Just think you can anyway

After giving the people at Woodenboat a couple of days to talk me out of it and into something else, I ordered the plans today. $97.50 for the plans (plus shipping), so I guess I’m committed (or should be).

It’s the Glen-L 15, BTW.

Well, I’m definately making progress. The car is gone and the garage is clean (kind of). The tools are still a disorganized mess and I have no place to work yet. Until now, that is.

This past weekend I began spending that car money on a little lumber and some tools that I know I’m going to need. No workbench can be considered complete without a grinding wheel (I use a pushmower and need a sharp blade). A vise is necessary too, because sometimes when you’re pounding away at something you need a place where you can secure your beer, right?

So, here’s the workbench I ended up building.

Note the vise on the right and the grinder on the left. Placement was determined by the location of electrical outlets and the fact that my daddy’s vise was on the right on his workbench. Some traditions should be respected, right? I also have my IPod sound station in the center, but I think I need a better place for that. If anyone cares, this thing was built to the musical stylings of George Strait. Another view:

This sucker is BIG. It’s seven feet tall and eight feet wide and three and a half feet deep. At first glance it looks almost too deep, but I intend to put some shelves back there and other items like tool boxes and such, and by the time I’m done I should have about two and a half feet of working area. That seems about right.

Anyway, now there’s no excuses for not having my tools organized. That’s the next step, then I’ll be ordering the plans.

The Garage is almost clean! Yesterday we spent most of the morning moving boxes to storage and rearranging the remaining detritus in an effort to make the garage look like a place where you could park a car as opposed to our own personal mini-storage unit. Then we went to Home Depot and got a bunch of wood and a kit to make a workbench. I also got a vise and a grinding wheel, because what good is a workbench without a saw and a grinding wheel? I should be just about done with it tonight. Then I’ll have to come up with some other way to clutter up the garage.

In other news, kiln-dried Douglas Fir costs about $4.50 per board foot from our local hardwood company. They have marine plywood too, but only 3/4″ so I’ll probably be buying from multiple places. Still, at that price the total wood cost should be under $500, which is pretty good I think.

As with everything worth doing, you should look past what’s just on the surface and try and get a handle on the whole thing before you start. I like to think that I know what I’m doing most of the time, and at the very least I feel like I’m aware of my limitations. So when I read the plans for this boat I want to build I can see lots of questions forming. Before I begin, I really want to understand what I’m going to be doing. Loose ends or “I’ll figure it out later” items just aren’t going to work.

Fortunately there are a lot of really smart people out there who don’t mind sharing. I looked at the lumber list and was trying to sort out whether to use White Oak, Sitka Spruce, or Mahogany. First of all, every hardwood dealer I look at lists three kinds of mahogany. The kind called Genuine Mahogany costs a fortune, the others are more reasonable but still expensive. Around this area I can’t even find the Sitka Spruce. So, I was thinking oak or one of the one-off mahoganys would be what I went with for wood. Of course, this is something I don’t know a lot about.

The Glen-L forums tell me that oak is bad in salt water and I intend to use this in salt water. Oak is cheaper though, and I’m still not certain about the mahogany. Enter woodenboats.com. I asked on the forum and got a pretty good answer–Douglas Fir. Way to think outside the box, right? I also got a little good advice about my coaming, advice I’m sure I will follow, and something to think about regarding the finish on my boat.

Fun stuff…

“You do not set out to build a boat because either the building or the boat is practical. you do it because the activity itself is pleasurable, and in the doing you make yourself and your life better. The boat is a bonus. Enjoy it to the fullest.”
- George Putz, Wood and Canvas Kayak Building

I don’t know if this is entirely accurate, I found it on another site. Still a great quote though. My brother is into kayaking, maybe I should get him a copy of this for Christmas…

I never claimed to be original, right? Here’s a blog of someone who is building a lobster boat, and who is chronicling it in a blog just like I intend to here. The difference is in the timeline, he’s giving himself nine months. His goal is to have the boat on the water by June 1, because his wife wants to go out boating with him and promises to wear a bikini if he makes the deadline. No word on whether he’ll post pics of that event or not, but he has plenty of the build.

