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Showing posts from January, 2018

Step 2: Build the girder!

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You don't have to start with the girder but as the most complicated part of the core frame I wanted to get it out of the way. Along the line I made a few mistakes with recoveries that might help (see further down). First things first, shape the stem (a jigsaw did a good job). Move one was measure out the vertical offsets from the side of the build box and put blocks around the two ply sheets to hold them in place. Then I glued in the stem and CB uprights next to give me some solid end points for the long horizontal pieces and started filling in the rest. Wood used was spruce for the stem, girder top and anything around the CB, lighter Western Red Cedar on all other pieces. I made mine in two pieces then glued together. Mainly because my building top isn't flat.... (see below) Once together I quickly added the top layer and then setup strings to test for flatness and added shims until everything lined up. My approach was to stretch the stri
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Step 1. Get bits sorted out.

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After a bunch of phoning around we sourced our wood and a laser cutting service. Guillermo at Ikon Displays in Otay Mesa came back with both a good price on the job and an 8' x 4' machine that could easily handle the ply sheets. A couple of other places in SD came back with good hourly rates but had smaller machines that would require extra work. Otay Mesa is pretty far from our North County base in Oceanside but the best ply quote came from Forest Plywood who could deliver to their facility in National City and searching around we found that TH&H in MiraMesa had a good stock of Sitka Spruce and Western Red Cedar so we borrowed a truck and made a round trip of the three locations. All three of these companies have been excellent to work with. Ikon uses Illustrator to manage their cutting files and the autocad files didn't properly extract scale (there are old work arounds for this but the current state of software meant these have changed). Guillermo came up wi
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Getting started!

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Having decided at the end of 2017 to build a couple of boats Jeff and myself are right at the beginning. We've bought plans and registered sail numbers, sourced plywood from Forest (currently waiting for pickup in Chula Vista), found a place with a suitable laser that will cut the sheets (Ikon Displays in Otay Mesa) and have a shopping trip planned to get hold of spruce and western red cedar for the stringers and frame doublers. A lot of time has been spent reading existing blogs and pouring over the plans and instructions so we have a rough idea what we're doing. Our garages have "strong boxes" built and awaiting the next stage. These are 12'x3' frames on which the hulls are made. Below is my strong box. It's going to be double skinned to prevent twist - I'm trying to make it possible to wheel my in progress boat to the edge of the garage when not in so much progress, so my wife can park and her black car doesn't have to bake in the sun this
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