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.