The work continues

Its been a while since the last post and a lot has happened at Trenton Boat Works. For those of you who might have missed it, Mercer Queen officially got her name back in October during an unprecedented double Nor'easter. The event was featured as the headline in the Trenton Times (link to story) that day and we had quite a turnout of friends and strangers alike. Like Odysseus of old, I must have angered Poseidon with my hubris because it has rained every Saturday since then.

In the meantime, work in the yard has come to a screeching halt, mainly because I am now gainfully employed. Just as well because I seem to work in three distinct modes of operation; reading, writing and doing, and they all go in a cycle. I was leaving the "doing" phase and entering the "reading" one just as I put the boat up for the winter. Mercer Queen is up on blocks in a barn in Cream Ridge, her bilge full of salt and the boiler full of anti-freeze. Now reading is winding down and it's time to start the writing again, and that includes new drawings. There's the new engine to finally draw up, and I'm planning on a modification to the boiler in the spring. I'm also wanting to start some new builds, first a new rowboat for my mother to replace the one that was stolen last September, and the other is for a new sailboat.

I'm a little iffy on the sailboat. I know I can design it, but building one is another matter. It would need to be so much more exact then a power boat so its unlikely to get built in the backyard. When we built Mercer Queen it was either level or straight at any given time, but never both together, so close examination would betray some inconsistencies in the build. That wouldn't be acceptable in a sailboat, especially one I would plan to race. So I'm casting around for a place to build it, preferably one with a level floor. We'll see how it turns out.

Yesterday I went to see the re-enactment of the first Battle of Trenton and I must saw it was an emotional experience. To see the formations and hear the muskets and cannon echo through the streets put a lump in my throat to think of the conviction of the men in that battle. We think that all of that happened so very long ago, but it was only 15 years after that battle that the first steamboat sailed from Trenton down the Delaware. Taking pictures with a digital camera only drove home the sensation of how far and how quickly technology has advanced since that day and one cannot think but that our progress owes a great debt to the men that fought on that day. From the water mill that once stood hard by the battle to the networks which make this publication possible, the shots fired from the ranks of musket can still be heard, clear as the day they were fired.

With winter hard upon us here in Trenton, its too cold to work in the machine shop for now. It would take a full 20 lbs of propane for a day's work, but that makes this the perfect time for drawing up new designs and revising the old. I'll be posting the new designs for the engine as soon as they come out. Soon my writing phase will be over and I'll get itchy to start building something again and after yesterday, I feel that it's my patriotic duty to make it a beaut!

All ready for her big day.

After two test sailings, Mercer Queen in scrubbed down ready to go. The first test was to check out the new water pump and engine seals. That trip revealed two things; one that the pump worked and put water in the boiler, and two, the new seals worked so well that they revealed all of the other places that the engine leaked. These new found leaks necessitated the a complete rebuild.

So the engine went on the bench and was re-plumbed, re-sealed, etc... I also took the time to correct some curious geometry that seemed to bind it up at high pressures.

Then the last trip was on Tuesday. The engine worked like a champ. Stoking the boiler on the other hand was quite a challenge. We just couldn't seem to build and hold pressure. It was then that the Earl noticed the valve for the stack venturi was open, and when he went to close it he broke the valve. It was a pretty heavy duty gate valve and the cover for the gate housing sheered off as he tightened it down. That left us dead in the water 300 yds downwind of the launch. I had to hand crank the paddles all the way back.

But now the valve is replaced and everything is set to go. Most of you will know about the christening this Saturday, but for those of you who don't and might like to show up, here's the invite. It should be quite the do, with rides to follow. See you all there and then!

Engine Update

As I said in my last post, the engine is up on the bench for some much needed repairs and upgrades. The first order of business was to fix the pulled out cylinder post. No big deal there, just some drilling and tapping for the bolt and backing plate (essentially a big washer). With that done, it was on to the water pump.

The pump you can see in the bottom left of the picture to the left. It's that long brass thing. Its a positive displacement gear pump, which should mean that no matter the speed, it will still pump water, and put some pressure on it as well. That's the theory anyway. In actual practice it needs to be going around a bit faster than once a second, which is the engine's approximate speed. But how fast?

To figure it out, I took it off and hooked it up to an electric drill, then put a gauge on the outlet end and had it pump water. To get a consistent 30 lbs took about 600 rpm, or ten times around in a second. That was the limit to the gauge I had on hand. Needing 40+ lbs I figured 900 rpm would be more than enough to overcome the pressure and pump water into the boiler. So I built a gearbox out of some sprockets and chain I had around. The result is what you see in the pics.

For those of a mechanical bent, The ratios are 2.4:1, 2.5:1, and 2.5:1 for each linkage giving a total ratio of 15:1. So for each time the main shaft turns, the pump shaft turns 15 times.

The pic on the right is the back side of the gearing and you can see the three linkages. The sprockets on opposite sides of the mounting block are connected to a joining shaft and turn on center together.

There's quite a bit of mechanical loss in doing it this way, but it was quick and relatively easy. I would have preferred to use spur gears, but that would have been a lot more machining than I have time for at present. Perhaps for the new engine.

There and Back Again or Success? Part 3

My apologies to Mr Tolkien, but old Bilbo would have understood. When we last left off, Mercer Queen had finally made it to the shores of Barnegat Bay and was ready to launch. Well, almost ready. I tried to keep her arrival for builder's trials quite, but word got out and we had about 20 people accompany her to the ramp and the same number more in assorted onlookers. So much for stealth.

As the Earl backed her down the ramp, it was the moment of truth as the essence of boat-ness is that it floats and she had never had her keel wet until then. In a previous post, I noted that she held water after a rain storm, but that was only just up past the garboard strakes. This time her entire bottom would be wet and after the trailer misadventures, who knew what kind of damage had been done. To top it off, the design had changed so radically from when I first did the weight calcs that I wasn't sure how it would ride. Too light and she would flop on her chines, too heavy and she'd be at the mercy of even a small swell. There's also a little thing called the metacentric point, which describes the righting moment for the hull. It that point is too high off the center of bouyancy, when the boat starts to lean it will just keep on going until it has turned turtle.

