Another lazy day - apart from some reading around on MIK's site, downloading and printing the PDF that he links to on this page on surface preparation of and adhesion of glues to wood, some desultory and inconclusive poking about in the wood stack for better centrecase bottom cleats, more conclusive poking about for the front side deck support cleats which I'd found that I'd forgotten about when I was browsing through the manual yesterday, and a bit of planing of the BT's lower cleat (by about 3 mm).

I only spent about 10 minutes with the wood selection and the planing altogether - and that included chocking the side of the boat on the "lee" side of the plane's direction. Used the cast iron rollers, last seen in the failed attempt to squash the forward end of the splintered side panel flat. Plane is nice and sharp: the oregon zipped off nicely.

I wasn't well enough to risk continuing longer than I did: most of the bad mistakes that I have made on Wood Duck recently have occurred when I have gone on too long in one session, been feeling unwell and/or tired, and/or lost concentration. So perhaps it's a good sign that I've been able to call a halt for once, before pear-shaped things started happening.

Had a look at MIK's latest Flickr photo-set - puddleducks at Goolwa - and got horribly homesick! I think it was the sight of the big sand dunes and the huge sky <sigh>. I really miss them...

I also made a "final" decision today about which way round I'm going to nail the bottom down. Because of this and the mostly boring nature of the plywood's grain, however, it will mean departing from The Designer's orders, by starting fitting of the bottom sheet at the stern, instead of at the bow. If I start at the bow, the majority of the only really interesting bit of the sheet will be cut off!

If the sheet is square, which it appears to be, this shouldn't be a problem as far as I can see - no doubt MIK will let me know if it is! If I stick to the instructions I will end up with a very boring "floor" - the other side of the sheet is even more boring! It is poplar, after all. I had always intended to trim the bottom to length off the boat anyway, so the overhang of the bow won't be getting in the way of the jigsaw blade (eeek!).

I noticed the other day that both the cockpit bulkhead and the bow transom are bowed inwards somewhat at the centre (I haven't measured the offsets yet yet), but this should get sorted by installing the mast step (and later the partner) runners. I'll also take MIK's advice and temporarily install the foredeck once I've planed down the cleats on the upper forward hull to stiffen things up a bit while moving the boat about. This will also help with the line of the CB. The glue on the bulkhead joints has pretty well cured, but it (the boat) certainly does wobble about! I'm starting to wonder if the glue will get brittle and start cracking, if I leave it too long before I get the hull stabilised.

Howdy Alex,

You can start either way round ... no reason why not. Whichever end you start with can be squared up with the end of the sheet.

MIK

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Howdy MIK,

Excellent! Thanks for that :)))).

Cheers,
Alex.

Well, almost another milestone, girls and boys :).

I spent some time this morning wearing out my shoulder using the plane on the bow transom cleat (and tripping over the boat, aaargh: boat fortunately OK, I'm still limping a bit and mopping up the cuts and grazes...).

On the way to the doctor's (re the snout, not the cuts!), I remembered one of MIK's writings, bless him, wherein was comment on using a belt sander to take gunwales(?) down quickly. Once home, I popped a new 40 grit belt on the sander, and zap! Not quite as quick as that, but much faster than the plane, even if a rather crude and lazy method. The joinst won't be visible anyway :). I took the stern and bow cleats down to just above the ply, then worked down (a lot!) more slowly with the Permagrit block.

I've got the bow done, and am sanding assiduously away at the stern. This means that I will be able to go 3D "offcially" possibly some time within the next 24 hours. Yay! Well, once I've trimmed the bottom ply and temporarily screwed it down and taken some photos to convince Mr Routh. More later with photos, I hope.

Milestone almost reached! Bottom very carefully lined up on the stern (the most accurately square part of the boat as it turns out); bottom screwed on; pictures taken; excess sheet at front marked; jigsaw set up with fence; bottom taken off and turned over; fence adjusted; excess cut off; bottom turned back over; bottom screwed back on its "registration" position; more photos taken; boat turned on its side and photos taken for Shorty Routh.

I played about with some of the larger bits such as tank side and side deck, and foredeck after dinner. The grain on the Europly shows up much better in the photos than it does in real life.

Photos:

1. Planing started. I always rest my planes on their sides when not using them. I think I was taught this in Woodwork at high school





2. More curly bits...





3. Lots more curly bits. I eventually got tired of this and grabbed the belt sander... Just before this photo was taken I tripped over the boat (boat unharmed, I wasn't). The plane got dismantled to check it for damage - it was OK too





4. The belt sander with 40 grit belt cut down the cleat quick smart!





5. Port side of bow: cleat taken to final level with Permagrit block





6. Starboard bow, bottom edge complete. Lots of dust from the belt sander's activities! Note the ding from the plane (on the right). Paulwonia is quite soft





7. Port side of stern, trimming complete





8. The first bottom screw in place: the sheet wasn't in quite the right position so the screw was repositioned after the sheet was moved...





