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.
.