Unicorn, a small electric fantail launch

Painting the Hull TL;DR:  Lots of text explaining finishing the boat. Read on for hopefully a little education and entertainment, otherwise just look at the few pics. The original idea was to leave the hull unpainted, showing the wood strip construction. The cheap fiberglass I bought left bubbles that showed the weave of the fabric. No amount of poking at the fabric with an epoxy-soaked chipping brush would make the bubbles go away. But fiberglass is an expensive part of the whole project, so I stuck with the "bad" stuff. The only way to hide the bubbles was to paint the hull. I really did still want to show the hull construction, so I sanded off all the fiberglass in the fantail stern, bought small piece of (expensive!) "good" fiberglass and re-glassed that area. It was SO much easier and faster using the better fiberglass. Lesson learned. The wedge shape shown in the pick below is an attempt to have something other than a boring straight line joint between the woo...

Rudder and Rudder Shaft The hull is sanded and ready for paint and varnish, but I've also worked on the rudder. It was a daunting task. I calculated the size using some formulas for much larger ships, then rounded up a little, then made the actual size a little smaller. It looks rather large for such a small boat, but at the low speeds Unicorn will be moving at a larger rudder will give more control. The remaining part of the oak board from Home Depot, that I used for the breast hook, was almost exactly the right size. The fact that it is a nearly perfect quarter sawn board would make it well suited for the forces on a rudder -if it was laminated between 2 thin boards with the grain going at right angles to the grain of the main board. This makes it into a 3 layer plywood-like board. Glue Layup of the Rudder. Note the cobbled-together long reach clamp coming down from the top. The central stripes are the cross grain of the 3/4" quarter sawn oak board. The grain going left-righ...

 Just a note: My boathouse was too cold to work in over the winter. After much research and education, I have figured out the least expensive and lowest effort method to get more power into the boathouse so I can have enough electric heat to keep it comfortable thru out the year so this should not be a problem this winter. Even if I finish this boat over the summer, I already have thoughts and hopes to build another perhaps smaller boat as soon as Unicorn is launched! For the curious, I have purchased a 50' 4 wire twist lock extension cord rated for 30 amps. This will plug into the existing 30 amp generator input (turned into an output) on the house. This provides 30 amps from each phase (like an electric clothes dryer) from the house's breaker box. I buried the cord about 6" underground. It comes up out of the ground at the boathouse and goes up the outer wall and in thru a hole in the wall. It ends up right over my workbench. ...and now for the cool part... It turns out ...

Boring the Prop Shaft Hole Unicorn will be moved thru the water with a propeller powered by an inboard electric motor. While the drive system layout uses modern components, boring the prop shaft hole was done with very low-tech tools. (Yes, I'm skipping over the fiberglassing effort for now because a)it's not quite done yet, and b)it looks awful. 😕 More on that in the next post. ) Here's a picture of the tools used to bore the prop shaft hole. The thing in the foreground is a modern version of an ancient hand drill, a Brace (sometimes called a Carpenter's Brace). This simple tool can produce the large twisting force needed to turn the 7/8" diameter auger bit I used. The picture is from after the hole was bored, but you can see extending out of the Brace is a 24" drill extension. The 17" auger bit in this picture is already completely inside the keel and hull. Here's the setup of the process. The goal is to bore the hole exactly down the center of the...

The Whiskey Stick The last piece of planking on a wooden hull is sometimes called the Whiskey Stick because it is tradition to celebrate "closing in" the hull with a toast of whiskey. (I don't drink, but I indulged in a tiny sip of Hot Damn Cinnamon Schnapps!) On a bead-and-cove strip planked boat like Unicorn or practically every strip built kayak or canoe, the whiskey stick is almost always a very thin piece that must be fitted into the final slot where the last strips come together. Here are some pics leading up to the installation of the Whiskey Stick on Unicorn. This is the last slot on the port side. It was filled with one long multi-tapered strip that took some creative clamping to hold it in place. The starboard side was similar but took 2 strips to completely fill. Left picture in the Port side, right is the Starboard side. That block of wood in the right picture is very strategically placed to push on the thin strip with just the right pressure to hold it in pla...

The Breast Hook The savvy wood worker will notice that this piece of red oak is quite special, made even more so because I bought it at my local Home Depot. I was looking thru the selection of oak boards just to see what sizes were available and doing cost comparisons. I pushed an 8x12 (11 1/4" wide and 8' long) board over to the side of the stack and low and behold this piece was there. I knew exactly what it was as soon as I saw it but I could not believe what I was looking at. What makes it so special? It is what as known as "quarter sawn". Quarter sawn boards are special because the grain, as can be seen in the photo above, is not only perfectly straight and knot-free, the grain is also straight through the board. It is far more expensive to make quarter sawn boards because they are take more setup time in the lumber mill to produce. The left picture below is how most lumber is cut. It is fast and easy to cut boards off the log with this layout. The picture on th...

 Coming Around the Bend Poppy is keeping me company. I've finally stripped down to the point in the stern (the back, or "aft") of the hull where the fantail curves around the sides. On a fantail hull, this is always a tricky part to plank. Using small strips makes it easier, but it still takes a bit of finagling. Here are a few picks of very large planked fantail hulls that I stumbled upon when visiting the Wooden Boat Show at Mystic Seaport this year. (Side note: I had a blast at the show with my sister, brother-in-law, cousin, and cousin-in-law!) This hull shows a very smooth transition from the sides into the rear fantail. Exactly what I'm trying to do.  What's that in the background?!? It's one of the Miss Budweiser (#T3 I think) 3 point Hydroplanes from the 1990's! A bucket list item I didn't know was on my bucket list. This view clearly shows the transition between the planks coming up from the bottom (red) and the planks coming along the side. R...