Ruby slippers authorized

Progress on the restoration of Monomoy No. 3 is moving along quite quickly - so quickly in fact that last weekend we totally expended our supplies of fasteners and epoxy putty - both critical materials in our re-framing process.  This isn't a wholly bad place to be in - it's a startling change to our usual schedule of movement, i.e. too slow.  But it does pose a problem in that our enthusiastic volunteers have picked up some great steam, and once you've got turns on, killing the momentum is deadly. 

So in our latest edition of The Pennant (the NHS weekly newsletter) as well as in a previous blog entry, we decided to create a "wish list" and ask supporters to chip in.  There's no gift like fasteners.  There's no gift like fasteners.  There's no gift like fasteners.  You get the idea.  I suppose it's better than asking for a heart, brain or courage - though we might start there too, soon.  We weren't really sure how well this would go over, but at least by allowing supporters to buy materials and send them to us, vice send money, at least they could be sure we weren't using the money for drugs.

But I'm very happy to report that less than 24 hours after publication, we've got enough material on its way to the Dockyard to keep efforts going for several weeks, maybe even months.  So thanks to those generous supporters who chipped in and helped keep our efforts going.  That said, I need you to be cool, honey bunny.  If I'm curt with you, it's because time is a factor. I think fast, I talk fast, and I need you two guys to act fast if you want to get this boat done.  That's right, we're going Harvey Keitel and a little Amanda Plummer on this thing. 

Or maybe, like most people, you just didn't get that quote at all.

All about drills, or, using your powers for good or evil

Actually, according to one of my favorite characters - Strongbad - you can only use your powers for good or for awesome.  Today, I'm eagerly awaiting a fascinating new machine - my taper bore countersink drill bitts with stop collars.  Kind of sounds like a Red Rider BB gun with a compass in the stock, doesn't it?  And like Ralphie, I have no shortage of people telling me I'll shoot my eye out, in one form or another.  The bitts cost a pretty penny - $90 plus $14 shipping for a set of 4 bitts and other assorted goodies - and like a kid at Christmastime, I'm waiting to rip open the package.

The things best learned by failure

Last week, we had a few problems with our steam bending as we started work on the pieces that had a tighter bend at the turn of the bilge.  Throughout the whole process I'd read just about everything there was to read about steam bending, at least as far as laying in frames "hot" - that is to say, right from the steam box into the boat.  But as I returned to the great and venerable texts from which I'd drawn much of my information I discovered that I had wholly discounted a different method, which the late great Howard I. Chappelle describes as "great for building single-handed".  Cool - that sounds about right for our skill level!  And on reading, I kicked myself for the simplicity of the most basic concept that had, until that moment, completely eluded me in all my research - that the hot bend was not, in fact the end-all, be-all of steam bent frames.  All at once I remembered why I pine so for the guidance of experienced builders that simply don't seem to exist in my neck of the woods, and despite all of my study, went back to feeling like the relative novice I am.

Where are THESE trees?

Last night's working session went over well, with the exception that the one frame we set out to bend ended up not cooperating.  Getting the hot frame correctly pre-bent and clamped in place proved pretty challenging, and ultimately proved to us that we need a pre-bending jig, or 'horse' to get the tight radii of the turn of the bilge before handing up the frame.  As I said yesterday, embrace shortcoming, learn and move on.

Luckily, I've found a few trees that might help with that appreciably.  I have no idea where these are but we need to find and harvest them ASAP.

NHS Steampunk

Well maybe not that steampunk.  But certainly a little Rube Goldberg-ie, and steam is definitely involved.  Over the last two weeks, Monomoy No. 3 has been prepared for her first replacement frames to go in.  On Halloween, I decided of my own accord to go ahead and jump the gun, firing up the steam box and laying in some stock.  And even though I've followed all of the directions from every major boatbuilding publication almost to a tee, I was still amazed that the process worked relatively flawlessly and that I, decked in leather apron, welding gloves and knee pads, managed to singlehandedly replace two of the floors with brand-new gorgeous white oak in only a couple of hours - most of which time I spent reading the newspaper.

So while I may not have been 'steampunk' by the modern pop-culture sense, I still certainly felt like it.  Maybe I ought to invest in an old leather jacket and some round eye goggles.  Then maybe we can get some Comic-Con types to start volunteering - you never know.

Color me confused

Last night's working session proved particularly productive.  With Monomoy No. 3 in the shop, we removed two complete floors, 8 and 17, and began cleaning up the planking interior faces for laying in new material this Saturday.  We're now down to the absolute bones of the boat - digging around deeper than a TSA agent screening a guy with frazzled wires hanging out of his pocket.  And in the process we're learning even more about the boat's construction and history.  No, we didn't find any dates scrawled between her planking, but it might as well have been.

As we began unscrewing and prying up the spongy old floors and poking around for other symptoms of dry rot, we broke out the trusty heat guns and started scraping back layers of paint.  And in the myriad colors bursting out under the scrapers, we were actually able to find some interesting tidbits that might help us validate the little we know of her documented past.

