Thread: Coquina

Dimensions of that douglas fir - I had forgotten that I salvaged these pieces from a ladder that was made in the 1940s and never finished, so while it is as near as dammit to 2" wide, the usable width is one and seven eighths because of the little lodging rebates for the treads cut along one edge. The thickness is inch and an eighth.
The length is about 17 feet definitely over 16 though I can't get it out of where it is to measure accurately without moving a bit of stuff. Looking at the visible part, it is every bit as good as I thought it was and has never been varnished, oiled or otherwise coated.

Though I doubt that there would be enough there to rip it down into staves for a hollow spar, I suspect a couple of other uses could be found for it in Coquina.
Let us know how we should proceed. My email is [email protected]

All the best

Email sent Mr. B

Busy day today after planing the garboards flush with the inner keel this week I did another dry fit of the 2nd planks and like with the garboards was not happy with the bow section.
So I decided to re mark all station 2 plank lines to correct the misalignment before the glue up (did both #2 at the same time)
Now at this point I did discover is it is just as well I'm doing glued lap and not traditional, pretty sure my little boat would sink if it was. . I miscued a little on the beveling as it twists through the gains and ended up with a less than close fit.

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Then onto finishing the scarfing on the outer keel. I rough cut the joint on the bandsaw but due to my poor judge of blade drift there was a fair bit to plane. Ah well patience and a sharp blade made it a pleasurable hour or so. The pile of shavings tells the story and that's only half of it. I employed a length of alloy tube to ensure alignment for the glue up.

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Finally a pic of my new assistant she is not much good at holding things and really lousy at reading plans but she does give me a sympathetic look when things go wrong. You will notice she was not interested in getting her photo taken either.
With a bit of luck and the bad weather forecast I might be able to get away with another day in the shed tomorrow.

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I believe the outer keel is a critical bit to get right. It needs to be straight, centreboard slot needs to be correctly positioned and aligned and even though it's usually out of sight the nice shaping should be even and accurate. This operation has proved to be fairly time consuming but fun non the less.

Planking has stopped at #2 while the outer keel is formed and fitted along with the skeg. I noticed this sensible approach in the photo set I bought with the plans, makes fitting a lot easier.

The scarfing to the outer keel has had several days to fully harden so I layed out the centreboard slot in preparation for cutting as the first job. This operation has been giving me some concern for a couple of reasons first I was having difficulty in working out how to measure off its position accurately from the plan. Not that it necessary needs to be absolutely millimetre perfect in my opinion but I thought it would be nice to be close.
Now the plan is scaled at 1 1/2 " : 1' and measuring with a rule and trying to convert has been proving fraught with danger for me but then I noticed a row of dots along the keel line and wondered what they could possibly represent mmmm..........the stations are 20" apart and there are 10 dots between them and they are aligned with the bow edge of the station molds, how convenient thankyou Mr. Hylan.

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So now reasonable confident about its position how do I ensure it is aligned accurately along the keel. I did make an effort to glue the scarf joints straight and the board had been squared before I ripped the sections so I'm confident I can register a router fence off one edge.

First job is to set up a centre line in this case as I have a few imperfections along one edge it is off set using a string line (red whipping twine really good for the job).

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Next mark out the width for the slot and keel dimensions from the table in the plans. At this point I did need to make a slight adjustment due to my hog being slightly undersize causing the planed flat of the garboard ply to be wider than the plans expect. The result is only between an 1/16 to an 1/8 but important I think to allow for and it's easy to go along and remeasure at each station.

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to be contd.

After marking out the next operation is to rough cut the slot and trim with a router using the still straight edge of the keel to reference off. First I drilled a 3/8" hole at each corner then two circular saw cuts using the drop method (brave eh ).
Then finish the cut with a Japanese rip saw before trimming with a router, notice my heavy duty stop blocks, never again will I trust my eye when routing.

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More about the keel.

After a congratulatory cup of coffee for cutting the slot without stuff up I pinned battens at the mark points to rough cut the keel outline. The circular saw has a piece of perspex as a base plate with a couple of ply discs to run along the batten very quick and easy way of doing it (acknowledgment John Brooks). Again using the batten as a guide the edge is trimmed with a flush cut router bit.

