Thread: Grey Seal build update 1

Andrew,
The frames look great. You are on your way. I envy you your "shed" which looks like the makings of a professional boatshop to me. I am getting a bit weary of banging my shins on the strongback corners every time I walk around the hull, and covet even a little more space.

Charles B.

Yeh Charles My last boat I built under those conditions, so this time I have promised myself the luxury of space and also I need to fit in a moaning chair.

Dunno 'bout the term professional.

So here we are - another new build. I'll spare you the usual slow jokes. I am building this boat away from home and we only go there on average every second weekend = SLOW.
Anyway I started with lofting the frames onto a piece of 25 mm MDF that was laying about. In hindsight it turned out very well 'cos I could screw the laminating blocks to it, lay some clear plastic, then smear the pox on my timber and clamp away
As you can see on the plans only one half of the moulds are drawn so I had to trace the half and rotate the tracing paper about the
centre line to acheive a full frame. I lofted about half the frames then traced them all, repainted the lofting board then did the full thing with both halves. Reason I did this was 'cos the MDF is only 8 x 4 ft so the frames only fitted in this space one at a time.
Now onto the nail trick to get my frames outline imprinted onto some 140 x 19mm pine for the moulds I did both mould halves at the same time screwed together so that I may some chance of my boat having a port side resembling the s'board side.At this point you all are probably wondering what I'm building and here it is - an Iain Oughtred "Grey Seal" 22 Ft long and with the new gaff rig that Iain drew for me. Actually involved me remaking a couple of the frames 'cos the mast is moved ( I think aft ) and so Fr 3 and 4 have a new location away from their respective stations which involved a bit of head-scratching figuring a way to loft new frames without doing a complete loft of hull. Hopefully my cheat will work. Time will tell.
Heres some pics of some bits

Right now to continue on a bit. Generally the frames are basically the same type of setup, once I'd glued up the lamination ( I found that I needed to reduce the thickness of the layers to get them to bend around the shape and not springback too much, therefore more layers ) and run my old electric plane over them to get rid of squeezeout then through the thicknesser, I mounted them to the moulds with small timber blocks.Some of the frames will have ply gussets added so I set my router up with a 1/2" slot cutter to make a groove on the inside face before I mounted them. In the above pic you can see the cross spalls to setup the moulds on strongback which are set 36" below DWL ( above if looked at right side up - I know what I mean )
As yet I 'm still making frames because I asked Iain to draw me a rig with a straight gaff. Originally he had drawn it with a curved gaff which is not very convenient when lowering the main because it doesnt lay very well on the boom with the sail. Also he dispensed with the running backstays. With the new centre of effort etc the mast is moved back slightly so I had to make a couple of new frames.
By now I was getting excited about the size and shape of the hull and wanted to get some of the moulds into a 3d aspect. I hit upon the idea of using LVL beams from house construction which worked out cheaper, straighter, stronger, longer than solid timber, for the strongback. I've built the main body of the SB one width and reduced it towards the ends but hopefully still leaving enough space for me to clamber in under the hull for goo dag scrapingThe SB is upside down here showing the under-spalls (?) I didnt add any to the top 'cos I already had some on moulds. I braced the SB with bits of ply and white melamine scraps to hold every thing square.
Next I added a stringline to centre and marked off the locations of the stations. Now for the time to add some moulds !!!!!!
Two mistakes I have made with my moulds are that I didnt offset the centre timber upright strengthening brace to one side of centre to facilitate lining up. The other thing I did was put the spalls on the opposite side of mould to frame which meant I had to pay extra attention to setting up the frames to the correct side of station , instaed of just setting the spall on the station. Oh well next boat - hah.
No doubt you all can see the alignment error with the keelson notches, yeh new you'd pick it. Somehow in my rush I hadnt been careful enough locating and marking the centre line on some of the moulds and when I looked up and along the keelson it was nowhere near straight. Oh ohh - now I know why every boat shop has a moaning chair, time to make use of same. Get up, move chair to new viewpoint, no good, move again, thinking thinking, tape measure, plans, offsets, straightedge. Finally figured out what to do and moved one frame to port 2.5mm and the next to s'board 5mm, there fixed, Phew that was a close one. Hope fully when I setup next lot of frames I dont have any more of those moments.So that brings me up to date.

