Turning Unicorn Upright

First, a short update on finishing the hull.
I ended up sanding off the poly (again) and some of the paint, putting on two new coats of paint with a foam brush, "tipping" the paint smooth-ish with the foam brush, and then put on three coats of poly in quick succession in the hopes it would "pull flat". The finish is better but still not actually smooth. You get what you settle for.


The Big Day (Poppy provided emotional support)
A major step in small wooden boat construction is turning the hull over. There are several techniques to do this depending on how big and how heavy the hull is, and how many helpers you have. Unicorn is about 14 1/2' long and I think the hull weighs roughly 75lbs. Since it was just me doing the task, I elected to use the two-lift method and go very slowly. The whole process took most of an afternoon, following, generally, these steps.
  1. build a frame or cradle(s) to support the hull when it is upright. This frame is also often used to support the hull while it is being turned over. I made a sturdy cradle the day before the Big Day and located it amidships.
  2. Lift the hull straight up off the molds and strong-back.
  3. Remove the molds and strong-back.
  4. Clean up under the hull.
  5. Rotate the hull using two "tackles".
  6. Set the hull upright on the frame or cradle.
  7. Add more cradles if necessary to support the hull. I made two more cradles for the bow and stern.
I more or less followed these steps with the added step of setting the half-rotated hull on the floor while I repaired the boat house floor and cleaned up. The following series of pictures shows nearly the whole process.


I used two "Luff Tackles" as hoists. A Luff Tackle provides a 3:1 mechanical advantage which proved to be just barely enough for me to do by myself. The top block is a double pulley, the bottom is a single pulley with a home-made "dead end" attachment for the fall (the rope) coming from one of the top block's pulleys.



Getting the inwales (the boards that go along the inside top edge of the hull) past the molds took a little wiggling and trimming of the forms. But eventually the hull all came loose and I lifted it up enough to remove the molds and strong-back.


If you look closely at the bow, you'll see a line going around the bow and up to the wood rack above the hull. Lifting the hull from the amidships point turned out to be not quite the center of gravity of the hull so I had to gently lift the bow up to keep the hull level as I raised the it up with the two Luff Tackles. This involved a lot of walking around the hull, pulling a line, moving to the next line, pulling a little etc. etc.



A couple pics of the two Luff-Tackles attachments and clamps to hold the hull to the cradle while the assembly is being tilted up on its side. In the right pic you can see three black dots near the lower clamp. Those are three 2 1/2" drywall screws screwed into the end grain of the 2 X 6 base of the cradle. There's another set on the other side. The entire hull hung from those six screws -into end grain!


Not shown in these pics is a little hiccup when the cradle came away from the hull. A little maneuvering and adjusting clamps and things got back in order. It was a tense few minutes.


Note the holes in the boathouse floor.

The holes were cut so I could hang bright lights into the crawl space to encourage the skunks living there to leave. After having the lights on for a week or so they left.  So now those holes have to be filled in (temporarily in case the skunks come back!).

I didn't get pics of righting Unicorn from when it was on its side. I was WAY too excited by this time to get her upright that I forgot. So here she is, upright and ready for the next steps!

Still hanging on the Luff Tackles.

Upright, on the floor!
I still have to tweak the cradles. She doesn't sit quite right in them.

p.s. There will be a delay until the next post. I have to do some house remodeling.


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