Website and Blog Making Progress Slowly but with Determination!

Those of you who have been patient enough to be checking back to see how progress is going on the new website and the blog deserve an explanation about what is happening.

Due to an excess of work and looming deadlines, Ive been caught between devoting time to the workshop and to development of the new website and the blog. Jobs in the workshop are well in hand (and must take priority), but by September my contracted work will be complete, and Ill then be turning my attention to fun jobs in the workshop, and lots more writing and design work. With good luck and sensible management, this should result in lots more articles and the publication of a stack of designs I have sitting in the wings waiting for finishing touches. Yes, I know you may have heard me say such things before, but I really am ploughing through the work at the moment, and I have for many months now had a moratorium on taking on any new building/repair work.

Tomorrow Ill post some photos of recent work, and a list of current jobs. One particularly interesting project is the building of a sixteen-sided mast for a large sailing dinghy. This mast is unusual in that it is not only hollow, but the wall thickness tapers as the mast tapers, so the wall-thickness as a percentage of mast diameter remains constant. Another interesting feature of this mast is that it incorporates an in-mast hinge - sort of like a tabernacle without a tabernacle (see Woodenboat Magazine #237 for the idea)

Here is a slice off a test section of my mast construction method. There is a very good reason for the angle being cut into one side of each stave, rather than half the angle being taken of each side as they used to do it in the old days. Maybe I tell you why some day...

The sixteen-sided method is probably too labour-intensive to be practical without a production set-up, but the experiment has provided me with valuable insights, and has been R&D time well spent. Maybe eight-sided next time? The method does have advantages over the Birds Mouth method, mainly in providing the ability to taper wall thickness as well as diameter - all in a home workshop.

Im just beginning to come to grips with some of the complexities of the website program and associated plug-ins, so there will be gradual (but accelerating) addition of content and pages. Further down the track will come video tutorials on some interesting stuff.

Facebook and Twitter have me somewhat stumped at the moment, but that will improve with time - especially after workshop commitments are complete.

Read More..

Sheathing a Hull with Glass and Epoxy

Over the years Ive discovered a number of building issues which people find intimidating, and one of those is the process of sheathing a hull with glass cloth and epoxy.

As with most things in small boat construction, glass sheathing is not difficult, but it must be done the correct way if one is to avoid a bad result. It is just as expensive and time consuming to do things the wrong way as it is to do it properly, so some research and preparation is time well spent! There many correct ways to do the job, but Im going to give you a very brief insight into the method which works for me. Because of space and time limitations, this is just the most basic demonstration. I hope it helps.

Prepare surfaces with longboard and other sanders. Round-over edges

Fill gaps with epoxy and sanding filler

Re-sand all surfaces with 80-grit paper to provide a good "tooth" for the epoxy, and thoruoghly vacuum the dust

Fill any minor blemishes and sand details

Drape hull with glass cloth and cut roughly to size

Tape overlaping areas and edges in place with a few pieces of masking tape

Smooth out cloth with a dry brush held at about 45 degrees to the surface

Trim overhanging edges with shears or scissors

Ready for epoxy

I did one side at a time on this job, so I peeled back one side and held it in place with lead weights

Mix up small batches of epoxy, pour on in sections, and spread with a squeegee held at a shallow angle. Dont press too hard, or the mix will become aerated. Just gently move it over the surface and allow a few minutes for the cloth to wet-out. Dont worry about an even finish yet - just distribute the resin and allow the wetting-out to proceed on its own.

Attend to details such as the dry edges with a disposable brush

Continue working downwards until the whole section is completely wet-out. There is no rush, as long as you continue working out from a wet edge.

When completely wet-out, remove excess resin using a squeegee initially, and then finish off with a dry foam roller. The aim is to remove all liquid resin from the surface, leaving just the wet cloth with no puddles

The result should look like this - an even, textured surface with no pools of liquid resin. The glass cloth should be in direct contact with the timber, and not be floating in puddles anywhere.