Got all my moulds setup on strongback with front stem last weekend. I'll need to make some adjustments here and there, like to the bracing for No1 will have to be put on the aft side so that the hull strakes clear when they come around onto stem. Please excuse the pixelation of pics ( major beginner blunder that I dont really understand )

I've started to brace the moulds to strongback and each other all the while leaving access for dag cleaning.

A few more pictures for the p*orn collection we all like
views from aft


And another from fwd. No2 has yet to have its frame assembled and a ply gusset before fitting to mould

Bling alert - sunglasses

First photo = traveller horse, gooseneck and tabernacle



Next up are Rudder pintles and gudgeons, forestay fitting, mast band



All from Classic Marine in UK. It is surprisingly heavy and well made, the rudder will never fall off. Reason I got most of it now is so that I can make bits ( mast, boom and rudder ) at home in between boat visits in the country.
Price, well let me just say, wife is not impressed!!
Now I got no excuse, I have a stack of ply, a safe full of bling, a shed full of lead and a strongback. Which way do I turn, guess I have to stop starting so many tasks and settle on just one ( story of my life)

Ah very nice.

I've been waiting patiently for build pics and it's great to see you off to a flying start.

Re bling yep I think every build needs the bling to spur the builder on trouble is the trouble with the chansellor in fact shh I've just ordered a bronze Herreshoff anchor from the states, don't really need one one but hey it will look fantastic mounted in the bow.

Geez bronze is a bit posh for chucking in the mud isn't it?

One of the tasks I need to complete before commencing planking is to line-out the frames and that involves making some long battens each of which is the same thickness as ply and same width as the planking lands in this case 1/2 inch by 1 inch wide. I bought some clear pine from that big green shed and ripped it before cutting the 10:1 scarfs on my slide saw


There is a piece of square melamine clamped to bed of saw so I could clamp batten at right angles to fence and therfore achieve a 10:1 angle which isnt possible when using fence.
In this next photo take no notice of the mess unless you can offer to come around and clean it up for me cos I cant be bothered . Anyway somewhere in there you'll notice my clamped up battens (with Polyurethane glue ) using scrap aluminium angles to hold them straight. Unfortunately this shed aint long enough to glue the total length up so I had to take them up country.



On the next available weekend away to the boat shed for more fumbling. I am currently working on drying assembling the stems and keelson so they will align in the correct angles and the right waterlines agree etc. I fitted a ply gusset and connector frame thingy to frame No2 before cutting to fit forward stem.



Said frame mounted on strongback and stem sitting in position



To be cont....

Alright now onto the stern area. The aft stem ( is there a better name for this device ) had me repainting and lofting the shape twice when I accidentally rubbed out lines before transferring them to the stem. Woops. Eventually corrected that and now for fitting to Fr9 where I mounted an aluminium straight edge to guide my circular saw to make the cuts in frame.



You can see my transferred waterlines on the stem in this shot, they are on 6 inch centres. While on the subject of marking waterlines etc on to various parts, I've noticed it would be very handy to mark both sides of moulds, stems and frames for any future aligning work. Pity you dont learn this until its too late, it was probably advised in one of the many books I have ..............
Here's a couple views of the stern area. this shot show the correct position of after stem, the keelson comes over from Fr8 ( the one with the pointy mould ) where it sits on a block and then gets faired into the stem. I'm still figuring out how to connect Fr9 to sides of stem. I'll probabaly screw and glue, but where to put the screws out the way of fairing and bevelling is the question?

Heres a close up of joint. I will probably reinforce this area with a gusset as per Fr2 when I get boat right side up but before hand I'll fix me some rebates on inner side faces of frame near stem, to set the gusset into, before I glue it all together.



Heres a view from quarter which reminds me that I still have to apply tape to moulds between frames on last two. Also need some bracing on nine. I'm glad I over-engineered my strongback, it may be dead money as far as directly going into the boat but it means that I can climb all over it with out any fear of any movement. Actually I may need to sabre-saw those uprights holding moulds where planking comes around at stern, just quietly. Till next next time........