Working on the mast for SEI

Beefing up the mast.

Chuck Leinweber at Duckworksmagazine.com has been using a woven fiberglass sleeve to reinforce the wooden masts he’s made for the various boats he’s built.

As far as I know he’s been using fairly cheap lumber for the birdsmouth system spars, and with the glass sleeve over them there has been no failures even when pushed very hard in events such as the Texas 200 and Everglades Challenge.

Here's his catalogue listing along with a little video showing how the 'glass sleeve is applied.

http://www.duckworksbbs.com/supplies/cloth/sleeving/index.htm

When visiting last year I had a look at what he’s done, looked over the material and decided that I’d give the stuff a try.  So, today, got the parcel out, sanded the mast blank off a little and got into it.

Its like a Chinese Finger Puzzle, push the ends together and it gets bigger in diameter, pull and it gets skinnier.  To apply, I shoved my hand down it while pushing the ends in, made it big enough to fit the mast through easily, and slid it through.  Taped the butt end to the wood and smoothed out the glass sleeve running my hands toward the other end making it smaller and a close fit as I went.

 I put a tape around the mast at the top end of the sleeve, this to provide a clean end to cut the strands of fiberglass to.  Next, I taped the end to the mast to control it while wetting out, and got into it with a brush and epoxy.

With two layers of gloves on, I smoothed the layup out, working from the start end up to the top of the mast pushing any bubbles out as I went.

This is fairly heavy fiberglass, and it soaks up quite a lot of resin, this 3.5m length took 300ml of resin. 

To see how the sleeve would work if I were to use Peel Ply or a similar substitute to control the resin content and finish, I wrapped plastic masking tape around the lower 800mm or so ( I ran out of tape)  and checked the rest to make sure it was properly wetted out.  I’m away for two days, and will pull the tape off when I get back so lets see how it comes out.

After all this was done, I was sitting on my bunk reading and sipping my mug of tea, watching this guy sitting on the end of my dock.  He or she is a Pied Shag, quite a big bird, similar to a Cormorant.  There are lots of them here as well as their cousins the "Little black shags" and the occasional King shag.  Its that time of year when the birds are seeking mates and making nests, so there is lots of interest and activity here on the river.  

Nose to the grindstone again

Or at least hands to the sanding block,  I’m unexpectedly home so have a chance to get some work done on SEI.  Its cold here, but the daytime temps are ok for WEST epoxy with fast hardener, and the sun comes in through the big windows keeping the shop warm enough for me to work in without heavy clothing.

So I’m sanding off the plank landings, the fillet between the skeg and the bottom and will be running a coat of ‘poxy with microballoons over the ‘glass to fill the weave before a final sand and then primer paint.

Sandpaper time.   Again.  Powered by elbow grease, It always seems to come to this.

I’ve several part pots of Toplac white oil based marine enamel, they came with my ship and that’s what I plan to use when I repaint her in our spring, and am very tempted to use that so I can get accustomed to its peculiarities before getting into the really big job of repainting the 40 ft motor boat.

So SEI will be white, boring but practical, pale green inside to reduce the glare, maybe some darker green highlights and possibly varnish on the seat tops just to tell people that she is a wooden boat.

Its nice to be at a stage where I can see the launching day off in the distance, we’re in the depths of winter here now, traditionally the worst is still to come but the daffodil plants are poking their heads up, I saw the first lamb of this season the other day and we’ve gained over an hour of daylight since the shortest day so there is, just occasionally,  a hint that there might be spring sometime .

I’d like to be sailing SEI when the good weather comes.

On the techo side of things, Howard Rice and I are both of us fans of anything that saves time when building  boats.  Our time on earth is limited so anything that speeds the building up means that we can build more of them, plus SCAMP Camp is a real teacher in that respect.

To explain, SCAMP Camp is 10 days, plus a little work over the in between weekend if the students want.  It’s a challenge to bring beginnner students along faste enough to get those boats ready to ship out on day ten, and anything that saves time is welcome.

We’ve been using the Ryobi cordless brad nailer for a while now, and it’s a real asset, saves about the equivalent of a day on each boat which is major.

We use the Makita builders laser cross level which not only makes it much easier to get the boats straight and true, but it takes a lot less time to do it.

The latest addition to our bag of tricks is the WEST System six10 cartridge epoxy glue system.  

The two parts of the glue are housed in separate chambers within the cartridge, and extruded through the blue mixing tube on the left of the "gun".  There are spares of those available as they are not cleanable but there does not seem to be a problem keeping a part used cartridge.

We don’t use it everywhere on the boats, just for the planking where the ability to run a controlled bead along an edge is very useful, and much faster than mixing by hand, pushing that into a ziploc bag and doing the cake decorating thing.  Sure its more expensive by volume, but there is very little waste and to give you an idea, at SCAMP Camp this year we were hanging a plank every 10 minutes, just about an hour and a half to do a pair of planks on each of the four boats we were building.  I remember that at the first SCAMP Camp we took more than double that,  that’s a saving of about half a day per boat.