Another good example of a proper finish after the initial wetting-out coat.

After the first coat has cured to the point where it has stuck the glass to the surface, but before it has fully cured, a second coat can be rolled or brushed on to fill the weave of the cloth. This is usually followed by a third coat a few hours later. In this photo you can see how the weave of the cloth has disappeared.

Here is the hull at a later stage after the hull has been sanded. Because of the fill coats, and the smooth application process, the sanding was done without cutting into the cloth - just the fill coats of epoxy were sanded.

For bigger jobs, extra hands are required to get things done before the epoxy goes off. On this 22ft hull, we had my wife, the owner/builder, and myself all working in a team

The result speaks for itself

Read More..

CNC Boat Kit Agreement with Francois Vivier

The following Press Release was Sent Yesterday

For Immediate Release Clinton B. Chase, Jr.
Tuesday, March 2, 2010 Sole Proprietor, Clint Chase Boatbuilder

Clint Chase Boatbuilder US Agent for François Vivier Architecte Naval; Brings CNC Boat Kits to New Boat Builders

Portland, Maine –Clint Chase is pleased to announce that Clint Chase Boatbuilder will now be a US agent for precision cut boat kits for François Vivier, a prolific designer of ships, yachts, and traditional small craft in France. Additionally, Clint Chase is contracting with other designers around the world to bring new boats and CNC (Computer Numerically Cut) boat kits to our market for the first time. Vivier’s design work is iconic in France and other EU countries and is bound to become equally iconic to the wooden boatbuilding and boat kit industry in North America.

We are also providing CNC kits to designs by Michael Storer, from Adelaide, Australia, Eric Risch, from Gardner, Maine, and we are in talks with designers in the UK, Finland, and New Zealand. CNC cutters in Maine will be employed to cut the kits and ship them by freight. Cutters in North Carolina and soon Texas will also be employed in the greater effort to get kits into the hands of builders around the country.

Clint has been cutting kits for several months, but is impressed by the interest in CNC boat kits by potential customers, the wooden boat community, and designers whom he has contacted. About a recent kit delivery, a customer in Houston, Texas said, “[the Goat Island Skiff] is a very nice kit overall. I looked at the wood grain pattern of the tank tops and transom, a very nice selection! The crate shows that you care about the things you build. Everything was well packed and labeled.”

"I applaud Clints approach to bring international boat designers kits to the North American market. There are so many creative ideas for small boats around the globe and Clint is approaching this in just the right way. We all wish him well. At the WoodenBoat Show [www.thewoodenboatshow.com] this year (June 25-27, at Mystic Seaport, CT), we are taking a new approach to Family BoatBuilding [www.familyboatbuilding.com]. For the first time, we will be inviting independent kit-producing companies to exhibit and to teach families and groups how to build their own boats. Clint was one of the first to contact us, and we are delighted that he will be building the Echo Bay Dory Skiff with a number of families. Clint is the consummate teacher, and we are excited to have him helping us."
---Carl Cramer, publisher of Wooden Boat Magazine and Professional Boatbuilder

Clint Chase is a graduate of The Landing School of Boatbuilding and Design in Kennebunkport, Maine. He started Clint Chase Boatbuilder after four years running youth boatbuilding programs. The three pillars of the business are: ultra-light, wooden masts and spars (“Birdsmouth” spars for sailboats), custom wood and composite oars, and precision-cut, CNC Boat Kits. In the US, there is a growing popularity and demand for CNC plywood kits for exceptional motor, sail, and rowboat designs from 8-28 feet. However, there are only a few kit providers in the market from which customers can choose and none that are reaching out to designers abroad to bring their beautiful boats to the US market. For more information please visit http://www.clintchaseboatbuilder.com or see our exhibit (building #2, display 19) at the 2010 Maine Boatbuilders Show (March 19-21st at The Portland Company Complex in Portland, Maine).

Read More..

