We made a 12 square foot mizzen for our Grumman 17 SCOUT, to help balance the gaff main. Cut it out of some fine painter's drop cloth, 6 foot luff, 4 feet on the foot with a 6 degree rise, which matches the rise on the gaff.
Marked the seam allowance.
Cut some corner reinforcement patches.
Too much air conditioning inside, let's move outside where heat index is 95F! Time to make the stern thwart, Spoiler Alert, here is what it looks like uninstalled once we were done, we just decided how to cut the next piece and what size to make it as we went along.
Cut one pine thwart to sit on top of the gunwale and one to notch just inside of it. Drilled 4 holes for 1/4 inch carriage bolts with washered wing nuts. Marked a 1 1/2 inch hole amidships, 3/4 inch forward of the aft face. Drilled a 1/2 inch pilot hole for the jigsaw blade and cut out the hole.
Cut two 12 inch side pieces and beveled the top edge so they would drop vertical and barely touch the sides. Then cut the angled bottom thwart, screwed together with deck screws. Once that thwart was assembled we installed it and dropped in the 1 1/2 inch mast (8 foot closet rod from Lowes), which tilted forward because of the angle of the thwart on the aft rise of the canoe. Used a diamond tile file to ease out the lower forward edge and aft upper edge of the mast hole, until the hole was oblong enough for the mast to be set plumb vertical. Then we leveled the canoe port to starboard, dropped in the mast and, set it plumb and vertical, and marked the bottom thwart for a hole on the top face. Took the thwart out and brought it in the carriage house to transfer that top marking to the bottom face. I could have disassembled it but I didn't want things to get misaligned during reassembly. This is a picture of the stern thwart upside down, we found the port-starboard center of the bottom thwart and transferred fore and aft measurement of aft face of mast. The positioned mast on those marks to draw a circle.
There is not much open room behind the stern seat and the stern deck, about 6 inches, so early on I sat on the seat with the thwart installed to see if the mast would be in the way. The mast was okay but the forward edge of the thwart was too close to the seat. So I took a pencil and traced a cutout for butt clearance.
Reinstalled everything to check visual sight lines, vertical and plumb with the gaff main.
SCOUT got to bunk over with ZIP, WINNIE, WAVE and MARGARET ROSE.
Log of SCOUT.
No comments:
Post a Comment