Author: The Slow Boat Builder

But, sailing season is upon us and I need my Cornish Shrimper on the water. The sails are now on and I have the tough problem of splitting my time between sailing and boat building.

Given that strip planking will go on for some time, I decided to show the process in some detail. The first picture below shows the previous strip in place ready for the next to be fixed. I am using West System epoxy and they advise a two-step bonding process. First, the surfaces to be bonded… Continue reading Fixing on a strip plank

Finally on to planking. Strip planking of course, and the clue is in the name. Each plank is 30mm wide so there will be a lot of them. The first strip, shown below is fixed a defined height from the deck shelf. This allows (according to the plans) for the whole hull to the planked… Continue reading First Planks

Despite there being quite a lot of work involved in fairing, pictures do not do a good job of showing where the effort has gone. Below you can see the keel being shaped to match the profile of the bulkheads. At the same time as fairing, I am also preparing the strip planks. I could… Continue reading Fairing Well

I had a visit from one of my crew teams today (I have two teams. The other team is younger) to check on progress. The good news is that I have had a good test of the strength of box frame joints and it stood up well. The bad news is that my crew decided… Continue reading The Crew Visits

In boat building terminology “fair” is a term used to denote the evenness or regularity of a curve or line. The egg box frame – longitudinals, bulkheads, the transom and the stem all need to be “faired” so that the strip planks can be laid to give a nice even, regular surface. I use one… Continue reading Fairing the egg box frame

With the deck shelves in place, it is time to cover them, the end of the keel and the rest of the transom with a layer of Iroko. I glued the lower plank in place first so that I had could clamp all the facing planks together without having to worry about them slipping out… Continue reading Facing the Transom

Doing anything for a second time usually takes less time and that was the case for the second deck shelf.

For the Golant Gaffer design (I don’t know if this is more general), the deck shelves wrap around the bulkheads at the top of the hull and provide the base for hull planking and the deck, and so are an important structural piece. I made the amateur’s mistake of ordering the specified softwood from my… Continue reading Deck Shelves

The next job is to add another layer of the keel. The keel will have to be shaped to follow the line of the bulkheads and Roger Dongray recommends planing off some of the wood fixing the plan in place. Below is my device for marking how much wood will need removing. Resin applied and… Continue reading Keel Second Layer