Monomoy Musical Chairs

This weekend, the Dockyard crew turned out to do a little shuffling of Monomoys 2 and 3.  Both boats are moving into winter quarters of sorts - so they'll be protected without constant attention (as last year, when we had to brush snow off of tents regularly).

Monomoy No. 3 is now in the Framing Bay - a move of some 88 feet over soft and uneven ground, four turns and a slide sideways - all while stabilized (the keel is carefully aligned and the hull shape preserved in a cradle).  Overall the whole assembly weighs about two tons, and we moved it the only way possible - slowly.  Now, I know what you're thinking - don't hurt yourself.  Yes, yes.  All possible safety measures were adopted - such as "the scamper" - a means of semi-rolling and crawling quickly away from a boat that is about to fall on you, or "the worry" - where you chant "no, no, no, no" with increasing quickness in a verbal effort to stop the boat from moving.  But I digest.

All in all, the techniques for moving something this heavy yet so fragile are relatively simple.  Just take the whole thing like a box of chocolates - and assume you never know what you're going to get until you get there.  Adopt, adapt and improve, sort of thing.  Or maybe we should just name No. 3 "Jenny".

Reefer man

This weekend we managed to get some serious work done on Monomoy No. 3. Last week we realized that prior to re-framing, we had to reef all of the seams, i.e. pull out all the old caulking, putty, dirt, sand, crap. And while to the inexperienced bystander this sounds mundane, it's really quite a lot of work to dig all of that out without damaging the soft fir planking. In the first 6 man-hours of work, we managed to reef a total of 15 feet ot the boat's 624 feet of seams. Ouch.

And to make the work just that much worse, all that time weilding the scrapers starts to wear down your hands. After 10 hours of work on Sunday and 5 hours on Saturday, I'm finding that my hands can't grip and hold anything unless it's the same relative size as the scraper - my joints are that sore. Plus, add in the myriad blisters, raw spots and an occasional slice and you have all the reasons you should be wearing gloves while doing this.

A guest blogger.... Or The Story of Dockyard Travails

This morning's guest blogger is IC1 Caleb Bryan, one of our best volunteers. Take it away, IC1:

Most Monomoy pulling boats are Carvel planked. The strakes (or planks) are attached to the frames and set edge to edge. The seam between is then sealed with cotton or oakum and a putty or pitch. The cotton is driven into the seam between the planks with a caulking iron and mallet and then payed with the pitch or putty. Now the Navy never, never, never ever neglects maintenance on it's boats and ship's, right? Right?!?! Well, in the case of our beloved Monomoy #3, maintenance was done many a time with a plethora of different procedures and materials - some of which were probably purchased at Wal-Mart. Reefing the seams (the process of removing the old caulking material) on #3 has produced an interesting variety: household caulking, paints and other substances used to keep her watertight are brought to light after long hours of painstaking work. Sore fingers, blisters, sweatsoaked clothing, raw mosquitobitten skin are just side effects of this process while the Dockyard Superintendant cracks his whip and shouts orders.

Death to the hands!

This weekend we spent a good deal of time getting Monomoy No. 3 ready for re-framing - the process by which we're going to be replacing all of her 107 year old steam bent frames, or 'ribs'. Preparation calls for stripping the boat down to the bare essentials - out with the thwarts, the decking, deckbeams, centerboard trunk and keelsons - until all that is left is the shell of the boat, keel, planking and frames. It is a scary process that entails carefully (or sometimes not) removing old fasteners and gingerly lifting out structural members (or beating them into splinters with a mallet and big nasty chisel). And as we progressed, the shell of the boat gets more and more fragile and flexible. I am very happy to report that as of writing, the boat is happily resting in her tailor-made cradles, almost completely empty. There is a certain zen to sitting amidships and seeing nothing but open space out to the frames in every direction.
On both Saturday and Sunday, the Dockyard resonated with the steady thunk, thunk, thunk of sledges driving out keelbolts, punctuated by the occasional "AHH CRIPES! MOTHER F(*&^*&" as the occasional swing missed or glanced off the bolt and onto fingers. My left thumb still hasn't completely recovered. And now, myself and the other victim walk around with hands looking like we just came out of Fight Club. This morning I even noticed a person staring nervously at my hands. The only thing I could think to say was "you should've seen the other guy".

Return of the Monomoys

Tonight is another working session at the Dockyard - we'll be doing some work on the model, getting the hull ready for paint, but also breaking out gear for Monomoy No. 1 and preparing her for the - da da dada daaaa - first sail of the season. That's right, this Saturday we'll be launching the Monomoy at Naval Station Norfolk and taking her out for the first sail of the season! In the process, we'll be breaking in new crewmembers for Conquer the Chesapeake 2011 and getting our laundry list of repair and improvement items polished off. Anyone interested in participating get in touch soonest and I'll provide more information.