New Francois Vivier designed Yawl with Clint Chase

Francois Vivier and Clint Chase are busy designing a new dayboat/weekender. This has been a fun collaboration and we have a lot more work to do. By this time next year, it is planned that we will be building this boat in our shop for our family use and for showing in 2012. Francoiss boats are designed with a CAD-CAM approach, meaning the drawings are done in the computer, files are generated, and these files can be used to do CNC cutting of all the drawn boat parts, such as bulkheads, molds, and planking. Some of the design requirements were:

· To be trailerable by an ordinary car, and therefore light, and be able to beach temporarily for loading/unloading.

· To have a large, wide and deep cockpit, comfortable, allowing for fishing and a place where children could be safe.

· To have a stable hull for family sailing but give excellent performance for weekend sails “with the guys”.

· To have a cuddy cabin, with a toilet for women and children, a small galley to heat some meals and two berths to spend a night or two on board, or for napping.

What I am most excited about is getting my kids out sailing again.

Read More..

Fleet Videos of performance with Two Different Motors

As some of you already know, Fleet is a planing-hull derivative of my very successful Flint design. For some background you can look at this post and at this post.

Fleet awaiting more trial runs

Fleet was designed from the outset to perform well in the very speed/length ratio spectrum in which normal planing hulls are at their worst. By that I mean the so-called "semi-displacement" or "semi-planing" range - widely thought to be in the S/L ratio range of 1.5 to 2.5.

Speed/Length ratio is basically the speed of a boat (expressed in knots), divided by the square root of the waterline-length (expressed in feet) of the boat. So let us take Fleet as an example: -

• LWL (length on the waterline) equals 14 feet
• Assume S/L ratio of 2.5
• Speed divided by 2.5 equals 3.74 (i.e. square root of 14 ft LWL)
• Therefore, Speed in knots equals 2.5 times 3.74
• Speed equals 9.35 knots (10.8 mph, or 17.3kph)

Now those speeds sound modest, but for a small boat like Fleet it represents a very satisfying speed indeed. More importantly, because this hull has been proportioned to operate within this S/L ratio, the boat trims well, instead of pointing her bow in the air like the standard planing hulls, which chew fuel at a high rate just to pull a large wake.

So far Ive been able to carry out several test runs in Fleet using both a 9.8hp Tohatsu two-stroke and a 2hp Honda four-stroke. The 9.8hp Tohatsu is based on the powerhead from the 6hp and 8hp models, so is suitable for this light-weight boat. My next test will be using a 4hp motor, which I think is about the optimum size from an efficiency perspective. In my part of Australia, 4hp (2.9kW) is the largest motor allowed without boat registration.

Here are two Youtube clips - firstly using the 2hp Honda, with which I achieved a consistent 7.9 knots measured by GPS with my weight aboard, and 7.1 knots with my wife joining me (she only weighs 60kg/132lbs. The 9.8 Tohatsu gave 15.5 knots (17.8 mph or 28.6 kph) with two heavy men aboard plus gear.

Read More..

Star 45 Construction Planking with edge glueing

[Star45] Update on planking bottom with edge glueing.

John Fisher is ready { 4/19/2007 } to glass his latest boat and is sharing how he planked it. His dad built a ply sided, cedar planked star using titebond II and it came out pretty light and stiff. With this information I started to build another hull using the same materials. He felt that edge gluing the planks added a lot of the strength to his boat. John didnt want to glue in extra wood to hold the pins to keep the planks in place for the glue to dry, so I combined two methods of planking. John liked the quickness of planking with CA and kicker, but it lacked stiffness when sanding the bottom before glassing. So he decided to edge glue the planks and then tack them in place to the frames with CA.

In this photo you can see where John put drops of CA on the planks. The wood is slightly darker.


It worked well. John has an edge glued bottom and he was able to plank it in one evening. To do this John first spray the frames with kicker, then apply titebond III to the edge of the planks. He then would hold the plank in place, tight against the previous plank, and apply a drop of CA to each frame to hold it in place. It did not matter where John started, bow, stern, or middle, but do make sure the CA has set up before moving to the next frame. Once the whole plank was in place he came back and wiped off the extra titebond. To fair the bottom to the sides he used a $10, 6" plane from home depot set at .010" depth of cut. It quickly removed the cedar and a little sanding finished the job.

