We considered several shapes for the bow stem on MARGARET ROSE, and settled on hybrid shape that drew elements from our Penobscot 14 ST. JACQUES' stem and the stem on our O'Day Day Sailer II CYANE. CYANE's bow is what Capn Jack called a Destroyer bow, almost plumb and full at the foot, so we used the upper 2/3 for that shape and used the quick run to horizontal from the Penobscot stem.
Cut the shape of the inner stem out of pattern plywood with our DeWALT 20V jigsaw, it still purrs like a kitten.
Smoothed the edges to get rid of splinters and sanded off the multiple stem shapes we had drawn with a 120 grit disc on the DeWALT 20V random orbital sander.
Clamped the inner stem to the keel to see if we like the fair curves.
Planned to apply a second coat of TotalBoat WetEdge Fire Red to ZIP but Skipper intervened, she said ZIP looks great, we had good coverage, and if I kept painting she would never dry. So we rolled her out by the flagpole to let the Florida sun bake the finish.
That gave us time to work on MARGARET ROSE. We drew out the keel batten/longeron, Skipper okayed it and I cut out a master batten from cypress with the DeWALT 20V brushless 6 1/2 inch circular saw. I cleaned up the corners of the centerboard slot with the DeWALT 20V jigsaw.
Once we were happy with the master we cut out 3 more layers from 3/4 inch stock, with one layer being from the first pine board we bought when we were fiddling with the design a few months back. We need thickness on the bottom so we can bevel for the Diamond bottom (V bottom) and still have meat left to fasten into. The Sharpie makes a nice saw kerf wide line, easy to see and cut along.
Maybe the boat's name should be SAWDUST, because that is what it looks like we're making.
We screwed the bottom board down to the deck, then screwed each layer to the board below it. Then we hoisted the transom end to get some prebend going, that end needs to rise a little over 12 inches for the final shape. Let me back up a minute, I was sitting in The Moaning Chair trying to figure out whether to prebend first or cut the shape first. Skipper suggested that it might be easier to cut the board if it was flat vs curved, a no brainer.
I was also trying to figure out how to jack the boards from underneath and Skipper suggested that we use her hoist. That worked great, the line raised the end about 8 inches and I got inspired to add a ratchet strap, that raised the boards up to the required 12 1/8 inches.
The skeg was next, how to make a 12 inch tall skeg from boards under 11 inches wide? I ripped some 3/4 inch scrap to 1 1/2 inches wide, then we stacked the strips until we got a stack just over 12 inches. I scribed the keel curve from underneath the keel to the side of the skeg, then tried to carefully carry the enire stack of 16 strips over to the work table, to Skipper's immense entertainment. I almost made it, the last few feet the strips started to delaminate and I got a nice pile on the table. It was easy enough to line them back up based on the scribe mark.
Next I unstacked the strips and dry fastened them together one at a time with #8 silicone bronze screws. This will be our version of drift pins, I may or may not leave the screws in when we epoxy all the strips together in a few days.
Trimmed the curve with the DeWALT 20V brushless jigsaw.
Dry fit the skeg. Which was another question. Fit the skeg to the keel or the keel to the skeg? We are going with skeg to keel. But first we need to epoxy all the skeg strips together and run them through the thickness planer to get the sides smoothed down.
Worked on our Alcort Sunfish ZIP's hull, prepping the puncture area for a Letterbox repair. I wasn't sure why it is called letterbox but it appears that this is the type of repair that would have been done to a door that had a mail slot cut into it, a way to repair that slot. Maybe we add 2 mail slots to ZIP and we're finished!
We marked the repair area so that we cut out lines that were parallel and had rounded ends. The goal was to cut away the damaged plywood and as little more as possible past that. We looked around the Carriage House for objects that were about the same width as the puncture and also for objects that had the end circumference that we needed. The items we found were a THIXO tube, a square and a roll of waxed thread. Here's the rough trim before we shaped the ends.
Used the THIXO tube to mark the parallel sides with Sharpie.
Scribed the circumference.
The long repair was about the width of the metal square. The waxed thread roll was used to scribe circumference.
We used the jigsaw to trim away broken bits, cut to the line on the sides and cut just a little shy on the ends. Then we used the Kobalt diamond file to get the final shape on the ends.
Next we needed to plane down some 1/2 inch marine ply to make it 17/64th inches, put it through 12 passes on the DeWalt tabletop planer and used the Dust Deputy to collect the sawdust. Normally for solid wood we'd plane both sides, alternating sides on each pass, but for plywood we kept the good face down and planed only one side, as we knew we'd go through the veneer ply and some glue along the way.
Compared the planed plywood thickness to ZIP's hull thickness.
We made the internal backer plates about an inch wider all around the letterbox patch, marked the hull then transferred those marks to the repair plywood. Our found shop object to mark the 1 inch was our 2 foot level, it is about an inch wide.
The X marks which line to cut.
Repair backer plates cut out, they will be epoxied to the inside of the hull.
We cut 2 of each for the backer plates, and then put one inside the hull to trace the shape of the hole.
One piece of plywood will be trimmed to letterbox patch shape. All of our clamps are named for family and friends, my brother Kirk's clamp held the backer plate in place while we worked on shaping the letterbox patch for the smaller hole.
We cut out the letterbox patch with a jigsaw, to the line on the sides and left the ends a bit proud. Then we used the diamond file to sneak up on the fit of the ends. We do not want the fit to be super tight, as we want a little space around the perimeter to be filled with the thickened epoxy.
Two backer plates and one letterbox patch ready to go, one more letterbox to be cut out and trimmed to shape.
We use our jigsaw a lot to butcher boat bits, bought this DeWALT around 2008. We were having our porch rebuilt in Texas and that is the brand that the pro crew used. Francisco said the DeWalt tools had served him well through the years, heavy duty enough for the job but not too pricey. We used this one to cut out all the planks and transom face on the Penobscot, strongback molds, frames, trim BARBASHELA planks, brackets for a shelf project, and it has cut all of the decorative ends on 2x4 rafters on a variety of Sunfish Shacks, pergolas, dock cover, etc...A versatile tool.