Well, as I was guilding the Earl back down the ramp, my brother, who was helping on the other side from me, called out to stop. My only thought was disaster. Something was caught or broken or something. Instead, I heard "She's clear, I'll walk it around." I couldn't believe it! It looked like it was still on the trailer. Perfectly level athwart, 2 degrees up at the bow, water line 1 inch above the chine amidships, exactly as I had planned it!! It was one of the luckiest things to ever happen to me. With all of the changes in weight and shape, for everything to cancel out and come out exactly as originally planned was one amazing coincedence.

Once she was tied up, I climed on board with my mallet and some cotton wick expecting to see at least a few geysers in the seams, but lo and behold, just a little seeping near the chines. No need to pound in anything as it would tighten up as she swelled (and she did. Dry as a bone on the 3rd day.)

Ok, it floats, and gave all appearances that she would continue to do so, so time to start up the engine. Here was more uncharted territory. I had run the engine with the boiler previously, but that was out of the boat with no load. The wheels were still on the shaft and the shaft in the bearings, but they were the only thing holding it on the trailer the night before, so who knew what to expect from that. Then the gearing was still to be worked out. I had brought 3 different size gears to give a 2:3, a 1:1 and a 3:2 plant to shaft ratio, but I had no idea if any of them would work. I really had no idea if any of it would work, period, since this would be the first time the system would be run all together. I wasn't even convinced that the system would be powerful enough to move the boat.

The most difficult part of this entire evolution was that we had a full cooler of beer, several of which I needed very badly to drink, but the entire time we were getting set to get under way, there was a cop in the parking lot not 10 feet from the beach watching us the entire time. Everyone was grumbling about this for a while before my cousin went up and asked him if something was the matter. It turns out he remembered my last steam boat as was just a fan. Here I thought he put a call in to the marine police and was just waiting for them to take me and my boat into custody. Do you think I was any issues with authority?

Once we got enought steam, I hooked up the 2:3 gears with the chain, figuring that would be the best case scenario. If it worked, she would zip along with the least amount to steam. If not, it gave me some other options. With 40 lbs on the gauge, we cast off, and I opened the throttle.

It was very anti climactic. She bearly made headway. We did manage to go about 2 knots for about a half hour, which got us about half way home. Then we called in one of the chase boats that where milling around, threw a line and got a tow the rest of the way. That's me and Earl enjoying the sun on the foredeck. Notice the line going to the tow boat. That was enough for one day. Time for to take stock and go at it again the next day, when Earl and I planned to take her under her own power a full 2 miles.

The next day dawned warm and sunny. A perfect day for a steam! The first order of business was to change the gearing. I took it down all the way to 3:2, just to see. After getting up steam, we pushed off the beach and started on our way. Our destination was the Seaside Park Yacht Club, where it was bay day, were all of the yachties from around barnegat bay converge for a day of sailing and alcohol abuse, mostly the latter. I had swore to a bunch of people that I would have the boat there, and damn if I wouldn't.

Before we had gone 100 yds, I noticed two things. The first was the the gearing was just right. She moved along just fine, even at only 20 lbs of steam. The other was that the water pump wasn't pumping water. This turned out to be a big hassle, because the only other way to put water into the boiler was a little foot pump that couldn't work against more than 5 lbs. That meant that about every 20 minutes we had to blow down the boiler, stopping dead in the water, and the pump it full again. No biggie, just a hassle.

Everything was going great untill we were no more than 100 ft from the dock. There are two neoprene gaskets on the cylinder posts that literally melted. This caused the cylinders to go loose from the frame and we lost all power. I flagged down a boat that was watching the races nearby and once again got towed in. We spent the rest of the day drowning our sorrows, which we did most successfully. Oh, and we also broke the tiller off trying to skull in. But we got there. And we had many admirers. I didn't spend much time on the boat, but took to standing on the dock nearby. Almost no one knew that the boat was mine, but plenty of people stopped, pointed, and took quite a few pictures. When the sun went down, we got towed home.

The next day, I replace the seals and tried to go for one last steam that weekend. I fixed the tiller with vicegrips and duct tape, got on steam and shoved off. My brother jumped on board at the last second and we tried to go around the cove a few times. The new seals did the trick! In fact it worked flawlessly. She held 40 lbs of steam and went at a jog, around 6 knots. It was actually throwing a wake! It also reveiled a new problem. The engine puts out so much torque, that it was bending the shaft enough to make the chain slip. The only was to get it to stop was for me to hold up the chain with a piece of pipe I had onboard while my brother drove. Still, that's a simple fix.

The ride stopped when all of a sudden one of the cylinders started to leak steam uncontrolably. Later when I took it apart to fix it I discovered what had cut short our fine steam. The cylinder posts are press fit into the cylinder body and I had put so much steam into it that I actually pulled out the pressing. I have since secured it with a backing plate and screw so it shouldn't be a problem any more.

Well, that was enough. I left her in the water as I took the kids back to Trenton to start school. Two weeks later, I put her back on the trailer and pulled her back home to the boatyard. She's in the driveway now getting ready for her big day on the 17th. I've been working on the engine lately, but more on that later.

Success!!...part 2

In our last installment, all the parts (except the new engine, but more on that later) were built and it was time for the installation. The first thing that had to happen was that the boat had to come out of the shed where it had lived its entire life so far. This was no mean feat as she weighed close to 1500 pounds once all the decking was installed and the yard is on a slight incline. Moving her one way was easy. Stopping, turning and going back up hill, well... not so much. Not only did it have to come out, but it then had to fit under the swing set where there was only 3 inches to spare on either side. And did I mention the tongue of the trailer weighed about 200 lbs, so it wasn't like we could just pick it up and swing it around. Needless to say everything happened very slowly.

After about two hours of maneuvering, she was finally in place. The final few feet was accomplished with the help of a block and tackle which we used to haul it back up the hill. In the picture to the right you can make out the line attached to the back of the trailer that we used to pull it. Once it was in place it was time to put the boiler in.

