Unicorn, a small electric fantail launch

  Short note about holding strips in place while the glue sets. In the last post you can see in the last pic, at the very bottom, there are a string of clamps that clamp the ends of the strips to the keelson. This was relatively easy and fast to do, but it is not possible to use this technique on the other side because the keelson is no longer exposed enough to place the clamps. So I made a couple large frames, tied to the molds, to hold wedges and boards that push hard against the strips to hold them down. I got the idea from others had similar challenges. It works quite well. A view of the whole setup. Wedge pushed under frame to push strip against keelson. Board clamped to frame, then banged on really hard to push it and the strips against the keelson. The C clamp on the right is holding the edges of two strips nearly coplanar. Without it the strips tended to pop out of alignment as they were "tortured" around that compound bend.

I'm back at it! Several "blockers" have been removed: My boat shop is not heated so I can't glue when it's below 45 degrees, I have actual work-work to do which is great because I get paid. 😀 But now it is glorious outside, work has slowed a bit, so voila! As most of you know, I'm not one to follow tradition or "that's the way it's done", and this boat build is no exception. The plans do call for strip built, but the strips are supposed to be 3/4" x 3/4" edge-glued. I am using the more current and slightly higher-tech bead and cove or cove and bead strips that are 1/4" x 3/4" with a, well, bead on one edge and a matching cove on the other. This allows the pieces to be glued together without any fasteners. And, being me, I've decided to take that to the extreme and am not using any  fasteners to hold the hull pieces together. This has proved a bit of a challenge as you can see in the pictures below. My father would be ...

Strongback With the shed extension complete,  I built a strong back out of cheap 1 X 6 lumber 12' long. The strong back is a rigid square beam to which the boat molds are firmly attached.  I had to add an extension on the back of the strong back that was stepped down enough to deal with the height of the fantail. The fantail is not only round, but is tilted up a little to match the rocker of the gunwales. I had to stiffen it by adding a leg (not shown) screwed into the floor. The next step, after lots of pondering about what the next step should be, was to reinforce the curve of the fantail so I could bend the "inwale" around it. The inwale is an inner piece of wood to which the outwale is attached forming the gunwale. The inwale and outwale are made of Ash. The Ash pieces were made custom for me by a boat builder we met at the Wooden Boat Show who is surprisingly located right here in New Hampshire. I was planning on steam bending the wood, but couldn't figure out ho...

Here are a sequence of pics showing the shed extension project. The large door in the end is a bit of a Rube Goldberg setup. This unusual layout required only 6 hinges and 3 lines and some rigging to pull it up in 3 stages. It can't be tightly sealed against the opening completely. That issue combined with the fact that there is only one 15A circuit going to the shed means I can't raise the inside temperature very much above the outside ambient temperature unless I run the electric heater AND a gas heater (for a little while) at the same time. I'll cross that bridge when I get there.                

I recently hiked about 270 miles of the Appalachian Trail in 31 days (long story for another time). While hiking I decided that if I was going to go home without finishing the trail I would start a similar-scale project -but one that I could do at home. I had built a few simple wooden boats in the past and that seemed like an excellent project. The style of boat I had wanted to build many years ago had completely slipped my mind, but I stumbled across it when I was searching for wooden boat plans and had a sort-of Eureka! moment when the memory of wanting to build that style came back to me. It is called a Fantail Launch, so named because the stern of the boat is rounded, "fanned out". The hulls of fantail launches are known to be extremely efficient at low speeds, largely because of the rounded stern. They are also known to be rather tricky to build as you'll see. I  purchased a set of plans for a 13' fantail launch called Felix, designed by Selway Fisher.  https://d...