Basically we have a little more varnish to do on the transom and we need to seat the centerboard and pivot pin and install the rope fender. For now though we need to shift gears to the Friendship sloop. We have been going over the rigging and the blocks and will soon start the yearly varnishing and painting. When that is done we will return to the Penny Fee. At that point we will be working mostly on accessories.

The finished hull. Look carefully and you will see standing rigging for the Friendship sloop hanging around the shop as we mend the service, redo the blacking and, and overhaul leathering.

Blocks for the Friendship getting an overhaul.

It will then be time to go to work on the oars, rudder, finish the centerboard, make up floorboards, attach hardware, look at making up some spars and a sail.

Gee other than that we are done.

In the meantime, here are some pictures of the finished hull all painted and nearly ready for those last touches and accessories.

If you would like to read all the posts related to this project together, go to the category at the right called “Penny Fee” and click on it. It will pull all the posts on the penny fee onto one page for you.

With the benches in and the hanging knees in, the main job was painting.  Working in two shifts, we managed to get three topcoats of paint on the entire interior over a week. Each day I would go to the shop early and either do some painting, or more often some prep-work. Then, in the evening after work, we would paint for an hour or so.

Two other projects were going on at the same time; I have been trying to get the centerboard finished up, and getting the foredeck finished.  The foredeck was a design change of my own and was based, originally on three factors. The first factor is that I don’t like and never have liked open bows. The “V” shaped bow area of a small boat is a place where ankles get twisted and people lose their balance; a foredeck largely eliminates this factor. The second factor is quite simply that we want to have storage space and the space below the foredeck will meet this need. The third factor was that when we started this boat, our ship’s wolf, Saxon, was having more difficulty getting from the dinghy to the deck of the Friendship. The foredeck was intended to giver her more height and a better, more stable place to stand and jump for the boat. Since she passed away, this factor no longer applies, but it was an important element, when we were making our original design choices.

The foredeck will be installed as one panel, and creating that one panel by laminating pieces together and then shaping it so that it fits snugly where it will be installed has taken a lot of time and head scratching. With any luck I will make the last adjustments and prime it over the next few days.

Dry-fitting the foredeck

The centerboard has been difficult only because of the many coats of epoxy, 4oz fiberglass cloth on the leading edge, and subsequent paint. It is just one of the projects that to date has had eight gluing sessions, three paint sessions, and will have six more paint sessions before it is complete, and the end result will just be a single piece that has a hole in it on which to pivot. It gets more complicated because after four fittings to make sure that the centerboard fit correctly when I went to check it a fifth time, it did not fit. The combination of layers of paint, epoxy and fiberglass has added enough thickness to cause the centerboard to jam. So, I have had to start sanding and removing layers and veneers on the centerboard, and then we will have to start the painting again.

Despite this annoying delay, the painting continues and the foredeck will get glued in this week with the caps for the centerboard well. At this point in the project, it is hard not to work on it. A few minutes spent looking at and enjoying what we have created makes me want to pick up a tool or brush and do just a little bit more, and then a little bit more, and perhaps just this little bit more….

I think this shot and the next show off the shape of the boat well

Just a little more work...

If you would like to read all the posts related to this project together, go to the category at the right called “Penny Fee” and click on it. It will pull all the posts on the penny fee onto one page for you.

With centerboard trunk installed and the benches cut and fitted, it was time to take the benches back out of the boat and begin the laborious process of prepping the interior of the Penny Fee for paint. This is another one of those jobs totally lacking in any form of glamor. For example one job consisted of mixing thickened epoxy and pouring it into the low points of the laps where they intersect with the floor timbers. The purpose of this is that water coming into the boat, when it rains for example, will drain to the bilge so that it can be pumped out more easily and will not pool in a dozen places. It sounds easy enough, but the boat needs to be even on her waterline and the exact right amount of epoxy needs to be mixed and poured in each space or there are overflow problems. The long and short of this is that it takes a lot of time.

With the low spots filled and the benches removed the interior sanding could be started. Basically the less said about this job the better, except to say that it needs to be done before the primer can be applied. Equally important and uninteresting is the cleaning and vacuuming of the interior. Anyway with all this prep work done it was time to start the priming of the interior.

Priming the interior

The good and bad of the priming is that now you can really see how good (or bad) a job you did with the prep work. As I applied the primer, I became less and less resentful of all that prep-work. While not perfect, the end result was smooth and easy on the eye, and will make the application of topcoats of paint easier.

While the primer was drying we started on the base coats of varnish on the interior of the transom (the only part of the boat that is varnished). And we started in on the sheer strake. The sheer strake is a bottle green. The paint scheme is designed to match that of our Friendship sloop, which has bottle green bulwarks.

