon-like shavings.  Who knew?  It was going to be such a nice net made of ash and Indian rosewood, or something like that.  I'd still like to build these, it's just proving to be a more difficult task than I had imagined.  Designing the template for the net and handle to join as one with fluid lines is just not as easy as I had anticipated.  I'm not sure how to take the image I see in my head and put it down on paper with a compass, protractor, and a ruler.  Hmmm, help?   

 
So this is what I got accomplished tonight in the short time that I was working, and not dodging shrapnel.  As you can plainly see, I'm not too fussy on organization, that leads me to believe that I'm impatient, and that my canoe project is likely doomed.

I think what I'll do is start taking Yoga or something of the sort, I hear it is very good for the mind and body.  Errr, not.

Have a good day, or night everyone.

(Entry 1) The workshop - Before (Eeeek)

 This is why I'm scared to start something new, that is the mess I have to deal with first.  What do I do with it all?  The wife says I'm not allowed to burn the house down, or rent a bulldozer for the day, what are my options now?  I've heard of this new thing called "elbow-grease", but it is a fairly unheard of thing these days and I'm not sure I can even muster the energy to do a Google search and find out more information.  I guess I'll have to find out if anyone on kijiji is selling a clean-up-bot, or at the very least a child laborer that some shameful parent is renting out to teach the poor minion some work ethic or some such retched thing.    

 Moving on... On the right you'll see a brick wall that's not important, now if you'll follow the brick wall to the back of the picture you'll see a plywood wall, that is also unimportant, now looking directly in the middle of those two unimportant things, you'll see the mess.  That gigantic, enormous, frigga-huge box type thingy is an old project of mine from way back, like last year.  It is...A...A...A...Heat box (See what I did there, I created suspense, amazing).  I'm sure you feel good knowing this very useful information now, what's even more interesting is that it is brand new, and it cost me like $100 bucks to build.  Apparently when you say you're building archery bows, but never actually build any (other than a few embarrassing test subjects), your heat box never gets used, except for as a shelving unit/dust collector.  So now what to do with it?  I'm going to rip it apart and use the plywood to build the strongback (you'll see it, I promise) that I need to attach the canoe molds to.  This strongback thingy is to keep everything straight and lovely looking, and hopefully make my life easier, and my back much less sore (I'm sure that depends also on the height I build it at).      

That's a trampoline, my daughters actually.  Why would such a lovely fun-maker be doing in my garage rotting?  To be very honest, I grew tired of picking it up off of the neighbors lawn after a storm, moving it before I cut the grass, and washing the bird dung and leaves from the ginormous willow tree out of it!  Like everyfrikkengoshdamnday (put that on dictionary.com).  It now sits in my workshop, just waiting patiently for the day I spray it with lighter fluid, strike my lighter (my old lighter, I'm now an X smoker) and set a blaze to the anti fun-makin thing it has sadly become.  Just kidding!  I'm going to set it out on the road with a FREE sign on it, come get it, you'll love it...I promise.  Back to the shop.  The white thing is an extra washing machine that I'll end up using for a storage shelf until it's needed in the house.  The pile of boxes on the right are filled with stuff from my Father's house from when he moved, he donated his junk to my wife (thanks Dad) so she could have a yard sale and make tons of money, yeah, tons!  The chair is a lovely kijiji purchased rocking chair that was intended to help her boobie-feed my youngest son, now it sits in my shop broken and unwanted, it is getting the lighter fluid.  Dear, I'll fix the chair if I can be fed that way, muah-haha.  Sadly I must keep busy by building boats, and writing terrible blog posts instead.

I hope you enjoyed the tour of my shop "before" the clean out.  We'll see you next year after it has been cleaned out, or the year after.

Spelling and grammar mistakes, run on sentences, and dull blabbidy-blah is what you should come to expect here.  I'm not a college graduate, nor a high-school one at that, and if you don't like it...Read the pictures ;)