Nina is going to be a small lobster boat, the plans are here: http://www.bateau.com/proddetail.php?prod=LB22

The blog is at http://buildingnina.blogspot.com/. After reading it I realize that I’m going to need to do more planning around the weather than I had given thought to.

Our Church is remodeling and adding a Sanctuary. Apparently they had an idea for how they wanted the parking lot to be built, but no one looked at the cost. After they started they realized that their plans would be too expensive, so they decided to do it another way. That caused problems with drainage and zoning, so they’re going to end up with a grass field that can be used to handle overflow parking–not what they envisioned at all. The last thing I want to do is get caught like they did–I need to make sure I have everything well planned out.

I haven’t spent enough time thinking about the boat lately! I want to do the Glen-L 15 as a sort of trial run, but I’m going to request a small modification to the stern that will make it strong enough to support a decent motor in case I have to get home in a hurry and there’s no wind.

In other news, the group I like to ride with is FINALLY getting started this weekend. I can’t wait, they’re a ton of fun to ride with and the weather has really been great lately. On second look though, the e-mail specifically says they’re riding on Sunday and not Saturday…. I guess that they don’t celebrate Mother’s Day?

Interesting site here.

This guy has some good pictures of the boat he sails in the build story. He started with the rigging from a boat he didn’t like and worked his way to the hull design, which is kind of backwards. He settled on one of the Dix designs, which happened to use the radius chine plywood method.

I like all the shots of the build, nothing I’ve seen so far looks particularly difficult. It’s gonna be like the marathon or grad school, you just go until you’re done and don’t think about how far it is or how long it takes.

This image shamelessly stolen from http://www.glen-l.com/picboards/picboard13/pic645a.html

Nice, huh? If you take a look at the page it comes from you’ll see the initial framework laid out. The chines have been set up and it’s all ready for the plywood cover. It has a lot of nice details, little things that make me think it could be an ideal starter project. The plans are a little steep for the size ($90) but the boat is about perfect for what I want to do and what I want to do with it.

My mind may change, but this was a quick find thanks to the forums at http://www.woodenboat.com.

I’m not unrealistic. I think that building a boat is ambitious, and I think that the more I plan the better. Right now I’m thinking of building a structure deep in the back yard to support the frame. I’m also trying to get my mind around the build method. If I use the radius chine plywood method that Dix does in the Didi 40cr, then I’ll need to be comfortable working with plywood and epoxy, and I *think* I’ll also need to be comfortable with fiberglass as well.

So, the best preparation I can think of is to build a boat! Seriously, I plan on putting together a small boat, dinghy size, in our garage this fall/winter. I figure that I can learn a lot about cutting, bending, and securing marine plywood in this way. I’ll also learn a little more about what I’m good at and what I need to work on, and the best thing is that it should give me a fair bit of confidence along the way.

I have no idea what design I’m going to use, but it should be cheap and it should give me an idea of what to expect in a larger build. I’ve posted over at the Woodenboat.com forums and hope to find a good answer there.

Anyway, before I can do that I need to make space. I have tools, bikes, strollers, boxes, skis, golf clubs, and all sorts of goodies in the garage. I also have the Jag.

This is a car I bought back in 1997 from my stepfather, who got it from the childhood mentor of someone in North Carolina who worked hard and made it to the NFL as a wide receiver for the Houston Oilers, said player being the original owner. I’ve put a lot into it over the years, but I’ve completely stopped driving it. It took a lot out of me emotionally, but it’s listed for sale now.

I’m gonna miss that car. The valance in the picture was torn up and repaired with Bondo when I bought it. I rebuilt it in my garage and learned a lot about working with fiberglass that way. I also learned that it’s no fun to work on Jaguars at the same time…

Anyway, once it sells I should have both the space to build in and some money to finance it. I can’t imagine a dinghy costing more than a few hundred in materials (not counting the sail).

More on this as it develops…