Sheer strake painted

Once the primer had cured we started on the top-coats of paint on the interior sections of the boat that would be easier to paint with the benches removed.  This is particularly true for the interior of the fwd and aft storage compartments.

Finish coats applied to the bilges and storage compartment interiors

Now that we have two coats of primer and three coats of paint on the bilges, the interior storage compartments and the underside of the benches, it is time to glue the benches into their final positions.

Dryfitting the benches before gluing

The actual gluing is not that big a deal, but we had needed to make up the hanging knees for the benches as well. I had already ripped white oak strips and steamed them to the correct curves. We glued these up and had our hanging knees ready to go.  You can see the steam bent curves of white oak here.

After laminating, we will cut two hanging knees out of each of the curves of wood.

We got so involved with the gluing in of the benches and the hanging knees, that I never got any pictures of us installing them. Perhaps just as well not to get the camera coated with epoxy. Anyway you can see one of the knees glued into place here.

With benches and the hanging knees glued into the boat, we changed gears a bit. We still need to install the foredeck, but have put that off in order to continue on with the painting. The only reason that we have done this is that I am getting antsy about wanting to get to work on the annual chores on the Friendship sloop, if we can get enough painting done this week, I can turn my back on the Penny Fee for a bit, work on the Friendship, and know that the worst of the painting on the Penny Fee is over with.  I emphasize the “worst” of the painting because I have been dreading the painting of the gunwales with the spaces between the inner and outer wales and the attendant difficulties of painting them without creating many many drips and runs in the paint.

We got the two coats of primer on the rest of the boat (including the gunwales), and will try to get to at least one finish coat before we break from this project. On the whole, we have made a lot of progress in the last six weeks, and I am now much more confident that we will be able to launch and get some use out of this lovely boat this summer. Whew…

Interior primed and ready for finish coats

If you would like to read all the posts related to this project together, go to the category at the right called “Penny Fee” and click on it. It will pull all the posts on the penny fee onto one page for you.

In our last exciting episode we were struggling with seat supports and gearing up for multiple coats of paint on the interior surfaces of the centerboard trunk. Since then we gave the interior of the centerboard trunk two coats of epoxy-paint-primer, three coats of topcoat, and three coats of antifouling paint. While we were painting we primed the sheer strake and the outwale of the boat and got the exterior of the boat ready for its final coats of paint.

Two halves of the centerboard trunk in foreground and the Penny Fee in the background

While paint drying we started to fit the blocking for the oarlocks. We had bought the actual oarlocks a year ago on sale, and now it was time fit them into the gunwales. Once they have been fitted we will leave them in place right up until the interior painting of the boat. They will be removed for this step and then will be bedded in marine bedding compound and permanently installed.

Blocking for oarlocks

Oarlock in place

With interior of the trunk painted we glued the two halves together and got the trunk ready for installation. The centerboard trunk, as is always the case in small boats of this nature, has taken a lot of time and work to complete, but this is also the part of the boat that is most likely to cause problems if it is not completed carefully.

Centerboard trunk glued together

Because of the placement of one of the floor timbers cut into the aft end of the centerboard trunk, and because the base of the trunk is the same width as the keelson, the alignment of the trunk during installation is easy. What is not easy is dealing with the squeeze-out of epoxy inside the trunk as it is secured. You see, you need to be able to get under the boat and reach up inside the centerboard slot to clean this out, and you can’t do that while the boat is sitting on the boat table. However,  when I decided to go with the table method of building the boat,  was aware that this issue would arise and my plan has to do with the fact that the tabletop is made using two pieces of plywood. The plan was to unscrew the two pieces from the frame and separate them leaving a space big enough to get under the boat and reach up and clean off the squeeze-out in the centerboard slot. This method worked pretty well and the process of shifting the boat made me again appreciate the lightness of the vessel.

Opening in the boat table

With centerboard trunk in place, we continued to work on the interior of the boat. The forward bulkhead with the framed opening for the hatch that will eventually go there was glued into place. We also measured out and cut the two seats that run crosswise in the boat. These were fairly easy projects.

Centerboard trunk in place

Rowing benches and fwd bulkhead

More difficult was the layout for the aft benches. The primary difficulty lay in trying to lay out the pieces of the aft benches so that we could get all of the pieces out of the Spanish Cedar bought for the purpose and not have a lot of waste or have to try and find more.

Starting on the aft benches

While the benches were being fitted I was also making adjustments to where the mast step and mast partners were located.