John had one plank that was too thin that he had to remove, it was harder than expected. He had the use quite a bit of force to break the glue joint at each frame, so he is confident that this method is strong. John will also use this for balsa planked bottoms.

In photo # 10 you can see the stern still needs to be trimmed and sanded. John will probably use a saw to trim in close and then sand to fair it.

Read More..

Spritsail with Jib Set Flying

When I posted about the Sailing Pilot Boat-inspired design that I have started for Geoff Leedham, I was reminded about how much I like the Spritsail rig with a jib set flying.

Bertil Anderssons drawing of Lotsbat Skum

Back in about 1998, I think, I was working over what I thought would be the optimum-sized boat for solo and two-up beach-cruising ( see post here). The whole process became an obsession, and one of the things that I worked over in minute detail was the choice of rig. Over many decades I had sailed my existing boat with a range of different rigs, and had gathered a worthwhile amount of general daysailing and cruising experience using un-conventional rigs.

After much head-scratching, I settled on the spritsail with a flying jib (i.e. a headsail not hanked onto a stay), having been influenced by the writing of a number of people, of whom Phil Bolger was the most influential.

Why the spritsail? Here are my reasons: -

• I wanted the shortest practical spars, and in particular, I want to be able to store the spars inside the boat. Several reputable authorities had written that the spritsail sets the maximum sail area on the minimum length mast;
• A jib or staysail would be nice when sailing to windward - particularly a flying jib on an un-stayed mast;
• The rigging needed to be very simple, and preferably easy to make and repair by hand using wood and line;
• It was important to me that the centre-of-areas in the sail-plan be as low as possible to reduce the heeling moment;
• The possibility of using the mainsail as a boomless sail as well as being usable with aboom was desirable. In really tough conditions, a boomless sail is a safety feature, as there is no boom to trip during a knockdown - you can alway ease a boomless sail but not so a boomed one;
• A spritsail can be brailed if properly set-up.

The above list made lots of sense to me, but the overwhelming advantage seemed to be that the spritsail is one of the very few rigs which can carry a jib without any shrouds or back-stays. Any headsail needs plenty of tension in the luff or else it will sag off to leeward, drastically damaging windward performance. Usually the rig with a headsail of any sort needs shrouds with plenty of drift, and/or backstays in order to keep the luff taught.  A friend of mine who sails a Bolger Folding Schooner finds that it is necessary to drop his jib when going to windward, because the boat goes faster without it! This is because there are no stays and the jib sags badly when on the wind.

In the case of the spritsail, the sprit is placed under considerable compression by the snotter at the lower end (the heel end of the sprit). This compression is required to hold the head of the mainsail up and out and to keep the head of the mainsail taut.

Here you can see how the sprit pushes the head of the mainsail upwards and outwards

The above photo illustrates how the sprit tensions the head of the mainsail. The tension in the head of the sail is transmitted to the masthead, where it pulls aft strongly (somewhat like stays) and that, in turn, puts tension in the luff of the jib. A wonderful side effect is that as the wind gets stronger, the tension in the head of the sail gets greater, with the result that the tension in the luff of the jib increases just when it is needed - all in a rig which can be made by hand from a few bits of wood and some line!

Phoenix III getting to windward in fresh conditions with the jib standing very well, despite the lack of stays. In most other free-standing rigs the luff of the jib would be sagging badly.

Here is the same boat in even windier conditions, with a reef in the mainsail. Despite the reefed main and the blustery wind, the jib is standing very well once again. Note how the sprit snotter has been stretched by the stong wind and consequent high tension on the snotter - the crease from throat to clew highlights the problem - but the jib is fine.