9. Stern very carefully aligned: this took at least 10 minutes ;). Not much sanding to do at this end of the sheet





10. Bottom fixed in place: 15 screws all up. Front of bottom untrimmed





11. Bottom refitted after trimming: looks a whole lot different, suddenly :). Offcut for frame 1 parts, etc. lying on top





12. Here she is - 3D! I hope Mr Routh accepts this photo :). Note that the grain is much more prominent here that in real life. The whole sheet is a very light off-white with darker patches. Interesting to see what the resin does to this, colourwise. Note the streamers hanging off the bow: well, they're shavings, really, but it does look festive - somewhat approriate, I feel :)





Well, I'm off to email Mr Routh now, and see what he says.

Well done Alex, I'm pretty exhausted keeping up with the build, please promise me she will stay in 3D, could not cope with the stress otherwise!

Congratulations

Brian

Hi Brian,

Thank you for your support and kind remarks :). I fully intend to keep her 3D from now on, apart from having to get the bottom off again to fit the mast step runners - and even then it's still 3D, just not floatable ;). The PD Racer rules as I believe they are at present are that "3D" is when the bottom goes on - it doesn't have to be glued down, as - in theory! - the boat can "be wrapped in plastic an put in the water" - although who woould want to risk that I don't know! Better to put the time into making the craft actually water-tight!

I'll have to go and have a look and see what marvels Chris is up to now :).

Cheers,
Alex.

Howdy MIK,

I emailed Shorty with the details last night :))))). Even if Shorty knocks me back this time, I feel as though I have passed a considerable milestone in the build :).

Thanks for the kind support from you, AJ, Mike C, Brian, Cliff, MAM and Nick, that has got me to this point!

It was in the back of my mind that I would be close to the 300 number - rather silly really, seeing that one is building a boat to sail in, not to get a particular hull number ;). Human nature, I suppose...

I'm working on getting the foredeck temporarily nailed down today.

Cheers,
Alex.

Wasn't feeling up to fastening down the foredeck by the time I'd finished the lowering of the cleats, but I did do a quick "mock-up" of the decks to make me feel a bit better. I didn't use the belt sander, as I didn't want to make a mistake that I would be regretting for the life of the boat, i.e., gouging the bow or cockpit bulkhead. Why patch something when you don't need to?

I ended up doing almost exactly what I'd planned to do today, although I was hoping to have got a bit more done. I did set up the belt-sander in its "bench mode" this evening, photos of that tomorrow. The sander gets turned into - a bench linisher of sorts, which I will try out tomorrow on the mast step runners, perhaps.

Still waiting impatiently for a reply from Mr Routh - maybe he went away for Easter and isn't back yet ;).

Photos:

1. Wood Duck chocked up on the floor, prior to dealing with the forward upper cleats. I haven't tackled those glue patches on the far side panel yet, but I will. Really Soon Now ;). A 20 kg bag of blue metal left over from the concreting job is acting as a useful chock





2. The cockpit bulkhead cap strip was way too big, as I knew at the time - but see photos 9 and 10 below for further comments about this!





3. Protool jigsaw and fence, along with a very sharp "plywood" Bosch blade, made a nice neat cut along the cap strip. The blade was still sharp even after cutting out all of the ply parts of Wood Duck





4. Front part of cap strip sawn off and lying on bottom of boat. I put the offcut back into stock - waste not, want not...





5. Side/end view of cap strip after its lateral trim: next step was to chop it down somewhat. It looks somewhat lop-sided here, but that's the result of the camera angle. No, really, it is! Hmmm...on closer inspection of this photo, it looks as though the sheer clamp is a bit below the top of the side panel. At this point it was meant to be either right on the line or a bit above it, ecpending on which side it is. I am going to have to check this out as it may mean changing the way that I do the final trim of the sheer clamps before gluieng the decking on...





6. Starting to make a gap to insert the jigsaw blade for lowering the caps strip. Slots were cut with the Z-saw, and a line for trimming down to was drawn on with help of the heavy duty straight edge (I erred on the much-too-high side when cutting). Had to move quite a way into the piece to miss the handle of the jigsaw, and then had to turn around and cut back as far as I could to remove this bit. I knocked out the small bits using a sharp chisel, hammer and small cuts





7. Two little "ears" were left that the jigsaw blade couldn't reach: the jigsaw's shoe plate got in the way. The other "ear" is not visible here as it was on the other side of the boat ;)





8. Cutting off one of the cap strip "ears" with a flush-cut saw: my one and only Veritas tool, because it has been the only one that I have been able to justify spending the money on! Having said that, it is a great little tool. I usually try to buy tools in the mid range - not dirt cheap, and not insanely expensive. As I like to say, "there's no such thing as a cheap tool", which is a modification of Robert E. Heinlein's famous quote about free lunches, so I can't really take too much credit for it





9. CB cap strip cut back - overview. Most of the excess removed by the jigsaw and flush-cut saw. Still took a while with the plane and the Permagrit block, though. In fact, there was very little of the original piece of timber left. If the CB had been installed a couple of mm higher, as it should have been, then this strip would not have been necessary at all. I can blame the misalignment on crawling about on the ground ;)





10. Ready for the final work with plane and Permagrit block. It took a lot longer than I expected, because there was almost no need for the strip: in fact, there would have been none at all if I had done my glueing right. And as I will no doubt be told, I could have got away with it by using a bit of extra glue ;). I hadn't quite embraced that aspect of glueing at that stage: I am much more amenable to it now!