Installing the boiler was the reason for the complicated move in the first place. My yard lacks and large trees that would have limbs large enough to lift the boiler in place, as I had cut them all down to make room for the boat. The only structure that was high enough and sturdy enough to lift the boiler in was the beam off of the treehouse that holds the kid's swings. Why not just lift it in? Mostly because the assembled boiler weighs ~520 lbs; too much for even two people to lift. So we possitioned the boiler under the swings, tied a come-along to the beam and rigged a harness for the boiler and started to lift. The feet you see on the ladder are mine as I'm operating the lift, one ratchet click at a time. We had to two-block the come-along to get the enough lift. Even then we only had about an inch of clearance between the boiler and the deck. Then we slid it in and bolted it down. Well, actually we pulled the boat back under the boiler.

With the boiler in, the only thing left was to install the engine and hook it all together. Simple, right? Well, it turned out to be mostly so, but it deserves a little technical background. The new engine wasn't (and still isn't) ready, so I was using the old one. The reason I wasn't waiting was because I was anxious to see if the boat would float, the missus was more than ready to have her back yard back, and I just had to have it in the water before labor day. The original launch date was Memorial day, so at least one day before the end of summer, she had to float and go. So the old engine was the only option.

Now the old engine was built for the old boiler. That boiler was high volume, but low pressure. The new boiler was lower volume, but was designed for much higher pressure. That meant that it would need to operate slower than before but with much more power on each stroke. How much slower I wasn't sure so I actually put three gears on the main shaft, a 10, 15 and 20 tooth gear. Matched with the 15 tooth on the engine shaft that meant that the wheels would go a little faster or slower than the engine. On the old boat, the wheel turned once for every 8 times around on the engine. Now the ratio would be nearly at parity. The calculations said that it would work, but that didn't mean it actually would. Anyway, I started it out on the 10 tooth, because it that worked the boat would really zip along.

The engine was plumbed in and all of that without any real trouble except, as usual, I was running out of time. My buddy Chadwick was coming at 3 to pick up the boat with his truck and I was still sweating pipe for all of the steam connections at 2:30. He pulled up just as I shut off my torch for the last joint.

The original plan was to lower the boat to the street by hand with block and tackle and then hitch it up there, but Chadwick, bold as ever, backed his big diesel right in. No small feat that, as his truck is a wide as the boat and that only has and inch to spare on either side out of the side yard gate. He pulled it down into the street without a problem, we loaded up and prepared for the trip to Seaside Park, some 60 miles away. That was 3:30 in the afternoon.

1.27 miles from the house, the trailer hit a bump, came down and sent every bunk on the trailer off in all directions. As we pulled over to assess the situation, the only thing holding it together was the paddle wheels which had prevented the outer bunks from splaying out. As Chadwick fearlessly started to raise the boat up using whatwas essentially a car jack and a game on Jenga, Earl arrived with some larger bunking materials and another jack. We were able to get the boat secured enough to get back to the front of the house.

At that point I truly dispaired of moving the boat further, but Chadwick would not be detered, and he and Earl immediatly devised a plan to fix things and get on the road again. What this eventially lead to was a complete rethink and rebuild of the entire trailer, something I wouldn't have thought possible and certainly wouldn't have been if not for those two, especially the indefatigable Chadwick. It was full on dark when we finally left. When we finally got to Seaside it was 10:30. What is usually an hour's drive had taken us 7.

Tomorrow, I'll post about the launch and what happened after. Until then.

Success!!... well, so far.

She's in the water and floats, and actually moved under her own power for a bit. For those of you who may be shocked that it's in the water prior to the christening, don't be. It's not unusual for boats of a certain size to undergo trials prior to the "official" launch. These builder's trials are undertaken to make sure that things go smoothly when the brass show up to officially take the craft. Even ships that are christened on the ways prior to launch still have several months, if not years, of work to complete before they're ready for pubic sailing. In keeping with this, Mercer Queen shipped no passengers except her builders (and my brother when I needed an extra hand), so no one has missed anything.

But it's been I while since my last post (my god, has it been since July!?!), mostly because I was too busy trying to get the boat ready to start trials to take time to write. I spent quite a few nights working into the wee hours and those that I didn't was only because I was too exhausted to do any more and just collapsed into bed. August was just a blur of sparks since most of the time was taken up with metal work, primarily the boiler.

And here's the beast getting put together. For those interested, it's of a modified Yarrow type, which is a boiler type that was once found on the fastest patrol boats. It consists of two lower mud tubes on the bottom and a steam trunk on the top and a bunch of smaller tubes that wind between them. The picture to the right was taken while I was welding on the connectors for blowing down the mud tubes. The steam trunk is on the left. You can also see the two down-comers that holds the assembly in place and also give a path for excess water in the steam trunk to find its way back to the mud tubes.

This picture is of me putting the steam tubes in. They are made of copper, mostly to better transfer the heat, but also because they are relatively inexpensive.They are attached to the steel with flare fittings. Originally the steam tubes were supposed to be all identical and bend in a simple S pattern from to to bottom. IT was a great idea except that 3/4 in. copper tube can't make a 5 in radius without an annealing torch, and even then... The problem was I had already ordered the shell of the boiler and had to fit the same surface area of tube into the same volume while making only 9 in radii for the bends. The result was the crazy bends you see in the picture, where every tube is custom bent and was tricky as hell to put together. On the computer, they can move through each other as I put them in place. Not so much in the real world.

