The Gar Wood's mahogany covering boards have been cut, pre-drilled, and rabbeted… just about ready to install.
The rabbit is that little shelf along the side of the covering board (on the left in this blurry picture).
The students cut it out using a router fitted with a bearing-guided cutter.
These cutters are very handy to have around the shop. You can change the bearing size to make a deeper or shallower cut, and you can change the cutters to vary the thickness of your rabbet. Using a setup like this makes cutting a rabbet a snap as long as the edge that you're working on is already fair. The bearing will follow any bumps and wiggles you have on your edge, and faithfully reproduce them in the rabbet.
As I mentioned in the last post, this rabbet is really just for show. The lower edge of the rabbet will butt up against the deck, and the groove will be filled with seam compound to make it look like a fancy caulked seam.
We save all sorts of parts from the original boat to use as references when creating the replacement parts. Here are a few of the original covering boards.
We can use these to know what kind of fastening pattern they used, whether they were back primed (painted or sealed on the undersides), how the edges were treated (rounded, chamfered, etc.)… on and on.
The students found that these boards were not back primed. After all, these were production boats, and sealing the undersides takes time and materials. We seal the undersides because it's just a good idea. Moisture moves in and out of wood, causing the wood to swell and shrink. If one side of the wood is sealed, the moisture moves more slowly through that side than through the unfinished side. When this happens, the unfinished side swells and shrinks more quickly than the finished side, and this stresses the wood and promotes cupping and warping.
So, why put your covering boards through all that? It's tough enough being a chunk of wood in a marine environment. We seal both faces to even out the moisture transfer and thus minimize stress on the wood.
The long mahogany ceiling planks have been cut and are just about ready for installation.
Like this:
The covering boards are long, but not long enough to go the entire length of the boat. The Gar Wood folks would have never tried to make the covering board from a single plank… it would have been a huge expense to find that kind of lumber. Instead, they used a series of shorter boards and had them meet with butt joints. A butt joint is the simplest joint there is, just 2 straight edges the butt into each other.
A butt joint is also the weakest joint there is, so you need to fasten it very well to hold it in place. That explains all those screw holes. And what do you fasten those screws to? A backing block beneath the joint.
The new dashboard is just about ready for finishing.
It will be stained dark, just like the original,
but not quite as dark as the part we have. Sun will darken the mahogany over time. Here's the sample stain that Warren and the students have settled on:
It's a good thing that the boat is so large, there's lots of room for everyone to do their projects.
Work on the Chris Craft has slowed a bit, mostly because the projects that are left right now are rather small, or involve varnishing. Throw a coat of varnish on something and not only are you done with it for the day, but you're done with working near it as well. It helps when you can take the engine box out of the boat to varnish it.
The disembodied hand has been installed now.
These were all the rage back when the Addams Family was popular. In fact, the one that came with this boat,
Oh, wait.
Never mind.
Just a student working on the instrument panel.
These gauges were re-done by a fellow in Minnesota who specializes in this sort of thing.
They are perfect. Cool, clean, retro.
Over on the 12 1/2, remember that insane clamp job on the coaming?
I'd say that the joint came out very nicely.
In a perfect world, you'd book match these boards, but the students did a very impressive job lining up the grain patterns.
The toe rails are being installed along the top of the deck,
and the trim is being installed in the cockpit as well.
The aft deck has been canvassed and partially trimmed now.
And did you catch that sassy little tiller hole in the transom?
You could have cut a little square and been done with it, but this adds a bit more class. The curve follows the sweep of the tiller as it travels from side to side.
And remember the mast hoops? They've been varnished and the small bronze fittings that will attach them to the sail have been installed.
The first year students are busy making piles of wood shavings in their boats.
These are primarily from fairing the deck beams. They use a camber mold to both mark and check that their deck beams are curving just right.
Of course, the note on that particular camber mold caught my eye…
Turns out that this particular camber mold was made with a small flat bit in the curve. Not exactly crap, but not perfect either. However, the guys on this boat had faired all of their deck beams with it prior to discovering this mold's particular idiosyncrasy. So, after making this warning on the mold, they get to do something that every boat builder has to do: They worked with what they had. They fair the beams to the mold, and then work out the flat spot with battens and by eye.
When fairing your deck beams, you may discover that your beams were cut just a bit too flat to begin with. Again, this is a pretty normal problem and the fix is easy:
Install thin wood shims on top of your deck beams to give yourself a little more height, and then fair down through them.
It's important to remember that the whole point of fairing the deck beams is to produce a fair deck. That means that anything that supports the deck has to lie along the curve described by the deck camber mold.
Like, the mast partner,
and the half-beams that help to support the mast partner.
If you're lucky, your mast partner will be just a bit low, and require some shimming.
Why? Because we use cedar to shim (it's the light colored wood above the grey painted partner). The partner is oak, and you don't have to be a boat builder to guess which one is easier to work with hand tools. The oak still does all the work of supporting the mast, so you don't have to use something that strong to add a little support for the deck. A light, rot-resistant wood like cedar works perfectly, and it's easy to shape.
The mast steps are installed on most of the boats now.
You may notice the bolt coming out of the side of the step just forward of the mortise (the rectangular hole). All that bolt does is strengthen the step. The mast exerts a lot of sideways pressure on the step, and this bolt helps to keep the step from splitting. Essentially, it's a repair for a problem that hasn't happened yet.
Lots of folks are cutting the mast tenons that will go into these mortises now.
They cut a round tenon on the top for the mast ring as well.
That's a fun one to do. No kidding, it's deceptively easy to cut a cylinder into the end of another cylinder, and it looks great.
One of the tough things about this stage of the project is that the students begin to realize that all these cool joints they've been making will soon be covered up by the deck, never again to see the light of day. Take the half-beams that help to support the mast partner.
These beams connect to the partner with a sliding, sloped, dado, and to the sheer clamp with compound (sloping in 2 directions at once) notch. And the only way to know that you've gotten your fit right is to slide
down
into
that sloped dado
And then you'll cover it up with decking. The next time it sees the light of day will be when someone repairs the deck.
But hey, YOU know it's there.
Upstairs, the Lawley tender is moving right along. The mahogany seating (called "sheets" when they're in the aft end like this) has been installed.
The seats in the rest of the boat are called Thwarts,
and they rest on top of Thwart Risers (also called Seat Risers). This one has been given a decorative little bead on the underside, just like the original.
You're looking at the forward end of the starboard riser. It ends just aft of the stem of the boat.
The thwarts and sheets will be given some extra support in the form of small, turned posts.
After doing lots of varnishing or sanding, it's a pleasure to do something different like turn wood on a the lathe.
Or look up some of the photos you took when disassembling your boat on one of the shop computers.
Yes, shop computers. I must admit, when these first went in, I was pretty skeptical. But the students use them to store thousands of digital photos of their boats as they was being taken apart, as well as for looking up part sources for boats that have long since stopped being produced.
I guess a little technology in the boat shop is ok.