Howard Rice running a bead of epoxy along the edge of a SCAMP plank.  The striped shirt is not compulsory equipment for this sort of job but it sure helps ( create laughter at least).

http://www.westsystem.com/ss/new-six10-epoxy-adhesive/

Well worth the little extra cost!

RIP Frances Diana Kyle. 1932/2015

Things have been very quiet on the posting front,  Apologies for that, but its been a rough week.

While enjoying summer, SCAMP Camp and SCAMP skills, the company of good friends and all that’s enjoyable about the ports Ludlow, Hadlock and Townsend out there on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington State USA, I got the news that my Mother in Law was failing fast plus two other close family members were not well.

 So I hopped the first available plane out, and after a trip home that included three flights on an airline I’d go a long way to avoid in future ( Hawaiian)  a night on the concrete floor outside the security office in Honolulu airport, a 23 hour wait between flights and arriving in Auckland in the middle of the night to find one of my two bags not present on the baggage carosel.

I got back to find my Mother in Law at home, only awake for short periods but still able to conduct very short conversations, and I had the privelege of staying close by and supporting the family for her last few days.

She died on Monday last, the funeral was on Wednesday, and I’m thankfully back at home on the ship catching up with tasks left aside while more important things were attended to.

Its dead of winter here, short days, grey and rainy, long cold nights.  Sort of appropriate really.

John Welsford

Lots of fun but no holiday!

Much too busy!

I have been flat out working at SCAMP Camp ( with a side expedition to the dentist to get a broken tooth fixed) pretty much ever since I got here to the Port Townsend area so have been very lax in my postings here on the blog.

We do though have a pretty good Facebook page up and running, thanks to my helpers there, thats Jackie, Pete and Chuck.  Lots to read and lots of pics.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/440526479459574/

We’re having a lot of fun at the SCAMP build class, halfway through the build class the boats are about on track with all of the frames and internal structure up, and tomorrow (Monday) we’ll be hanging the first pair of planks,  filleting  which is a seemingly endless task, fitting the cleats to which the cockpit floor and seat tops will be fitted  and organising for the second pair of planks.

By Wednesday the boats should be all planked up, “Real” boats, and this crew are doing a nice job of them.  Well done Dana, Bruce, Steve and Daniel.

The photo software “here” is not working the way I want, so please forgive the lack of pics on this post, it wants to do “Cloud” storage rather than keeping them on my hard drive, I’ll work it out.

In the meantime, its Sunday morning as I write, I had a little sleep in, and am now fiddling around learning the new sofware on the Macbook Air I’ve just bought as a replacement for my old laptop.  Nice, it runs for around 12 hours on a charge, great! The old one struggled to get 2 hours.

So I was reading some of the threads over on the WoodenBoat forum, a good plae to “hang out” when wanting some interesting reading, and found three threads on builds of my designs there that will interest.

Suzy Jackson is coming along well with her Navigator build, lots of pics there,

http://forum.woodenboat.com/showthread.php?176883-Elena-a-Welsford-Navigator-cruising-sloop

Mal is making very good progress with his Sundowner,

http://forum.woodenboat.com/showthread.php?148391-Welsford-Sundowner-build

This is a very substantial little boat, lots of space inside, and he’s doing a decent job of it.  Nice work Mal.

There is a good thread on a SCAMP build “here”.  Bruce in South Australia is coming along well with his little boat, and has documented the victories and trials that he’s encountered along the way.

http://forum.woodenboat.com/showthread.php?182771-Romana-de-Scamp

And there is discussion on the big “Pilgrim”  open boat cruiser I designed for myself a while back but never got further than the frames before circumstances meant I had to abandon the build and find somewhere else to live and work.

The pics of Chip Matthews big curvy beauty are well worth a look.

Thanks Chip.

http://forum.woodenboat.com/showthread.php?86953-Pilgrim-from-John-Welsford

I’ll be back in a couple of days, I promise.

John Welsford

Tools,

I was busy building a garage, I've mentioned it before.  A kitset 6m x 3.5 m one from Trade Tested here in NZ,  it came in several cardboard boxes, not very big ones, and did those boxes  not seem like nearly enough to carry all the bits needed for a building that size.
It turned out to be so lightly built and difficult to assemble that I abandoned the build half way through, it took me a couple of hours to dismantle what had taken me an awfully long time to get built,  then a day to make up a complete pre nail wooden kit from 3x2 wood including five roof trusses, and a day to stand all that up and put the cladding from the kit onto that.
We've now got a robust and tidy building that will withstand a good blow.