The other limitation to the boiler was that all of the sheathing had to fit on two 4X10 sheets of steel. This was strictly to control costs. The entire boiler cost as much as (probably more than) the hull. Although it was close. Both came in just over $2K although final accounting isn't complete (mostly because of fear of the truth). This limitation let to an interesting feature that the steel pipes poke out through the cover. You can kind of make out this feature in this picture of the aft face of the boiler. This was taken just before we hoisted it into the boat. The pipes and tubing is all inclosed in a double layer of 16 ga. steel. This design is a safety feature of my own imagining. The draft for the fire comes from the top of the boiler, through the gap between the walls and down under the grate. This serves two purposes, the first is to keep the outer skin somewhat cool and the other is that should there be a failure in the steam tubes (the weakest point of the assembly), the steam would all go up the stack or through the top of the boiler, thereby sparing the boat's occupants the worst of the steam's damage. That's the theory, although the draft doesn't quite work without a full head of steam being blown up the stack to increase the draft. (For those of a safety minded bent, I did hydro test the assembly before and after the skin went on. It passed with flying colors.)

There was some wood work as well, mostly the wheels, although the tricky part was the hubs which I welded out of steel. You can't really make them out in this picture but they are at heart 10 in pieces of 1 in pipe. That size pipe has an interior diameter just a hair over 1 inch and they slide perfectly over the main shaft for the wheels and are secured with 6 set screws. In all it worked out quite well.

It's getting late so I'll stop here so that I can give the assembly move and launch the detail they deserve. Until tomorrow...

Way better engine video.

Just the good parts. Enjoy

Engine and Boiler Update

I haven't been doing much work on the hull lately and have been concentrating on the mechanical systems. I haven't started shaping any metal yet but have been working to finalizing the designs for the boiler and new engine. But before I get to that, some hull work has been done. Mostly that it's complete. All the structural parts are now on. Earl has been working on the trim and has made some really fine step pads. He's going to put some more trim around the wheel cowlings and such and has said he's going to make some seating for the front. I have some mahogany from the old 50 footer that I was hoping to incorporate into the boat and this seems a fine opportunity. No pictures of the boat today as it hasn't changed except in the details which get lost in the big pictures and the detail pics don't make a lot of sense out of context. You'll just all have to wait to see it live.

The trailer is in the back yard, but after close inspection it was decided that it needs an overhaul before it can be used, namely a new axle and springs. It would suck royally if after all of this the boat wound up as splinters on the highway after the axle snapped. I'm still anticipating that she comes it at ~2500 lbs and nothing has changed that so far. She'll probably have to travel with the boiler and tanks empty though. We'll see.

Now for the fun bits, the engine. In an early post I showed the design for the engine when she was to have only one that was chain linked to the wheels. Going over this for some time, I decided that two engines would be not only so much cooler, but more reliable and make the boat much more maneuverable. So I took the full rotary design and split it in half. It adds about 150 extra pounds for the extra plumbing and frames but it seems to me that it will be quite a coup to pull it off. I have yet to make even one, so I'm trying to count my chickens, but wow! will it be cool.

So this is the new design. Its hard to see much except the cylinder assemblies and the rotary valve in this picture because the nifty bits are hidden behind that big plate behind the valve. Those plates (there's a matching one on the back of the frame) are probably the most essential elements in the design. They're for aligning the shaft bearings which I can tell you is a very very tricky business. There are all kinds of places for things to go out of alignment and I need those to make sure that the thing doesn't seize up after the first few revolutions. To give you an idea of the size, it's about 24X30X15 inches squared off. Probably closer to 18 after the plumbing goes on. I'm hoping each one to develop about 3 horsepower @ 75 psi of steam. That's the theory anyway. The torque isn't that high because the pistons are skinny but once it gets going it should be all right.

I also made this nifty movie of the tricky parts, namely the drive yokes and the crank shaft. I don't know how well it will play on the web, but take a look anyway. No boiler pics or diagrams. I sent the drawings off to have the sheet metal water cut so I'll have pictures when I get that back. Until then.

The Last Coat of Paint

For the deck at least. Not much new to report other than the deck is painted and the wheel covers are on and also painted. I often wonder why more people don't keep wooded boats, and then I have to paint one. There's a lot of surface area that one never considers. Painting a wall is one thing. Rolling on 200 sq. ft. of paint takes about 10 minutes. Brushing on 200 sq. ft. of high gloss enamel on a boat takes about 4 hrs. Edges have to be precise and there are hundreds of little nooks that have to be reached, and they are all in the most inaccessible spots and require you to constantly go back to areas you have already painted to maintain a wet edge. And then the bugs! What is it about gloss white paint that attracts bugs so?! I've given up preventing them and now just go around with a sharp knife after it as dried and cut them off.

Anyway here's some pics. As you can see the deck is green. Not the exact color I wanted but it was cheap paint so I went with it. The brightwork to close the gap between the deck and hull is yet to be installed. Hopefully tomorrow or Wed will be the last day of woodworking for a while and she can move out of the shed onto the trailer and I can start the metal work. We'll see.

I promise I'll post more regularly. I was caught up in preparations for Fourth of Julobster and haven't been near my laptop in a while. Now I have two weeks to get as much work done as a can before my next out of town obligation.

Duck, duck, duck,...deck?

It's been a busy couple of weeks here at the boat yard, but not necessarily from working on the boat. About 2 weeks ago the boat looked like this. We had finished cutting out the deck frames and had started placing them on the hull frames. Experienced boat builders will note that the frames are a little beefy. I mean, 3 inches of oak is a bit excessive, but it's a quick and dirty solution to a geometry problem. You can see that the frames overhang the outside of the hull. Those aren't going to be cut off. The deck is actually cantilevered over the edge of the hull. This serves two purposes; it gives that jaunty riverboat look and protects the side wheels. I suppose I could have come up with some fancy bit of wood work that would be a lot more elegant, but who has that kind of time?

A week later the boat looked like this. All of the frames are bolted on and we started bending on the outer framing. The top frames have just been bent on in this picture and those pipe clamps are holding the bend in the wood until it sets. Without the clamps, the wood tends to kink around the frames instead of bending in a true spline, something I learned from putting on the chine logs. This is just a way to cheat without putting in more framing to better define the curve. The boards in the boat are the deck planks waiting to be cut and fit. They're there because they're 12 feet long and I didn't have any space in the wood loft for them. Its all 4/4 poplar which is being planed down to 5/8. And yes I know poplar isn't a traditional boatbuilding wood, but it has a virtue that I find trumps all others. It's insanely cheap.

