Stir Ven @ 43°S: Bevelling the sole and adding the garboards

What this is about

We live by the D'Entrecasteaux Channel in Southern Tasmania. It, and much of the Tasmanian coast, offer amazing cruising possibilities. Previously, we owned an old, sturdy and fast 33 ft Huon pine sloop that we loved. The things it didn't offer - easy portability to other waters, shoal draft, beachability and the simplicity of dinghy-like sailing - are the things we gradually craved more and more.
For at least a few years I have thought that I should build an open, or mostly open, 20-something footer that would satisfy these urges. After much looking around at designs, we finally settled on the Stir Ven.
She is beautiful, fast, seaworthy, floats in 25cm of water and is designed as an adventure boat on which one can spend a few nights.
We hope she will be ready for use by the summer of 2012/13!

Monday, September 5, 2011

Bevelling the sole and adding the garboards

Now, I'm getting excited as this is where the boat takes shape. The Garboards are the lowest pair of planks and on this boat they are the biggest and require a reasonable bit of twist forward. Andrew Denman warned me that hoop pine ply is stiffer than Gaboon/okoume and this made me worry that I wouldn't be able to put this plank on solo. I made a bunch of the L-clamps that Vivier recommends and that Mike Randall strongly advised to help in this regard.

First thing was to bevel the edges of the sole to accept the garboards. This was done by cutting with a tenon saw at each station to match the angle of that station. I then lined up the cut marks with a batten and drew a line. Then I used a power plane and finished with a hand smoother and felt pretty happy with the results

witness cuts to match the station angle

I then coated the beveled edges with Bote-cote epoxy with TPRDA added. This is their epoxy monomer (it's not thinners) which makes the product soak into the end grain very well and edge grain as well but to a lesser extent. It's the mix that Mike Randall also used and I coated all my planks and bulkheads with it (especially the edges).

this looks OK dad

Next thing was fitting the garboard. I test fitted it and once I was happy, marked on the position relative to bulkhead C. Then I mixed up a batch of thickened glue and smeared it on the bevel and the edges of the bulkheads and started attaching it from amidships and then gradually forward and aft. This wasn't as bad as I thought it might be. The plank lined up nicely with all the marks as I screwed through the top into tape-covered plywood blocks to clamp it into place