The students have been on break this past week, but before they left they were busy folks.
The 2nd year crew that's working on the 12 1/2 have finished up the forward bulkhead framing and are busy working on finishing priming the interior and getting the decking and covering boards on.
Here the decking has been cut and holes drilled to attach it to the deck beams. It's now getting a final sanding before being primed and installed.
It's a good idea to prime everything that you can while it's off the boat... much easier to work with that way.
Although the deck gets painted and canvassed, the covering board is finished bright (i.e., varnished). The arrow points to the covering board in this photo.
The covering board is the outermost decking plank, and it goes along the top of the sheer. One of the tricky things about fitting this part is that you have to cut a slot in it for the bronze side stay to go through.
Sounds simple enough, but you have to keep the covering board lined up exactly right while you measure for this slot. It's a little tricky to do with the stay in the way.
The goal is to have the slot cut so that the covering board just slides over the stay but also remains perfectly aligned along the sides of the boat and fits just right at the forward end where it will miter into the starboard covering board. Lots of precision required here because everyone that gets on the boat will notice these joints if they're loose.
Here, the deadwood is being shaped. The deadwood is filler wood that goes below the keel and butts up to the lead ballast.
The white pattern is placed on top of the deadwood, and then a router with a straight cutting bit and guide bushing are used to follow that pattern and cut into the deadwood to exactly match the pattern's shape.
You can see in the first picture that the router bit is only long enough to cut down an inch or so into the deadwood. The next step will be to put the pattern onto the backside of the deadwood and rout out a strip from that side. Finally, the 2 routed areas will be joined together by hand.
I mentioned previously that the first year students have some very nice cedar for planking. This is what I was talking about.
Don't ask where it comes from. Shipwrights and other craftsmen used to jealously guard the tricks of their trade... after all, it was those tricks that set them apart from ordinary craftsmen and allowed them to stay employed. Nowadays, we share the knowledge of our craft a lot more freely, but don't go asking us where we get our wood. When you find a good supplier, you think twice before telling your own granny about it.
Some of the first year students have finished up planking their boats now.
This gives them time to work on other projects.
In this case, putting the final touches on their half-hull models. It's a nice detail to have the waterline clearly demarcated on your model.
Other students are closing in on the final planks on their boats. Here, the arrow is pointing to the spiling batten being used to pattern out this last plank.
The final plank on a boat is called the shutter plank or the whiskey plank. Traditionally, there's a big party when this plank is installed and whiskey is poured on the plank. Or rum, or beer. Never umbrella drinks. We forego that tradition here, and opt instead for a good whoop whoop and perhaps a trip to the soda machine.
These students have both of their shutters clamped on at the forward end, and they're doing the final fitting along the aft end.
The big wooden blocks act as clamp extenders. The plank that's being installed in the 3rd one up from the bottom. You can see that the clamps aren't large enough to reach from below the boat all the way up to that plank, so we put the clamps on these blocks and have the blocks transmit the pressure up to the plank. You lose some clamping force this way, but it's not enough to cause a problem.
Other first years are working on the tricky business of fastening the fronts, or hood ends, of their planks. There's a lot of plank twist in this part of the boat as you can see here.
In a very short space, the plank goes from vertical at the stem to flared out as it goes aft. The plank really wants to spring out and away from the stem, so keeping it clamped in tight while fitting and fastening can be quite a trick.
This student is using both clamps and a wedge on top of blocks to hold the plank in tight before he fastens it to the frames.
And finally, Corsair is all planked up!
Once the new mahogany planking is all faired, sanded, and varnished, she'll match the older topside planking quite nicely. She'll be bright finished down to her boot stripe, and then painted with anti-fouling paint below. Here's a photo of how she looked when she came in the shop to give you an idea of how she should look.
(photo credit: Warren Barker)
She's going to be quite the beauty...