The Penny Fee plans come with an extraordinary number of options for the rig; lug sloop, lug yawl, gaff rig, gaff yawl—just not the rig we are looking for. All of these rigs have advantages. They are all beautiful, to my eye anyway, and I am sure they all sail well. They are, however, all more complicated than what we are looking for in a sailing launch for our Friendship Sloop.  What we want is something that we can set and strike with as little fuss as possible, has minimal spars, and those spars need to fit comfortably into the boat. After much thought (nearly two years) we have opted to go with our original instincts and chose the sprit rig.

The reasons for this are multiple and are rooted in simplicity. First, we have a loose-footed main. No boom means that the sail can be brailed up against the mast and the boat can be rowed without the need to strike the mast and sail. Second we get away with a mast and sprit that are the same length and shorter than the mast for the lug rig. Third, the sail area and shape of the sprit-sail is almost identical to the lug sloop rig which should result in very little change in performance. The center of effort of the sail is a little bit lower which should make the boat a little stiffer. The center of effort is also a few inches farther forward than on the lug sloop, we will correct for this by slightly adjusting the position of the mast step and partners. If you look at the drawings below; the first one is the lug sloop as drawn as part of the boat plans we bought. The second drawing shows the modification to the sprit rig. You can see yourself the differences and similarities.

Sail plan for the Penny Fee as a lug sloop

Our plan for the sprit rig for the Penny Fee

In essence we have changed little about sail area and placement, but have reduced the number of spars by one and the length of the remaining spars by at least a foot. Lastly, we have chosen a rig that has only three pieces of rigging, a sheet, a halyard, and a line called a snotter. Awesome.

If you would like to read all the posts related to this project together, go to the category at the right called “Penny Fee” and click on it. It will pull all the posts on the penny fee onto one page for you.

After making the cardboard templates for the bulkheads we went on to make the bulkheads themselves out of the left over marine grade plywood from the planks. Using the same basic method utilizing cardboard templates, we started in on the floor timbers. We glued in the first three floor timbers over the weekend.

Aft bulkhead glued into place

Fitting the floor timbers in the boat

Next we started in on the centerboard trunk. Mostly this consisted of making up the individual parts of the centerboard trunk and gluing them together to make the two halves of the trunk. We will not glue the two halves together until the interior surfaces of the trunk have been painted. We had finished coating the centerboard with epoxy, and before getting too far along on the centerboard trunk, we did a dry-fit to make sure centerboard and trunk were going to fit together properly.

One aspect of the centerboard and trunk that I wanted to elaborate on is the pivot pin for the centerboard. The actual pin arrangement is not made as clear as I would like in the drawings. It seems to call for a tube that is set though the trunk of the centerboard and centerboard as well that has a bronze pin inside it. I have a lot of experience reading blueprints, but could not make sense out of the drawing. My concern with the pivot pin is that since it is below waterline, this is a potential place for water to seep into the wood of the centerboard, or the wood of the trunk.

I finally decided that what I would do is to make a sort of epoxy bushing for the 38” bronze pin. The pin will be cut a little short, and either end of the hole for the pin will be filled with Boat-Life polysulfide, before we cover the ends of the holes with the “squishy rubber” gasket and plate that the design calls for. What we did was to bore out a 1” hole where the 3/8” bronze pin would go in the centerboard and in the two trunk sides.

Next we coated the sides of the holes with raw epoxy. Then we filled the hole with the thickened epoxy mix and let it set. We put waxed paper under the hole so that the glue does not attach the piece of the boat to the surface that it rests on. When the glue is dry the waxed paper pulls right off. Waxed paper is one of the materials that we use a lot of that you might not think is typical for a boat shop.

When the epoxy had set we drilled out the 3/8” holes for the bronze pin, and there you have it; epoxy bushings that seal the marine environment out while providing a stable and tough surface for the pin to pivot on.

You can see the first couple of steps in the process on the centerboard itself here.

We now need to paint the interior surfaces of the centerboard well before we glue the two halves together, otherwise we would have to paint the interior with some sort of narrow roller on a stick arrangement, and we may have to do subsequent paint coats this way, but while we can paint these surfaces easily and well, it seemed like a good time to take this on.

While all this was going on, we also started in on the oars, or I should say we started in on the first set of the oars. Eventually we expect to have two sets of oars, but for now we want to try out one pair before committing to a second set. The oars will be 9’ 6 ¼” long. We contemplated spoon bladed oars, but they would require additional time that we don’t have right now, and are not in keeping with the work-boat function that we are striving for, so regular oars will do. We are using kiln-dried spruce to make the oars light and inexpensive. I should say that although the plans are very detailed for the Penny Fee, and although just about every spar combination has been meticulously drawn out, there are no notes for oars. There are a number of formulas for calculating oar size. The simplest is to make the oar just a little shorter than twice the beam of the boat.