In the photo above, the winds are lighter, but the boat is being sailed without the jib. Despite the lighter winds, the head of the mast is bending aft because there is no jib providing support. The mast bend has reduced head tension in the mainsail, allowing the unwanted throat to clew crease to form. Phoenix III was designed to balance well with or without the jib. Note how the tiller is pretty much centred, indicating that there is very little weatherhelm despite having only the mainsail set.

No rig is perfect, but the sprit rig offers simplicity, drive, low centre-of-area, short spars, and the ability to set a jib effectively without any stays. Perhaps the Scandinavians, Melanesians, Chinese, Dorymen, and Thames Bargemen, to name just a few, were several steps ahead of us...

Read More..

Covering Star45 model hull with fiberglass and epoxy resin

From: "John Fisher" racer577 at citystar.com
I have used the 3.2 oz satin weave on 7 boats now. The first was a single layer and now that hull is 4 or 5 years olds it is showing wear and tear. I went to using 2 layers to help with durability and to have more material for sanding. Another thing I like about the cloth is that is drapes very nicely and easily will cover the hull with one pc. On my 10Rs I have used 2 yards folded in half to do the hull. On the star I was concerned that it would be too wide for a single yard. I ended up with more than enough material so I cut it on the diagonal.

The glassing starts by laying the glass over the hull. Then I smooth it out so there are no wrinkles. This may take a couple of min. Then I repeat with the next layer. Once the glass is smooth, time for epoxy. I used the 209/105 west systems combination. I used about 10 pumps of material.

I start applying resin to the middle of the bottom with a cheap paint brush. Then I work my way out to the edges of the bottom. Next I do the sides. You need to use lots of resin and dont pull too much or you will pucker the cloth. Once everything is wetted out I go back with a squigee and remove the excess resin. Dont get to carried away or the cloth will go dry again. If in doubt of how this should look practice on a spare block of wood first to get a feel for how the cloth looks as you take out resin.

I did the glassing at about 8 pm and with the 105/209 the resin is still green at 7 am the next morning. When green the glass can be trimmed with a #11 blade in a hobby knife. Then wait another day or two until sanding for full cure. I dont like to do much sanding, instead I try and do most of my fairing by using a thick primer and sanding most of it off between coats. For a clear boat I use polyurethane for a top coat.

Read More..

A world with options

Very much worth reading (and acting upon), a little good news, and the word of the day is S-T-E-A-M-P-U-N-K...

Some time ago a rigger of note came up with a very cool clutch system for sailboats that worked great, did little or no damage to the line, and from the looks of it should be cheaper than existing systems due to its overall simplicity of materials and labor.

This one in fact...



Yeah, the Chinese handcuffs clutch... A small block of alloy with a few holes drilled in it, some Kernmantle cover, and a bit of string. Something an inspired DIYer could throw together for $10- $20 bucks a pop with a little sweat equity and a bit of cunning. No rocket science involved but brilliant all the same.

That said, once the idea became a product of the yachting sort not all that affordable anymore.

Of course, the choice of paths is up to you but its nice to know you have options...

Listening to Kitty, Daisy, & Lewis

So it goes...

Read More..

Some cat rigs with a French flavor

A good way to spend a day out on the water, politicians in France unanimously doing the right thing (think about that for a minute), and just in case you have not been paying attention...

Over at Voiles Alternative theres a great discussion of the fabled "Punch" catboats from the design office of Phillipe Harle that you might want to check out.

Listening to Ingrid Michaelson

So it goes...

Read More..

Website Being filled with More Content At Last!

Have been working too hard in the workshop, and blog entries have suffered. However, paid building jobs are almost finished, and the website is being populated with several design page entries, and an increasing number of items on the "Shop" page.

After mid-September, I will be working predominantly on designs, website content, small video production, and more regular blog entries. Ive got a stack of material from workshop jobs over the last year or so - have just been lacking time to edit photos, write copy, and publish material.

Much more to come very soon.

http://www.baysidewoodenboats.com.au/

Read More..