Timbers? Ribs? Frames?

First off, we had seven great days in France!

TL;DR:

There seems to be no consensus on what the things are called that run from the keelson (if there is one) athwartships (across the hull), curving along the inner hull and up to the inwales (the inside part of the gunnel). One very old source has no entry for Frames and says this about Timbers and Ribs:

Timber. A general term for all large pieces of wood used in ship-building. Also, more particularly, long pieces of wood in a curved form, bending outward, and running from the keel up, on each side, forming the ribs of a vessel.

"Ribs. A figurative term for a vessel's timbers." What?!?

I choose to call them ribs for no particular reason. But I also call them sticks because that's what they are before they go into the hull. As usual with this project, there was a bit of trial and error and lots of how-to videos.

Wood softens when heated up to a certain temperature. Fortunately that temperature for most woods is around the boiling point of water, so putting a stick in a box filled with steam usually works well.

I think the tricky part of steam bending is being sure the temperature inside the steam box is actually close to the temperature of the steam. This is easy to tell because the wood should be too hot to touch when you pull it out of the box, and the wood should feel more bendy. I think my steam box didn't get quite warm enough inside.

My suspicion stems from a test I did after struggling to bend in the first few sticks. I put a stick in my bench vise and heated it up with a heat gun for maybe 10 or 15 minutes, sometimes even burning the surface of the stick. While heating up the stick I also bent it a little by pulling sideways on the end of the stick. It was obvious when the stick got hot enough all the way thru because the stick rather suddenly bent over very easily and stayed bent after cooling off.

I stopped using the steam box and heated the rest of the sticks with the heat gun.

Here are two pictures of the installed ribs. (Note: The lighter colored board in the middle is the main bulkhead and aft end of the water tank. I'm calling it a bulkhead because most historians use that term bulkhead for a panel-like divider even though it is very similar to a timber, rib, or frame.)

Detail showing 2 layers of a rib, one end tucked under the inwale. Sometimes I bent them individually, sometimes I glued them together first, then bent them (and the glue usually failed...).

The aft ribs are two pieces, butted against the keelson. The tiny holes in the keelson are where I screwed in temporary boards to hold the ribs while bending and epoxying them in place. Those holes will eventually be filled with epoxy.

Closeup of the aft bulkhead/water ballast tank wall/floor frame support. It is epoxied to the rib.

Forward bulkhead/front of water ballast tank (showing burn marks from the heat gun) and longitudinal floor frames all temporarily in place. The forward bulkhead had to be slightly bent because the rib it is glued to was not quite straight as it crossed the centerline of the hull.

Floor frame temporarily in place. It is all Red Oak for strength and stiffness under the floor. It will be removed and entirely coated with epoxy along with every other surface of the ballast tank to ensure everything is watertight and waterproof. The frame will then be glued and screwed permanently in place.

Next steps are to install the floor(s) and plumbing for the tank and bilge. They are related because the floor is also the top of the water ballast tank and the pipe to fill and drain the tank goes thru the floor. Question for next time: Does the water ballast tank have to be completely sealed water tight?

Stranger Things

One of the most mentally and emotionally disturbing things I have ever encountered occurred while installing the ribs. I can't overstate how freaked out I was.

I had the steam box going and was bending sticks into place in the hull. This involves pushing hard on the long thin piece of ash, forcing it into the shape of the hull. Wearing gloves because the sticks are hot, I stand on one side of the hull and place the far end of the stick under the edge of the far side inwale, then push the stick down into the hull. It bends down into the hull and eventually I get my end of the stick to pop under the inwale on my side. I was doing this when something made me look away. I have no memory of why I looked up from the stick, but when I returned my gaze, the stick was gone! There was no sensation or memory of letting go of it and no sound of it going anywhere. The stick had vanished without a sound.

I am not making this up. I stood there for a second wondering what had happened. The long slightly bent stick should be easy to spot but I didn't see it anywhere when I glanced around the boat house. A thought went thru my head "did I ever actually get the stick from the steam box?" I was sure I had, but I looked and it wasn't in the steam box. I went back inside the boat house and again looked everywhere. Nothing. I was truly starting to feel like I had lost my mind.

I remembered Conor teasing me about not being very good at looking for lost things, so I looked around again, with more care. Nothing. I went to the door of the boathouse and looked out into the grass, thinking it may have somehow shot out the door. Nothing. Had I really never tried to install it? By now about 5 minutes had passed. I was in a very weird state of mind. What had happened? Was I in The Twilight Zone?

I went back to where I was standing when I was installing the stick, then turned towards the large shelves that hold my hiking gear and boat-related stuff. Something caught my eye. There it was. It had somehow launched itself, silently, to fit perfectly onto a shelf, its slight bend allowing it to fit around and behind some of the stuff on the shelf. I must have let go of it when I looked away and the gloves on my hands obscured the feeling of the stick sliding out and shooting over to the shelf about 5 feet away.

After a huge sigh, I got the stick and went back to bending it into place.