Starting to glue up the blades of the oar blanks

Adding thickness to the looms of the oar blanks

Oar blanks ready to start the rough shaping

If you are looking for a more specific formula I can recommend the Shaw and Tenney website. It gives a much more complicated formula that involves measuring the beam of the boat in inches, dividing that number by two, take the result and add two inches, divide the result by seven, then take that result and multiply by twenty five to get the final length in inches. The end result is an oar that is—wait for it—just shy of twice the beam of the boat. However, if you are afraid of making a mistake go to their site, check it out and do the math. They make a fantastic oar and they know what they are doing, we are making our own because we can save money that way. I calculate that what we will have spent in materials to make a pair of oars, including paint and epoxy will amount to about $35 a pair.

Seat supports. The other project that we have been working on are the seat supports that are glued into the insides of the hull to support the outboard ends of the seats. Cutting and fitting these pieces took more time than I would like because they are a complex shape and curve in two planes to match the inside surfaces of the hull. Having said that, I can also say that the plans make very good use of the interior laps to locate the correct placement and to facilitate the gluing of these pieces into place. Even so it was a challenge.

Gluing in seat supports

You can see the seat supports and aft bulkhead in place here

The next week will see the multiple coats of paint on the interior of the centerboard trunk, continued placement of the seat supports and we need to place the socket for the heel of the mast soon. Stay tuned….

If you would like to read all the posts related to this project together, go to the category at the right called “Penny Fee” and click on it. It will pull all the posts on the penny fee onto one page for you.

Case in point: I have a nephew who turned five this week. When I realized his birthday was just around the corner I began to stress over what to make. I could not think of anything. Then I started thinking about the time we spent together just after Christmas. I suddenly remembered playing on the floor with him with a bunch of wooden boats and fire trucks that I had made him, and he quite suddenly started asking me about a toy biplane that I had made for his older brother when he was little. He seemed fixated with the plane (which he is not allowed to touch) and I was a little surprised at the time because it is a rather simple toy, and not one of my more elaborate efforts. Once I recalled the conversation, however, I knew what I was going to make him.

The plane is an Albatross D-series fighter dating from World War I. The toy is made of varnished poplar. All parts are glued and doweled together for strength. It has a plexi-propeller disk, a design which I have found holds up better and is less prone to getting broken than a wooden propeller blade that turns on a spinner. A bear flies the plane, and the insignia on the fuselage is made up, but loosely based on the bear symbol of the city of Bern Switzerland.

It has been months since we have been able to work on our Penny Fee project, but with the arrival of March it looks like we might actually get something done on this lovely little boat.

If you cast your mind back to a much earlier post on this project (New Boat #8 ) you will recall that when we clamped the strakes together we used long battens screwed through the strakes to hold the planks together until the epoxy dried. We plugged those holes from the outside before we painted and flipped the boat. Now it was time to clean out the boat and plug the interior ends of those holes. This is one of those jobs that often gets glossed over because it is not all that romantic or glamorous to climb all over the bilge of a boat wielding putty knife and pot of epoxy spooge, but in fact it is vitally important; an unplugged hole in the bottom of the boat is a very bad thing.

Filling interior ends of screw holes

With the interior ends of the holes plugged, we needed to sand the interior.

While this was going on we were making the templates for the bulkheads. The plans do not call for bulkheads, but because of how we intend to use this boat as our launch, we want lockers fore and aft which will allow us to keep gear for the boat locked on board. In addition we want areas where we can put inflatable floatation. Knowing this we have figured out the location for our bulkheads and are making templates in cardboard. One of the nice things about lapstrake construction is that making templates is relatively easy because the section of the boat is made up of a series of short straight lines. We used a shop compass to get the templates close, and then hot-glued short pieces of cardboard onto the master template to make any corrections.

Cardboard template for aft bulkhead

Corrections made with scraps of cardboard and hot glue

We have also been working on the centerboard, which is made up of three layers of marine plywood leftover from the planking that have been glued together. The idea is to create a wing-like cross section to reduce drag through the water. The leading edge is simply rounded, but the trailing edge poses more of a challenge because it has a significant taper running from the bottom trailing edge up to about half its length, at this point I wanted to keep the aft edge of the board rectangular in profile so that the board will not twist or rattle in the centerboard trunk. This meant that as I shaped the trailing edge there would be a sort of scooped place halfway down the length of the board that would ease into a hydrodynamic trailing edge. In essence the problem was to scoop out some of the laminated plywood without raising the grain too much.