BT

The covers on Monomoys No. 2 and 3 are both off - one in a horrible state of tatters and splinters, the other worn to near unserviceability. New covers will be going together and be ready for setup the week after next - so standby for that operation.

And on that score, someone asked recently - "you've already told us its okay if the boats get wet, so what's the big deal?" Well, simply put, water isn't the only enemy of wooden boats. In their current state, the bigger threat is actually the sun - which can cause the wood to check and crack and do serious damage. We need to get them out of the sun - hence the covers. Its okay to leave them exposed for a few weeks, and doing so gives us a great opportunity to clear out the area. But leaving them that way for too long is a recipe for disaster.

BT

Amidst everything else that is going on, we're going to be working out the details for a quick restoration of Monomoy No. 3. Some time ago, we determined that she was by far the better preserved of our two 1904 vintage Monomoys, and in the interest of getting one of those behemoths out of the Dockyard, we'll be putting all of our eggs into one basket to get her restoration cranked out and completed. She'll need a complete recaulking and some refastening, plus a lot of scraping, painting, and fabricating all new masts, spars and oars. More to look forward to this summer!

NNNN

Dockyard mystery, or, Gloating over small success

Tonight I've been going over the stem we removed from the No. 2 Monomoy. What seemed like a reasonably open and shut case of some parts needing replacement is rapidly turning into a whodunit murder mystery of boat restoration. This is going to get technical, so if you're only here for my wit and interminable charm, now is the time to chime out.

The stem is in two pieces that were scarfed together with one of those pesky curved scarfs I'm dreading reproducing and nobody seems to know how to cut. But that was the least of my concerns as I started my work for tonight - tracing the outline of the removed pieces to make patterns to make the replacements. The scarf didn't fit very well and there was some nasty checking of the timber in the vicinity of the joint. But this I just wrote off in my mind as the product of the fasteners working loose. Obvious!

This is where, as you have probably anticipated, the plot thickens. I hadn't given it much thought but the gap in the scarf was in the middle of the joint, not the ends as you might expect if you were to force the pieces back and forth. Photo 1:

See what I mean? Look at the stopwater hole (the big one right through the center of the scarf) - its not even aligned properly. What could cause this? I thought it highly unlikely that the wood should back off from the center of the scarf and leave the ends relatively tight. And it turns out, I don't believe that it did.

If you look at the lower part of the scarf in the photo above, you'll notice a considerable amount of checking, where the wood grain has opened and expanded. And even in the small section of curve you can see, the outer curve (bottom) is not even close to fair. Clues. There is clearly distortion here, but what was the shape originally? I need to know this if I'm going to have any serious accuracy in the replacement parts. I need to play with this shape.

First, I started by finding an index - some point on both pieces that I know was lined up originally. The stopwater is the perfect index point. When the pieces were joined and bolted together, that hole was drilled where the joint passes through the back rabbet line (deepest part of the rabbet). I started by lining that up. But when I did, the rabbet was thrown dramatically off. Photo 2:

Yes, the stopwater hole is aligned. Unfortunately that's about the only thing. Well no - the bearding line (where the inside of the planking meets the stem, above in illustration 2). The rabbet is completely off - like nearly 3/8" off. I should also note that I had to cut off a chunk of the piece on the left - go back and see photo 1, you can see my saw cut (I put the piece back for the photo). On photo 2, the gap is clear - that big black wedge shaped void. And as my mind wandered, suddenly I saw it. The rabbet is not off. Somebody MADE it that way. Look again. Photo 3, a little closer view. A red arrow points to the smoking gun.

SOMEONE and I'm not pointing fingers (at the idiots and assholes who may have repaired - or thought they were repairing this boat before me) but the rabbet was cut back to match the misaligned pieces! The photo doesn't do it justice - its more than apparent in the flesh. Wood flesh. Real life. Whatever. Bastards.

Okay. I'm onto something here. Clearly I've found the original orientation, and I'm getting farther afield from my index point - remember that's the stopwater hole - but the inner and outer curvature still eluded me. Look again at the parts aligned on the stopwater, from a distance. Photo 4:

Okay. Stepping back and looking at it, I realized that the answer was remarkably simple. Go back to Photo 1, and look at that checking in the wood of the lower part of the scarf. I'll wait.

The checking forced the wood to expand, forcing the lower right portion of the scarf to push to the right and throw the scarf out of alignment. The maintainers unknowingly just kept shovelling putty into the gap. When somebody got around to repairing the resulting sprung garboards (which explains the condition of those parts quite well) they had to chisel back the rabbet to make it fit. If I were to just carry the curve from the right piece onto the part of the left piece that isn't checked. And surprise surprise - its a fair curve. Look at Photo 4 again. It seems so obvious to me now. Elementary, my dear readers. Yeah right! Took me about three hours of heaving and hawing, adjusting, readjusting and playing with the batten.

Now I can proceed tomorrow with finishing up the pattern. Why didn't I do it tonight? I dunno - because I've been too busy BLOGGING about it. Oh well. Small victories.

NNNN