The point behind this epistle is, apart from dont buy  one of those cheap garden or garage kits, is that I had some serious trimming of sheet metal to do, and tinsnips just did not cut it ( pun intended of course)

So I want off to the hardware store to find a metal cutting blade for the skilsaw,  not a cutting disc for an angle grinder, this is a sawblade specific to sheet metalwork.
Found one, near enough a hundred bucks.  That was enough of  a shock that I had to go and browse in the aisle where all the toys are ( read, power tools,  I'm a sucker) to get my breath back.

I found there one of those "twinsaws" that are advertised as being able to cut almost anything,  this was very similar to the Ozito brand one in this link http://www.bunnings.co.nz/ozito-1200w-125mm-corded-twin-cutter_p00318797   but was the very cheap Bunnings brand XU1  version. $65  .  The saw blade went back on the rack., and I took the twinsaw home with me.

The thing cuts like a Samurai sword production line test dept.  It cuts anything up to about 1/8in like butter, its not a high quality tool and I dont expect it to last forever  but it pretty much paid for itself in an hours work.

I dont think I'd buy this brand if I were serious, but the Ozito one is a reasonable deal and the quality is reasonable for a tool that is not in full time use.

A word of warning though, they're not good for cutting wood, they are specifically built for sheet and light sections of metal.

Interesting tool though, useful.

John Welsford

Facebook, travel and stuff

We’ve  started a Facebook page,  I’d tried to do that a couple of years ago but got annoyed at how many emails it dumped into my inbox and spent ages trying to unsubscribe to no avail.  But since Yahoo made such a mess of their Yahoo groups system Facebook has become much more popular, and it seems the way to go.

With the help of Jackie Monies and Chuck Leinweber I now have a Facebook page that works, and I  am impressed at how many people have joined up.

My thoughts are that I’ll use this blog for mostly technical stuff, tools, ( I’ve another one to report on, have the photos and will do that in a couple of days) building, projects, and such, and use the facebook for more social stuff and interactions with everyone “out there”.

So if you have not caught up with it, here is the link.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/440526479459574/

Today,  in about 6 hours I’m walking up the hill towing my suitcase, heading for the bus stop into the city where I’ll catch the airport shuttle,  this trip is a long one,  3 months, I’ll be back in late October.

I've several boat shows to attend, sailing events, SCAMP Camps,  Red Lantern Rally, and lots of driving.  I'll be visiting several JW builders, seeing a lot of new places and meeting friends new and old. 

Travel at this time of year is not a bad idea, its summer in the USA, and here we’ve just had the coldest day for more than 60 years, its raining right now and my heater is on full. So I’ve got to pack, tidy the ship and switch all the systems off, go and rob the bank, then its make that walk up to the road and along to the glass bus stop with the amazing view out over the sea.

Spring is just around the corner. Well, several corners and a couple of straights really.

Three minutes and forty four seconds.

Not a lot, you cant do much in that small amount of time.  I can type about 100 words, walk a hundred and fifty yards at a gentle pace, paddle around twice that if I am pushing it along, or brew a cup of tea.

Today I’m working on taking off the plank offsets for SEI, and I can tell you that although it’s not a complicated job, it takes a great deal more time than that. I’ve been on it most of the afternoon and it’s a job nearly done.

But todays time here in the southern hemisphere between sunrise and sunset will be three minutes and forty four seconds longer than the shortest day a couple of weeks ago. The seasons are heading for springtime and we’ll soon be able to tell the difference! 

I will be heading for summertime in 10 days time though, the long trip to Port Townsend has become an annual event for me, SCAMP Camp is a fixture these days, usually run just before the Port Townsend Wooden Boat festival in September this one has had to be scheduled early due to the Maritime Center being booked for our usual time so I am in there in a couple of weeks time being a Schoolmaster teaching people to put their kits together.

It’s a long trip, and most of the airlines go through LAX That place is my least favourite airport on the planet and I’d got to great lengths to avoid travelling through there, so this time I’ve managed to get a decent deal on the tickets with Hawaiian Air, flying via Hawaii then into SeaTac. No I don’t get a stopover, drat.

But its going to be an interesting northern hemisphere summer for me, Jackie Monies and I are touring, from Port Townsend to Michigan, back to Toledo Or for their boat show, then Port Townsend for the Wooden Boat Festival, then wandering south to Oklahoma, Texas and the Port Aransas PlyWooden Boat show.

Once we can get our heads together in PT we’ll be working out where we’ll be, who we can call on, what we’re doing. Our thoughts are to post our schedule so people will know when we’re in their area, stop for a day to meet builders and interested people, talk boats and other nonsense, then drive to the next stop.

All this takes time, more than the 90 days that my visitors permit allows, so I have to leave not only the country but “neighbouring countries and Island territories” as well.  So it looks as though we’re going to Belize, just for a few days. 

Could be a lot worse.

It will be well into spring when I get home to New Zealand again.

Hope to see you somewhere along the way.

JW