After some experimentation, the best tool for the job appeared to be a round-bottom plane that I originally bought for shaping the propellers of a full sized airplane that I built in High School (a story for another time).

Round-bottom plane

After roughing out the shape the rest of the shaping was simply done with a sander.

Roughing out the centerboard

The board will be coated in epoxy and the leading edge will be glassed with 4oz fiberglass to protect it from groundings.

The centerboard after shaping

Coating the centerboard with epoxy

Meanwhile the interior of the boat with all holes plugged, was sanded and cleaned. This allowed us to apply a sealer coat of epoxy to the interior below the waterline. The idea is to protect the interior if it has to sit with rainwater in it for any extended period of time.

Cleaning out the interior of the boat after sanding

Coating the interior with epoxy

With any luck we will be shaping floor timbers, finishing up the centerboard, and building the centerboard well soon.

If you would like to read all the posts related to this project together, go to the category at the right called “Penny Fee” and click on it. It will pull all the posts on the penny fee onto one page for you.

With all that has been going on this fall and winter, it has been very difficult to find any time to work on the Penny Fee. However, we still managed to get one or two things done. We have been working on finishing the gunwales. In order to do this we needed to make up both the breasthook and the transom knees that connect the inwales to the structure at the stem and to the transom. All three pieces are made from 6/4 white oak. The breasthook is made of two matched pieces that are splined together. We glued these in and backed up the glue with bronze fastenings.

breasthook

Transom knees with inwales in place

The outwales, which we installed last summer and were described in an earlier post, were glued to the outside top edge of the sheer strake. The inwales are glued to the inside edge of the sheer strake. The three parts together, outwale, sheer strake, and inwale, collectively make up the gunwale.

We wanted inwales that have spacer blocks, and the best way that I know of to get a symmetrical set was to glue the two strips that form the inner face of the gunwales  and spacers into one unit: sort of like a very narrow ladder.

The narrow ladder

Then, when the glue dried, rip the single unit into the two respective, matched inwales.

Dry fit of inwales

This done we dry-fitted the whole together. There was a long interval between the dry fitting and finally getting to do the gluing, but eventually we got it done. As with every other step in glued-epoxy-construction, we spent almost as much time taping off areas and scraping and cleaning the glue that was squeezed out by the clamps as we did making the parts to be glued.

Gluing in the inwales

With gunwales installed the boat is much stiffer and I feel better about getting into the boat to finish the glue clean up.

Finished gunwales

If you would like to read all the posts related to this project together, go to the category at the right called “Penny Fee” and click on it. It will pull all the posts on the penny fee onto one page for you.

Having now survived the rather frantic run up to the holidays, I can share a few more wooden toys that I made to give to family.

I have four-year-old nephew who is a fireman (at least that is what he tells me). He goes everywhere in turnout gear and helmet, and is often talking on a plastic handheld VHF radio—I believe it is a toy, at least no one has answered him yet on it. Clearly a fire truck was in order:

As with most of my toys, the crew for the truck is made up of bears.

Another nephew has a fascination with the Trojan Wars. This year I made him a toy acropolis. Admittedly it is from a later period than the actual Mycenean, but I could not resist the challenge of making an early Doric temple. And the truth is that at least half the fun of making toys is trying to come up with ideas that are fresh and unusual.

Over the years this nephew has acquired quite a collection of Greek and Trojan toys. Some of the collection can bee seen here.

The Trojan Horse was in another room, and it turned out that several squads of Greeks were hiding in the hull of a toy arc, given to a different nephew…sneaky.

Mystic

The trip to Mystic was fun because neither the woman who will willingly get up in the middle of a stormy night and stand an anchor watch, nor I, had been to Mystic in several decades. It was also fun because in late October the place is devoid of crowds, which pretty much allowed us to look at what we were interested in. We were impressed by the ongoing work on the Charles W. Morgan and equally impressed by the shop floor and piles of beautiful timbers that will take their places as new pieces of the old vessel. We were also impressed by the rest of the fleet and the small boat collection.

The ukuleles that we produced were part of a wedding gift and although one was a tenor and one concert ukulele, they were both made of Hawaiian Koa wood with Aquila strings (the tenor was given a low ‘G’ metal wound string) . They both sound just beautiful, although at the time they were given away the strings were still stretching.

With luck, as we get the sails settled in the sail loft for winter and do our final chores putting the Friendship sloop to bed for the winter, we will be able to get back to the Penny Fee and I will be putting up some more boatbuilding posts…