On with the bits

Once again it's been a while since I posted.  Real life has a habit of getting in the way of boatbuilding plans and in this case it was ill health that set me back somewhat.  Hopefully things will go well, but progress on the boat and this blog may be sporadic.

I've been working on the bulkheads as well as other bits and pieces.  Just recently. I decided to try making the bowsprit and, in the absence of good cheap Douglas Fir here in Australia, I decided to try working with Cypress Pine - a native softwood.  Usually used for building or fenceposts it has a fine grain and is as strong as  Douglas Fir but a little denser.

I bought a 2.4m post 100mm x 100mm for about $20 and went to work with table saw, plane and spokeshave.  Here's a picture of my brother-in-law Andrew hard at work with spokeshave, working out some of his frustrations.  Turning a piece of rough timber into a  tapered, rounded spar with nothing more than a homemade spar gauge and a few hand tools is always a satisfying process.

I've also noticed that the wood sold in Bunnings - one of our big home improvement places here in Australia - as "structural pine" is also called "baltic pine".  This appears to be the Australian name for Picea abies, Norway Spruce.  Pickng through this lumber can give fairly clean lengths of relatively slow-grown timber.  Compared to clear-grain Oregon (Douglas Fir) which here costs about $40/m for 200 x 50, it seems like a good choice for relatively inexpensive spars, even if I have to increase the dimensions slightly.

Back to work

A number of things have kept me away from boat building over the last few months, but things are starting to settle down and I can turn my attention back to the pleasant complexities of working with bits of wood.  I've been looking at some of the bits and pieces I can work on without a massive outlay on ply and without requiring the space to plank up the hull - space I don't have until I work out what to do with my Tammie Norrie.  

I'll build the bulkheads next but my first little project was to out together the rudder, rudder stock and tiller.The photo below is a relatively early stage.

The tiller was sawn, chiselled and spokeshaved to shape from an old piece of Tasmanian Oak that was once part of a roof timber, I think.  The rudder stock sides were made from 18mm hardwood marine ply, with a core of Douglas Fir (Oregon).  I lined the tiller socket with thin strips of cedar to give a nice soft fit.

The  rudder was made largely from two pieces of 18mm hardwood marine ply laminated up and edged at the front with hardwood and glassed. I added a piece of brass half round strip I had left over to the lower edge.  

The rudder will be held in place by a 12mm SS bolt and lacking the appropriate size tubing as bushing I epoxied stacks of M12 washers into the bolt hole in the rudder and stock - should keep the wear down.

Next step the bulkheads