Finally today the boat looks like this. Actually it looks a lot more covered up as I took this this morning. All of the foredeck is on and the side decks are all cut out and painted. Also all of the interior is painted and the lower deck is put on. The lower deck is just a 3/8 face board that keeps the water from splashing up into the boat. It also provides a nice airspace to help the deck to dry out and keep from rotting to quickly. You can make out the interior space now as we bent on the inside frame. I built two jigs as shown here. The one hanging is the one I used to bend the frames for the deck. It was a complete success. The big one was for the wheel cowlings. It was a failure, through no fault of it's own however. The wood I had cut to bend on it had an unseen flaw and is useless for bending, so no more gettin' jiggy.

On an note related only to the title of this post, I have to announce a new arrival at the boatyard. On the day of the flip, my brother had brought me nine duck eggs that had been abandoned in his front yard. I happened to have a hen that was looking to sit on eggs, so it was a bit of serendipity. About a week ago, our Jersey black giant hen Nicole hatched three of them. Mother and babies are doing well and the little ones are at the peak of their cuteness right now. Here's some pictures to oh and ah over. They took to swimming around in their waterer until that water ran out so they have a little pond now.
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She's Over

The flip was a complete success. Not only did the boat get on it's keel for the first time, but there were no injuries (it was close for a bit there) and everyone had a great time.

It started out as an extremely rainy day. Over an inch had already fallen from dawn until people started showing up. We had started out inviting only a couple of people, just for muscle to turn the boat. Once word got out about this once in a lifetime (for most people) event, it quickly bloomed into a Friday night barbecue with about 40 people coming. Good thing I had fixed the tree house because it had whole bunch of kids in it the entire evening.

The ceremony was supposed to start at around 6:30 but like everything else in this project there were delays. The main one was that we had to feed everyone first. 20 lbs of sausage and hot dogs later, we got started at around 7:30.

We started with a safety brief for everyone, which like most safety meetings no one took seriously. The then the entire crowd gathered in the boat shed. It was a good thing we enlarged it because it was jam packed. Mercifully, the rain had been coming down fairly straight so it was dry in the shed.


I decided that since this was the first time she would be on her keel to make this the keel laying ceremony. The first part of this was the laying of coins on the keel for good luck. In a ship, the weight of the ship would drive the coins into the wood and make them a permanent part of the keel. In this case we used super glue. Each of my daughters placed a gold coin just behind the false stem (see pic). Then I said a few words of thanks and dedication. Then I threw out everyone who wasn't going to lift.

I gave the lifting crew some instructions on what we were going to do.

The boat was lifted off the jig and shifted to starboard

Then it was lifted up

And Up

And up until she was all the way on her side.

Then we shifted it over on the jig as far as possible.

Then the hard part came as we started to lower her down onto the cradle. Those orange straps you can see around the boat's waist in earlier pictures are ratchet straps that were only the safetys. The cradle was mostly strapped down with 1/2 in. nylon braid through screw eyes that connected to the 2X3s that I had screwed into the frames near the sheer

Then it got a little dicey. I didn't make it quite clear to everyone that once it started coming down there was no need to actively lift, only to prevent it from falling too fast. As a result the lifters in the back continued to do exactly what I had told them to do, lift. Meanwhile, I had left my position at the bow to help lower it down and so took away the counter force which caused her to dip in the bow as you can see in the picture.

This dip caused all the weight of the boat to momentarily rest on one 2X4 in the middle of the jig. It was very dicey, and would have resulted in crushing everyone there under the boat, as my brother has been telling me since it happened. As luck would have it, it held and we managed to get her down without incident.

Here's a group shot of a good many of the people who helped flip the boat. There was about half this many more around that missed the shot. To everyone who helped out this weekend, my heartfelt thanks. It would never have been so easy to do without you, and you all turned the event from a chore I was dreading into a really great time.

And the end result was perfect. Now onto the deck.

Ready To Flip

Well almost. The bottom needs another coat which it will get today. Other than that we're ready. Here's a pic.

As you can see, the boat house has also been enlarged by about 5 feet. I did this by extending the roofline on one side. You might be able to tell from the picture that the right side is slightly shorter than the left. Earl and I went though a bunch of different options on how to enlarge the space before settling on this. I have to say that it has worked out quite well so far, but we haven't had too much wind yet so that aspect is yet to be tested. It certainly is a lot airier which counts for a lot in the late afternoon when the sun gets in it. We marked several 100+ degree days inside this month prior to the expansion. Now we have plenty of space for putting the deck on.
You can see the fliping cradle to the left as well. It has eight pads covered with the prettiest pink carpet. It's built to support the widest part of the boat as it goes over, that way the boat never really touches anything. Once the last coat of paint goes on, the cradle will get strapped down to the boat. It will also serve to level the boat once it's flipped since the building jig is a little worse for wear. While it was fine for supporting the boat it didn't take to well to the extra weight of yours truly as well. I'm not that concerned about it breaking up, but I'm not that confident that it won't either. Either way, the cradle becomes the new jig and once it's turned over we'll use it to level the works before the deck goes on.
Here's a view from the back. We had some dissappointment with the paint we were using. My traditional boat paint was Siperstein's house paint, a truly awesome alkyd enamel. Well, they closed their factory last year and no longer make it and I didn't have enough around to cover the boat, so I had to switch brands. I went to MAB, which has a store near by, and got some primer and an alkyd enamel. The primer performed so poorly ( we sanded a lot of it off) that I'm no not going to use the enamel either. Instead, I went to Sipersteins and got some Zinnzer primer and a Pratt & Lambert enamel. The primer was great, as always, and the enamel works just fine, even though it's formulated for metal. I like to use alkyd paints for the boat because it has a lot more give to it than the urethane or epoxy paints. Sipersteins use to make a monopoxy paint that was better but...see above.