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Next job is to plane the bevel (chance to show off my new apron plane )

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With the bevel completed your very amateur boat builder needed a rest and to have a think about the next step. Mr. Hylan suggests in his promotional material that the skill level for Coquina is "skilled amateur" well that maybe so but I think he threw in the graduated cove (my terminology) along the edge of the keel to see just how skilled the amateur is!
I'm sure there is a relatively speedy way of doing this it's just that I have now idea what it is. Perhaps if I had a nice sharp gouge to rough it out that would help but I don't have one so patience and a gooseneck scraper is my approach.

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That's it for the minute.

Mike, looking good from here. Dunno how you blokes can do boats, very tricky I reckon.

Thanks Greg, actually the good thing about boats is it the little goofs can be easily reworked or hidden.

The dog and I took a trip last week to see Mr. Barnacle. Despite his crusty forum name suggesting otherwise John is a very obliging bloke and what's more I reckon he has probably forgotten more about boat building than I will ever know. He very kindly offered me some long lengths of Oregon and they are perfect for the inwhales thanks Mr. Barnacle.

Work continued on the keel this week and during the dry fit I rough cut the outer stem on the bandsaw to test fit. Seems a problem occurred during my making the pattern or the initial marking out was not good as there was a significant gap between the keel and stem as the first pic shows......oh no .
A bit a rest on the moaning chair and I think ah just make a filler piece no problairmo. Then I looked at it a bit more and figure it is worth trying a bit of a shave of the hog as it ramps down to the stem to increase the angle of the keel slightly and I'm happy to report the stem fits like a glove so no botch up needed. The second pic shows the result it still needs some more work but that will wait until the planking is finished.

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Oh and a bit of jewelery along with some bronze bits arrived from Ross Lillistone (fathers day present to myself ) thanks Ross.

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The keel and skeg are complete and fitted. I got a little carried away with the keel shaping around the rear section of the CB slot. The flat surface to receive the half oval is too thin but I don't think it will matter and besides looking nice it will improve water flow to the skeg, well that's my story and I'm sticking to it.

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The pic shows I deviated a little from the plans and used lag bolts to attach the skeg instead of through bolts and nuts. Of course the question on everyone's lips at this point is did I drill the holes straight. Answer is no, after I cut out the skeg and trimmed the joint I started the tapered sides instead of leaving it square to register against a fence thus ending up with an angled drilling this even after checking the drill press table for square rechecking the alignment umpteen times. Fortunately the misalignment is only slight so no harm done.

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Really lovely work Mike. And great pics as well. Thanks.

Originally Posted by rob540

Really lovely work Mike. And great pics as well. Thanks.

That made me chuckle if only you knew, just came in from the shed after cutting the CB slot in the inner keel.

Now there are many ways to do this, by hand with a rip saw and some careful chisel work a bit slow perhaps or jig/sabre saw and clean up with a pattern following router bit, a lot quicker or you could really rip into it with a circular saw and wiz along with 19mm pattern bit like I intended.

This last method does depend on one very important factor and that is
DO NOT FIT THE SKEG BEFOREHAND
or the saw and router will foul on it. Obvious to any forward thinking boat builder even me, pity I didn't remember my planing now where is my pad and pencil.
Ah well after cutting and routing as much as possible some hand tool work was needed to finish up.

Back to planking.

I purchased a japanese flush cut saw for trimming plugs and thought it would do a good job on flushing off the keel below the transom.

Ended up slightly under cutting the thing, kinked the saw and generally decided patience and a plane are safer to use. Just as well the rudder gudgeon brackets will cover it up.

No pics at the moment and work is on hold for a couple of weeks while I trek north across the Simpson desert.
The weather is a bit iffy with an inch plus of rain forecast for the area so if you don't hear from me again you can assume we did a Burke and Wills and
a) got permanently bogged in a claypan
b) drowned in Eyre Creek
c) ran out of fuel and beer thus perished.
d) all of the above

Have a great trip. I think those two gentlemen would have given a barrel of bully beef to see the country as lush as you will.