Thread: The Northstar GIS Build

Can I just order a sail from Duckworks or do I need to construct the spars first and measure for deflection? How important is that? I'm not going to be racing, I'm going to be knocking about having fun and trying to come home dry. I'm a good swimmer but I have no interest in dunking in 12 C water. I want to order as soon as possible because of the wait to get the sail. I'm on my 90 day target now so want the sail here when the hull is ready to go. I need the "motor" to make the boat go.

The Duckworks sail is fine.

There are other alternatives, but It is one of the good ones.

Michael

The sail is ordered. Given the lead time, I should have the hull ready by the time it gets here.


For those of you in the USA, if you live near a Mennard's they currently have an 11% off of everything in the store. We bought almost all of the rest of our lumber today.

Speaking of which, we bought one board that was a beautiful clear, straight grained wood that was labeled plantation grown and imported from New Zealand. I was blown away. From what I have been able to read, I thought it was too heavy to be Hoop Pine. The grain and color look like a type of pine. It looks to be hard and strong. What do I have here?

It is radiata (I'm sure there must be another name to go with that). It is also known as Monterrey Pine and it is nice to work with. I built my GIS mast with it.

Radiata is almost a swear word in Australia - it is the lowest construction grade, Australians being lazy sods (or at least the ones involved in making decisions about big scale forestry) and not thinking for a moment that they can make more money out of clear, well managed timber.

The names for it here in Oz are pretty damning. Pinus Crapiata, Pinus Twistus

New Zealand often has had a nice line of Radiata - clear boards. A few decades ago it was a sought after board inside New Zealand for use in planked racing boats - very fine grained, clear. And they can export at sawn timber prices rather than near woodchip prices. That's foresignt, planning, investment to get real return!

It will be perfect for the mast if reasonably fine grained and clear.

Michael.

I built my square box-sectioned mast from Pinus Radiata imported from NZ available at Home Depot. My chinelogs too. Nothing broke in my 20 minutes of light wind sailing last fall.

"Pinus"... I knew there was another part of the name... Thanks, Dave!

Wish I had known that earlier, it is 2/3 the price of Oregon. Beautiful lumber so if it isn't liked in Austrialia, must be the way they are managing it. I'm hoping to have a big day today. I want to cut most if not all of the plywood.

I'm having a terrible time replying to this thread. I get things typed up and it just freezes. This is four times in a row.

Well, I didn't get all of it but I got a long way. I have to plane the two hull panels and trace around them and cut. Then, I have to redo the bow section of the bottom and the bulkheads that go on that sheet and I'm pretty much done. Next up is to start gluing up bulkheads, chine longs ect. I need the weather to warm up so I can start glueing things together. I have a limited supply of the cold weather epoxy and that is probably going to the foils so I can start work on them. I intend to pre-finish the panels as much as I can. Sanding and painting standing on your head has limited apeal.

If I just epoxy everything, what grit sandpaper should I use to abraid the surface before glueing, painting ect?

Well, I got everything cut except the center seat which has no deminsions listed that I can find so I am assuming that you custom fit it once the hull is put together.

Here is a Goat Island Skiff like shape beginning to emerge.

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Here is a Flat Screen Version of a Goat Island Skiff.

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A beautiful Goat Island Skiff - some assembly required.

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Next week, centreboard case, mast, spars, enough epoxy to glue the world together.

What fun.

Jerry

I decided to try to put the hull panels together so here is the first attempt at sticking things together with lots of epoxy. I thought it turned out pretty good. Clumsy to deal with as it needs something to stiffen things up. Chine longs next.001.jpg002.jpg004.JPG006.jpg

I've got to find a way to get rid of that sticker and the glue that it came on.007.jpg

Here are the finished panels waiting for chine logs.

I still had some cold weather epoxy left over from some other project so decided to use the big trailer outside so I could put plenty of weight on the stop any squirming around when I glued up the staves for the centreboard. Here are the staves aranged on the trailer.

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Since there seemed to be some warp in the staves, I thought a little weight might hold them down long enough for the epoxy to do it's work.

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Over night conditions did not seem conducive to good epoxy work. Here is what greeted me in the morning. It was never over 0 C at any time while I was doing this work.

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I'm going to have the weather arrested. It should be illegal to dump 240 mm of snow on me on April 10.

Now, what awaits in the barn?

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Epoxy worked well in spite of the weather.

Here is the rough shape once cut to size. Came out a perfect 341 mm wide but by the time I trimmed it, it was 20 mm short. I can live with that.013.jpg016.jpg

I'm not sure how I'm going to get this ugly duckling turned into a swan but there has to be a way.

Chine logs next.

I had never made a scarf joint before and decided to use a dovetail saw to get a nice neat joint. I tried twice, first and last. I'm a fair hand with a power saw and the dovetail was going nowhere fast so I switched. 010.jpg

Actually the dovetail made a nice groove for the power saw to follow so that is what I did. Here are the two joints ready to go to work. This is a 10:1 scarf joint done by hand with a power saw.015.jpg

I've been wondering how to go about cutting the scarf for my chine logs. I managed to get 20'ers for the gunwale/inwale, so this will be my only scarfing. Wondering whether to try and hack it out with my japanese razor saw or to borrow a friend's table/mitre saw. . .