With some time on my hands watching the paint dry, other long neglected projects are now getting done. The "tree" house has been repaired at long last after having been damaged by a falling bit of timber last fall. I had accidentally dropped a 40' mulberry tree on it. Remarkably, even though it was a direct hit, the only thing that was really damaged was the upstairs railing. Well, we replaced that this week with some plywoood. This has provided an excelent opportunity for me to teach Eleanor the rudiments of painting and she's progressing quite well. She's gone from brush killer to rank amature in only a day. I know some adults that have never progressed past the former. Maybe she'll one day be up there with her old man as a true Paint Nazi. Oh, the towhead on the swing is Katherine, engaging in her new passion, making herself dizzy.

Well, the flipping is on Friday so I won't be posting again until then. Wish us luck.

Paying the Devil

Yar! For you landlubbers, paying the devil is a seaman's way of saying caulking between the keel and the garboard strake, and that's just what I was doing today. And while you may caulk with some chemical mastic, I was paying out my seams with cotton wick, a home made mallet and my caulking irons. Larger seams would require oakum, but my seams are as tight as a... well no need for that kind of salty language.

Here are the pictures I promised yesterday. I had them but was too busy to post them.
This is the port side looking aft. Its a terrible picture but it shows the dead straight sides. This is perhaps the oddest feature of the boat but it was a design necessity. I needed the full width at the chine for adequite displacement but I couldn't cant the side out any because the deck needs to extend another 1-1/2 feet out from the sheerline to accomodate the paddle wheels and if the sides did come out any, the boat would never fit out of the back yard. Then I'd have to install a bathtub and fireplace like Landsailor Dave at Traders Cove.

This one is from the starboard quarter looking forward. For some reason it looks a lot bigger from this perspective. Maybe because you can't really see the tapered bow. You can also see the leading edge of the skeg I finally got around to making the other day. You can kind of see that it matches the height of the bow. This is actually a design feature I put in to protect the wheels from grounding. The wheels will reach down to the bottom of the keel amidships. The bow and skeg are both 2-1/2 in. higher (or deeper) than that so even if both are grounded most of the weight will be carried by the keel and not the wheels. Why not just shorten the wheels? It's that whole displacement problem again, except this time it had to do with the height of the boat and where the center of the weight of the boiler would be. Suffice to say, everything is where it is for a reason.

This one is of the skeg. That the piece that is standing proud of the keel back there. Its designed as a sacrificial piece that can be replaced if need be. You can also get a good look at how the stern curves up. It's actually a fairly tight radius and took quite a bit of steaming to get the planks to lay in like that. Its designed like this to make the boat a bit "sucky" in the rear in order to put more water over the rudder, which is fairly small. The idea is that ole bernoulli will pull the stern down a bit into the water while she's in motion and pull the water up a bit as well, giving me an artificially high waterline over the rudder. I don't know if this is sound naval architecture but that's how it plays out in my head. It will eat up some power, but we're not looking to set speed records here.

This last pic is the false stem I installed the other day. I should have taken it further up the bow so that you could see how it bends over the keel. Those bums are the plugs that haven't been sawn off yet. This is one of the few pieces that have gone on exactly as I imagined it would. It's main purpose is to hide the end of the side planks as you can see here, but its also a sacrificial piece for the stem so that if there's ever a collision with something harder than the boat, that piece is a lot easier to replace than the stem and fore keel.

That's it for today. Tomorrow I'll finish paying the seams and then it's painting time. We should be ready to flip this weekend. Keep your finger's crossed.

The Tribute Post

Well, the sides are now fully planked out and we finished plugging them today. I'll post pictures tomorrow but I'd like to take this moment to pause for a tribute to all of the people who made this project possible so far.

The reason for this trip down memory lane is the overwhelming feeling of nostalgia that came over me at the sight of the freshly plugged hull the other day. Doing the sides today brought it back just a clearly so I figured it was a sign that it was time to write this post.

The first name to be mentioned is George Orsi, who was my sailing instructor when I was about 9 years old. He's first because he took me, and a few others in our class, on a trip to Beaton Boats in Mantaloking, NJ. For those who don't know, Beaton's is a place on Barnegat Bay where wooden boats are built, restored, kept, etc. The nostalgia at seeing a freshly plugged boat takes me back to that trip where I first saw such a thing. I had been around boats for most of my life up to that point, but to see one actually being made for the first time made quite an impression on me and I have to say, started me in my life of things nautical. Mr. Orsi also imparted a lot of other sea lore, like navigation and some marlinspike and his teaching has served as the foundation for my nautical knowledge ever since.

Now for a rogues gallery of others who have contributed to my delinquency:

My uncle, Bernie Sobon, a true craftsman, who not only imparted key nuggets of wisdom over the years but has also contibuted in no small way to my tool chest.

My old boss, Larry Ellis, at USMI for giving me the chance to learn how to make some really great boats.

Also at USMI, Bryant Bernhard, once chief engineer, now president, for teaching me the basics of naval architecture (although he might deny it if he saw this boat), and for that matter all of the guys on the shop floor there, especially Karl LaBouve (who works for the US Gov., not USMI) for being patient with the young yankee so that he could keep his job and keep learning the ropes from them.

My great friend, Chris Chadwick and his father Jack, who kept me in sailing and boats when I could have drifted off to learn to smoke dope under the boardwalk. Instead, Chris and I learned the maximum amount of beer an A-Cat's crew could drink during one race (13.5 cases).

Also, Richard Switlik Sr., my wife's grandfather, who lent me one of his row boats so that I could teach myself the basics of wooden boat repair. It probably didn't mean anything to him, but it meant a lot to me.

Their names are too numerous to list here, but honorable mention to most of the guys on the SPYC Saturday morning tow. I'm not sure if I learned much beyond some salty language and a few local tactics, but it was a formative experience in my boating life. Sort of my two years before the mast.

This list wouldn't be complete without a mention of my mother, Eleanor Welch, and not just because I wouldn't hear the end of it if I didn't include her. It was her infinite patience with the meriad junk boats, cars, bags of tools, cans of paint and beer at her house in Seaside that enabled my brother and I to indulge our strange obsessions.

