18 June 2013

Boat building bug nibbling away

I am fretting with no boat being built, so I have started looking around for another project. I have always liked the Wee Lassie strip built canoe described in the book "Featherweight Boatbuilding" by Mac McCarthy. The larger sized Wee Lassie 2 would probably suit me better. I have never tackled strip building at all and find it a bit intimidating. The "Featherweight Boatbuilding" book is very good and I have just ordered the Manual of strip building from Selway Fisher. 

As I had a large piece of cardboard and a spare piece of MDF, I had a go at lofting and cutting out the two stem moulds (or molds as they insist on spelling it over there). Quite pleased with the outcome and that I noted two of the offsets are not quite right. This is actually noted on the Feather Weight Canoes website, but I only found out later.
http://www.feathercanoes.com/html/q&a.html

The first mould was cut with a jigsaw and carefully smoothed with a block plane. The second mould was roughly cut with a jigsaw and then the two clamped together  and I ran a router round the pair to match the second to the first. I drilled through for the clamp holes with both moulds clamped together. First with a 1" flat bit, which got very hot, and then with a 1" hole saw, which worked very well, and also got very hot. I am now building a couple of saw horses to hold everything up. Haven't decided yet that I am building anything, but these things tend to develop...

No comments:

Post a Comment