11. Ready to trial-fit the foredeck. I appear to have got a lot of fine dust inside the camera lens as well as all over the boat, oh dear...





12. Mock-up of the decking: the side decks are in the approximately correct positions - supported by foredeck instead of cleats. The latter are yet to be installed. This is probably pretty well going to be the way that these bits end up getting installed. It's a pity that one side of the sheets was so different from the other three... What's the bottle of cyanoacrylate doing at the bottom of the photo?



My wife's comment on seeing this set-up was "Those decks look a bit flimsy" ;).


The CA is going to be used for a non-structural (more-or-less cosmetic) purpose, which I will tell you about if it works. Or if it doesn't ;).

Next task is the completion of the mast step runners and mast step assembly. I have a cunning plan for the runners, which I will also detail later.

Back to waiting impatiently for Mr Routh's PDR lottery announcement - I know for sure (from some quiet spying on the pdracer forum ;) that it's not going to be # 300, though: it's more likely to be within the range of 301 - 303 (the latter is not a good number for a duck!).

Nothing much to report - a very laid-back day on the boat front, although I marked out and cut the mast step runners, drilled the hole for the 10 mm step bolt, and marked out to screw the two steps together for trimming. And temporarily screwed the foredeck on after chocking the boat out of twist.

Photos tomorrow if I've stop sneezing!

Howdy Folks,

I just heard back from Shorty: Wood Duck's hull number is 303, as partially predicted (it was at the end of my suggested range).

Its coincidence with the Browning calibre aside, it's a nice number. Anyway, I can go ahead and scratch it into the fore bouyancy tank now :).

Photos from yesterday:

1. Foredeck fastened in actual position. The angles between the forward sheer clamp and the cockpit bulkhead on the one hand, and between the starboard and rear edges of the foredeck (the sheet corner in fact), are both 90 degrees, i.e., they both match. Even better, the port edges of CB and FD both match. too :).





2. Mast step runners trimmed to shape: oversize as it turned out, so I used the Permagrit block on two 3.6 mm ply jacking pieces, to sand the ends identically up to the the line.





3. Close-up of trimming. Note that the cut is not in the wrong place: the piece of timber is around 48 mm wide (this was allowed for when marking out)





4. Getting the mast step runners normal to the drill bit - and allowing for the tape so that the square didn't rock backwards!





5. Mast step bolt holes both drilled out. The darker shavings are from a piece of plywood (see comment for photo 6).





6. Screw positions marked in, one for each side, located in waste areas. These are so that I can lock the two pieces of timber together for straightening out the upper edge of the the front end of the top runner so that it matches the one below it. The screw holes will be pre-drilled 3 mm diameter to prevent the vulnerable grain splitting (see also comment below). This set-up will also allow me to trim the pieces to 45 mm width, which will save time on planing. The downside is pulling the storage bench apart to use the table saw. Note the nice clean hole produced by the nice sharp wood-boring bit :). A piece of scap plywood underneath assisted a nice clean drill exit.



A comment on the grain direction: the runners are really going to need the mandatory ply patches, since the runners are going to be really vulnerable to splitting from mast shock loads. I'm going to laminate two pieces of 3 mm 7-lamination birch A/C ply for the purpose (I don't have any 6 mm ply: I used 3 laminations for the firewall bulkhead of the 1:4.5-scale P-40 E that can be seen in its building jig in the background of many photos). This should fix the problem - I wouldn't trust the 6 mm poplar Europly for this task: it is way to soft, even with an epoxy coating. As it is, I am going to apply a layer of lightweight, or even 150 gsm (4 oz), woven glass cloth over the outside of the patches and onto the tops (not the insides!) of the runners, for extra safety. Unfortunately, none of the oregon that I have available for the runners (step or partner) has grain in a vertical orientation wrt the bolt. Jarrah is just a tad too heavy ;).

An unusually small number of photos for me :). More adjustments for for the mast step today, plus fitting, I hope - worked around doctor's appointments, etc. I'll use the large ratchet clamps set in spreader mode to set the CB and BT at the correct distances and at the same time get rid of the bow in each!

Alex,
I have to say your attention to detail is exquisite. When I drilled the hole for the mast step bolt it was with a cordless drill, eyeballed the alignment....then prayed

Mike

Hi Mike,

Why thank you :). Been there, done that, bought the t-shirt, etc. ;).

BTW, I put in a plug for you guys, your help and the forum on the pdracer forum when I got the hull number. I thought it only fair! You chaps saved me from giving up on several occasions so far :).

Cheers,
Alex.