Of penultimate importance is my brother in law, Greg "Earl" Switlik, who has been not only a source of cheap labor, but a great sounding board for my ideas on how to fix things that I've screwed up the first time, a source of those ideas, and that indispensable set of extra hands that no boat gets built without.

The most important of course is my wife Kassia, who let me build the boat shed in our tiny back yard between my chicken coop and bee hive. I think that sums up the latitude that I have been given in taking on this, and all my other wacky projects.

There are quite a few other people who deserve to be on this list, and if you don't see your name here but you think you deserve a mention it's probably missing because your contribution would require too much space to explain fully.

In the future, I plan to post a list of people who have actively thwarted my efforts to date but I may run out of server space on that one.

Pictures tomorrow.

A Milestone, not just a millstone.

At long last I've reached one important milestone. The bottom is fully planked. This was acheived at about 4 this afternoon. After I drove in the last screw, the Earl and I to a moment to have a celebratory beer. Then we went right back to work.

Here's some pictures of the finished bottom.



As you can see the clear oak is quite fetching but it's not quite good enough to keep bright so it will get a coat of white paint like everything else. Some of the wood on the topsides I plan to keep bright. Actually just oiled since varnish tends to go bad too quickly and I don't have the facilities to do it right.

And here's a view of the stern.



It's hard to get a good angle in the shed of the aft parts but they really came out much nicer than I had expected. I also promised pictures of the bull nose. You can sort of see them in the second picture above but here's a close up of the port side. You can click to enlarge it. As you can see by the lines, there are 5 layers of 4/4 oak put together then shaped down. Its hard to tell from the 2d picture but there is a lot of curviness to that area and there was no way I was going to get 1/2 inch oak to fit in. On my next boat (don't tell my wife!) I'm going to pay a lot closer attention to the design of the bow. I've learned a lot about what wood will and won't do, and just because I can make a pretty curve work on paper... you get the idea.

There were a few other pictures in this series that had some good shot that Earl took. Alas, they also contained images of my bloated corpus and so were not fit for publication. I take enough mock on my work, I don't need you all to be casting aspersions upon me personally as well. That's my family's job anyway.

Good news at Last.

I apologize for not posting in some time, and am sure after my last post many of you might have thought that I'd never post again and would be enjoying a roaring bonfire in the yard as what was once my steam boat dream went up in smoke. But for you fans out there, be of good cheer, progress, and substantial progress at that, has finally been made. If things go well, and I have no reason at this juncture to expect otherwise, the bottom of the boat will be done in the next few days. And when I say done, I mean planked, primed, caulked and painted. I mean flip ready.

When we last left off, I was just about to bend on the new chine logs after a complete rebuild of the bow. That was successfully done. I had enough eucalyptus left to complete the bendy parts and I used a nice piece of 5/4 white oak for the straight part amidships.

Now when I redesigned the bow, I gave up a lot of curviness that I really liked, but was not quite skilled enough to pull off. What I didn't give up was the sharp radius where the keel meets the stem. The front of the boat is very nearly vertical and turns to horizontal around a ten inch radius. I really like it, but no matter how I tried to manage it, I couldn't get the wood to be bendy enough to fit it. I realize now that had I designed the keel slightly differently it would have worked nicely. I kind of knew it when I was first putting it together but of course I was too cheap and tried to do it with the least amount of wood. 17.5 board feet of white oak in the burn box latter... well that's where I was. So instead of bringing the planks to the bow, after consulting with the Earl, I decided to bring the bow to the planks. using some 4/4 and 8/4 oak scraps I had, I epoxied up two bull noses that I then shaped to fit the bow as I wanted it. (The Earl actually did most of the shaping) Then I cut a notch in the rear of them for the planks to mate into. I'll take pictures when I get a chance. The end result is I get to keep my shape and the planks get to not bend in unnatural ways.

Wait a minute, you say, what's all this about planks?! The last we heard you has said plywood! Yes I had said that, but that was before I had actually priced it out. A sheet of 1/2 in. marine plywood goes for about $70 a sheet. That's nearly $2 per square foot. The bottom alone is about 90 square feet. $180 dollars in plywood, right? It would be if the boat was square and flat and had sides in multiples of 4. But a boat is non of those things, at least no boat I would want to build, and so there is some waste where the wood is cut to match the shape of the boat. Quite a bit a waste actually. It would have taken 6 sheets to to the bottom alone. That's $420 right there. Then I would need to seal it up with fiberglass and resin and that stuff is far from inexpensive. All told it would have been nearly $800 just to do the bottom, forget about the sides and the deck! So I found a supply of 1/2 inch clear oak (red this time) for pretty cheap, and it turns out to be a lot let expensive to do it that way. Actually about half the price. As some of you may realize, I had originally planned to plank it in oak, but I had gone away from it because, yep you guessed it, I was too cheap. Several hundred dollars in the burn pile latter...

So good news so far. A little behind schedule and slightly over budget but I'm planning to make it up. I have a new boiler design that will not only make it easier to build but be cheaper too. I wonder how long it will take for me to learn my lesson this time. Until then...

Failure - Utter, Complete and Abject

It seems that the hubris of my last post (not to mention by off-blog comments) drew the ire of the gods. Since that post, the Earl and I planked half of the boat. That took about seven days of work. Then we got to work taking it all off. That took about three hours. Then we took the two forward frames off and took them apart. That took about 30 minutes. So after three months of labor and materials, I've gotten exactly nowhere.

That's not exactly true, but it sure looks that way. Or at least did for a few days. How did it come to this, you ask? How did so many work so much to achieve so little. This story goes back a ways so you better be sitting down.

In fact it goes already back to the fool who designed the damn thing. Its like the moron didn't know the first thing about naval architecture, and as that moron, I can attest to that fact. The first thing I didn't know was, well everything. Actually, the design wasn't all that bad. On a larger boat it probably would have worked with a little more care in the construction, but on that small frame, oh, not so much. The one thing a certainly didn't know was how wood bends and behaves when bent. If this was composite construction it would be now problem, but the curves that made the design good were totally unpractical with carvel planking. While the curves looked great in my mind's eye, the wood had it's own ideas. Remember learning conic sections in high school (or on your own if you went to a cess pool like mine). Apparently that place you use them is wooden boat design. Something to keep in mind.

