Metal things

I have been going into the boatshop at the Independence Seaport Museum (ISM) pretty much daily for the past several weeks.  Once I'm there, I tend to stay around for the whole day. It's kind of like working again, except I'm having fun.  While I am in the shop, I tend to work mostly on Lagniappe, but occasionally I take a break to talk about the shop with visitors touring the ISM or to help out with one of the shop projects.  Oh, and I also take coffee and banter breaks with my co-volunteers, and the shop boatbuilders.  All in all, it is a much nicer atmosphere than my garage.

Right now, in addition to my Grey Seal, there is a 1972 Beetle Cat catboat being restored by volunteers and a 1928 Ventnor 25 foot runabout undergoing restoration as well.  It's funny that, with her traditional lines, many shop visitors assume that the Grey Seal is an old boat undergoing restoration as well.  

With all those hours in the shop, I am actually getting stuff done!  The ballast installation is now complete. Once the Boat Life had cured sufficiently, I trimmed it down.  Then I faired the ballast to the deadwood using thickened epoxy.  Next day, I sanded the epoxy and applied bottom paint.  Anyone who finds himself beneath the boat would have a hard time telling that there is a 1200 pound hunk of lead there.

Faired with thickened epoxy.

Sanded and painted.

Next on the list is the engine installation, and that began in earnest last Monday.  Obviously, the first step was to get the engine and the boat into the same location.  Moving the engine is ridiculously easy after the centerboard and the ballast.  I hoisted it into my truck with a chain hoist and my homemade gantry.  The gantry, which has done yeoman service, will be disassembled and "recycled" soon.

Naturally, it rained the day I loaded up the engine.

At the boatshop, Jeff and Bob helped me unload the engine and, later, helped me hoist it into the boat.

Now that's a real gantry!

It fits!

My Yanmar 1GM has about the same footprint as the Dolphin, which Iain Oughtred depicts in his plan, so I positioned it in approximately the same location -- between stations 6 1/2 and 7.  There is lots of room forward, behind, and on all sides, and there is plenty of play in the mounting feet and width in the engine bearers for proper positioning once the shaft is in place.

The shaft was the next order of business, or at least boring the hole through which the shaft must pass.  The total length of the bore is about 36 inches, and since the shaft exits the deadwood where the latter is only 2 inches wide, you pretty much have to begin drilling from the outside going forward.

Before boring, it was necessary to determine the precise slope of the shaft bore.  Although you can adjust the angle by using the engine mounting feet, I decided to go with the same slope as the engine bearers have, as the plan shows.  We tossed around a few ideas on how to replicate this slope, as well as the height of the bore, and finally settled on a solution proposed by John Brady, the CEO of the ISM, who formerly directed the ISM boatshop.  John is a frighteningly knowledgeable boat builder and designer, and it is an continuing incredible benefit to me to be able to get advice from him and from Jeff Huffenberger, the current boatshop head.  

Our first step was leveling the boat -- both fore to aft and port to starboard. This is a 2 or 3 person job, and I was lucky enough to be the one on the boat, looking at levels and calling out instructions.

John proposed affixing a board (we used MDF) the length of the boat from the bulkhead at station 6, well past the sternpost, along the centerline.  Then, using a plumb bob with a constant length of string, and taking measurements at each end of the bearers, transferring the slope of the engine bearers to the MDF board.  A long straight edge is used to connect those two points and to extend the slope line all the way past the stern.  The plumb bob lowered the same distance at the back of the board gives you the height of the beds as well as the slope.  

The slope finding board braced in position.

Here, you can see the slope line that runs the length of the board.

At the stern, we build two support brackets to keep the angle of the bit constant and perfectly consistent with the slope.  I bored a hole the same diameter as the pilot bit -- a 5/8 inch 24 inch long auger -- in 2 blocks of white oak, to attached to the support brackets to guide the bit.

Support brackets and bit guides.  

The pros advised that I grind the screw tip off the auger because not doing so would tend to encourage the auger to follow grain variations and move off track.  While "barefooting" makes drilling much slower and more difficult, John and Jeff insist that it will give me a truer line.

One other task needed to be accomplished before I could begin to drill.  My Grey Seal building compatriot in Melbourne, Aussie Andrew, wrote me a month or so ago and asked how I had handled the presence of a keel bolt through frame 8, directly in the path of the prop shaft.  I had to acknowledge that I, being not nearly the planner that Andrew is, had mindlessly done exactly what Mr. Oughtred showed in his plan -- installed a bolt directly in the way. It would have to be removed.

Removing the bolt turned out to be pretty simple.  I located the bung at the bottom of the skeg, chiseled it out, and since I had mushroomed the end of the rod to keep the bottom nut from backing off, I simply "unscrewed" the rod using the shop's pneumatic wrench.

Correcting my "oops" or was it Iain's

Later, I will probably put a long lag screw into the bolt hole, from the top, in order to provide more stability for the keel.

Finally, it was time to start drilling, since I could think of no other ways to avoid or delay it. The going is very, very slow, and, more than a bit scary. Despite all the care in measurement, I keep expecting to see the tip of the bit emerge from the side of the skeg, or to be too low or too high.  I got through 24 inches, the length of my auger, before calling it a day.  Tomorrow I will attach an extension to the auger, and try to get through the remainder of the wood.

18 inches and counting.