After the design comes the lofting. Now every book or site on boat building is about half full of details on this critical step. They all go on and on about how crucial it is, how you should spend more time lofting than building, blah blah blah. That's why I felt confident in doing almost none of it. I had the picture of what it should be in my head. I mean, I designed the damn thing. Wasn't that enough? Apparently not. As usual with these kind of things, there are all of these little things that add up, in my case to disaster. Could I have avoided all of them with lofting, no, of course not, only about 99% of them.

The next place that things went wrong was the total lack of skill of the builder. I mean, this guy couldn't shape his way out of a paper bag. Well at least I couldn't when I put the frames together. Well, most of it was a fine enough job except the most crucial curves on the boat, frames 9, 10 and 11. These are the forward frames that give (gave) the boat shape. In hind sight, these frames should have been the same to the millimeter. I should have cut them from the same piece of wood and the split them. It turns out that close to the nearest 1/2 in. doesn't cut it. Unlike plastic, wood is not a very forgiving medium. A quarter inch difference in position on frame 9 was the ruination of weeks of work.

Finally (for this post at least) comes the selection of building materials and methods. Both choices were poor ones. First the method, carvel planking. Never having done it, and eschewing reading anything about it, I of course imagined it to be easy. Take some wood, steam it soft, screw it on, repeat, ?, Profit! I'm no stitch and glue man, not even lapstrake was good enough for me. I had to go right for the most demanding. And not only that, but with my own untried amature design! And my choice of materials was even less informed. Douglass fir is a fine boat building lumber I'm sure, if it's carefully selected and cured. Not mine, oh no! Only randomly sellected sodden heat wood from the Home Depot remainder bin was good enough. I was going to finally get one over on the man! What a disaster. They all looked great going on. That stuff bent like a dream. Of course, once it began to dry out it shrank some 20% of what it was leaving huge gaps in previously tight seems. To top it off, just about every board developed surface cracks that reached about halfway through the plank.

So is this the end of the Trenton steam boat industry. No, of course not. In my life, failure of this magnitude barely even registers. I know for some it would be a crushing blow, but for me, eh, just another day. So what's next? Well the forward frames are already rebuild, I'll be bending the new chine logs on in about an hour (steam's on as I write) and its all moving forward. Of course, compromises must be made. We're going with plywood planking and that nifty clipper bow is being reworked a bit to acommodate the plywood. Other than that, it must go on. I'll post pictures and the new drawings soon.

Walking The Planks

Who would have thought that superimposing square ridgid boards onto a constantly curving surface would be so much work?! I mean, just because nothing is straight, and the things that are curved change their shape as other things are put on them, and the designer obviously had only a loosely theoretical understanding of boat construction when he laid down the lines, that shouldn't mean that it should take two days to get two boards in place. Yet that's how long it took us. And by us I mean three of us, BiL Earl, nephew Chris and myself.

It didn't really take two days to get them in place, but it took us that long to figure out to put them there. If only I had read the books that I had bought. Although, in retrospect it wouldn't have done any good as the books I have are geared to sail boat designs and I'm building a classic power boat hull. No, this was a case where I had to waste some wood and time figuring it out by myself. Now that I see how to do it I'm anxious to start in earnest.

Here's some pictures of what's been happening in the boat shed.

This first one shows the first true plank to be put on. It's hard to tell from this picture but it twists from vertical to near horizontal over a span of about 5 ft. It also has some funky carving on the inboard side to make it mate flush to the keel. It wasn't like I could just run it through a joiner at an angle to get it. It was all hand sawn and planed. Also you might notice that the very bow is slightly different. I previously had a rather monumental piece of work up there holding it all together and had some rather fanciful ideas on how wood might bend around it. It turned out to be both impraticable and unnecessary. As with nost of the design, I'm finding that a lot if it is wildly over built. So I took it off and replaced it with a simple sawn knee. The curve of the hull, at least at the garboard strake, looks a lot better.
You'll also notice the three strips of planking on the outboard sides. Those are there for now and where kind of a test before I had really figured out how to plank the damn thing. We'll see if they stay.

This next one shows the garboard strake on the other (starboard) side of the boat. This one was cut from a 16' 2X8 that had knots in all the right places. For the smaller pieces, I take dimensional lumber (2X6s mostly) and cut in in half for two 3/4 in thick pieces. In this case, it was too wide to reliably run through the band saw, so after cutting it to size we ran it through the planer a few times and created a pile of chips about as high as my three year old. Then it was too long for the steam box so I had to cut 6 inches off to make it fit. In the end it's a true work of art. You might notice a pile of thin strips to the right of the picture. Those are reference battens. I'm using them to fit in the planks. Its a somewhat convoluted process I'm not going to take the time to explain here. I'll share if someone brings it up in the comments. Anyway, in both pics you can see the Earl fooling with something at the stern. What could it be?

Why it's the keel and skeg! I hadn't really thought about putting them on this soon since I planned to do as most boat building information tells you and plank from the outside in. Since I'm now going the other way with all that, it turns out I needed it now. So there it is. I've been saving some choice pieces of oak for the job and it went on as I had designed. One interesting note: to fit the curve of the keel to the curve of the skeg I used my own variation of a technique I saw as a kid. When I saw it is was carpenters putting a scarf joint into some beams for a house. It involves running a draw saw between the two pieces of wood as a slight pressure is used on them. Not enough to stick the saw but enough for the saw to bite the extra between the gaps. It worked a lot better than fitting, marking and sanding the two pieces. Not good enough for inlay work but close enough for a home made wood boat. Anyway, here's BiL putting the nuts on the threadded rod that holds the skeg to the keel.

Tomorrow's a big planking day (took today off to go to the zoo). Also, I'm in an eating contest. So little to do, so much time! Wait...