The first boat had a more pointed bow and stem line. but on this one, I wanted to show respect for traditional speed boats in the concave surface under the front area, a touch of the barrel back shape at the stern, and that more vertical bow line. Besides, a vertical bow line can look beautiful on either a traditional or contemporary boat.

It was a casual thing to sketch side and top views, and the difficulty to design it on CAD was mainly figuring out how to use it. The program even had a color warning if too much angle change was occurring over a short distance. This is not exactly the boat I am building, but I obviously did not notice the bend and twist needed on the lower front area.

Had I done more research, I would have found myself in good company. Below is an expensive European Frauscher runabout that shows a vertical bow line relatively well designed, although by running the chine so high, the sides look a little like fat cheek jowls.

Below is another Frauscher with a vertical bow line. It might look good from the front, but at this angle it just reminds me of a turkey wattle. Cut that weak, skinny piece off of the lower front, and there is a pretty boat left.

So here I am, trying to create that strong, vertical line, that looks good from all angles. Somebody should have told me it might be impossible. On the other hand, I have collected several examples images of vertical bow boats that must have encountered the same design challenge.

1. This is another inspiring Frauscher, but when it gets up on plane, the front end might talk turkey.

2. The Herman Form 29 solves the visual side, but there is still the angle/bend problem at the blue line.

Below is a contemporary beauty, the Gilbert Creative Muskoka. I would like to see what is under the water.

Of course, friend Jeff also drew a compelling piece of poetry in motion, and it looks like the dropped chine line may contribute to an easier go at the front. I will have to ask him how this 36′ Cruiser was to be built.

So, enough of the class room education. The easy part of the fairing preparation for most of the hull is now done, and it’s time to get moving on the front. Sooner or later, you gotta get off the couch and put the ideas in action.

I am quite curious how this is going to turn out!

Woodworking is woodworking, unless you are building a boat. For a piece of furniture, most of the parts are pre-cut on heavy stationary machines, jointed, planed, doweled, mortised, or otherwise shaped and sanded before assembling into the final product.

Not so, on a boat. Many parts have to be attached to the boat first in rough form, and then have final shaping, sanding, notching, etc. done in place. Great furniture respects hand work also, but it becomes essential when messing with a boat that gets heavier to move every day.

Becoming adept with hand tools is like anything else. ” Necessity is the mother of invention,” and “practice makes perfect.” The first on the list is the hand saw, but not like the saw I used to build the tree house behind my house on Myers Avenue near Concord Junior High School. That saw was already old and rusty when I got started on the job. I think it took me half a day to saw twelve feet of 2 x 6 floor boards straight on the end.

One of the main problems is that wood saws are so difficult to sharpen, so many saws hanging around home shops are usually not much fun or good for anything.

Ah, but this saw is a Japanese pull stroke saw notching for a runner. The brand is Irwin, and it came from Lowe’s but was either made in Japan or very well imitated. Pulling to cut allows a thinner blade, less effort, and more precision. The motion only takes a little while to get the feel of it, and it is a satisfying effort.

Next, are some work horses of the boat work, the scraper and rasps. The two handled scraper does a great job with glue or epoxy that sqeezed out and hardened. The replaceable carbide blade allows it to be renewably sharp and the two handles give a tremendous focused power. The rasps are good for rounding edges, and rough wood reshaping. I have blue tape on one end for hand holding comfort, but also to make sure it is not doing harm where it should not cut.

On the finer side of reshaping, and especially for making a curve regular, or fair, the home made long board is the champ. The 1/2″ plywood is flexible enough to follow a mildly curved surface, so when you are done, your hand can slide across the surface and say all is well. The handles help to work with pressure, more comfortably. The size is made to use a portable sander belt, opened up and contact glued to the board. This is not fast work, but an amazing ability to take out dips and rises on a long curve.

Up next is my wood mallet which is also home made. It is helpful to have a large contact surface, so I can concentrate my eyes on the chisel working, and not get my thumb hammered. In this case, it is also carved specifically to fit my left hand, which you would feel by picking it up and finding its fit.

The chisel is from a set of Iyoroi Japanese chisels. They have perfected metallurgy for hand tools. This blade has a thin lamination of a very hard cutting edge fused to a more ductile metal which helps not to break so easily. They are expensive, but they sharpen very well, they have been a joy to use for nearly thirty years.

In the chisel drawer below on the right are the four chisels I use the most for all kinds of normal chisel work. The middle three are specially made for cutting mortises, and the next three are old Craftsman chisels. They don’t keep an edge so well, but are sure good to dig out drywall or old linoleum. I also don’t worry so much about hitting a nail, or dirt.

The one on the very left is actually a 1/2″ chisel, old and nearly useless. That is, unless you love an old chisel just dull enough not to scrape off the drying glue without damaging the wood. It is almost always laying out on the bench somewhere, ready to help.

Below are some more favorites, my Lie Nielson collection. From left are: Scrub Plane, No. 4 Smooth Plane, Low Angle Bench Plane, Scraper Plane, Block Plane.

The dust tells the story if which planes are getting the most use at this stage of the building process, although my wife just thinks I make generally too much dust. The low angle plane has been the biggest help straightening and fairing the runners and frames. The pile of shavings are a pleasure each time.

The beauty of the shavings all over the floor makes it easy to push off clean up to another day.

The new boat is a continuing theme, but some interruptions are necessary in a 2-3 year project. The !962 Thompson being restored by Lake Effect Marina in Union, Michigan is nearing completion, but it needed a little help finishing up the dash board. Over the years it had been painted a couple of times over a plywood panel that wasn’t so special to begin with.

Scott is quite an artist with the Hydro dip technique, but getting a good looking Mahogany grain over paint never quite materialized. So he called and I went over to check out the problem. The last time I discussed how he wanted me to fix something, he said, “I have seen your boat. Just do this job like it was your own.”

That simplified the discussion, and the idea carried over to this project as well. So, the first thing I thought was that the dashboard should have the same beautiful solid thick Mahogany veneer as the transom that I rebuilt last December. (see Posts Thompson Transom 1 and 2)

I bought a nice piece of 4/4 Mahogany from Nisley’s Sons, and used my table saw and bandsaw to slice it in two book-matched pieces. Then I jointed the middle edges straight so they would lay together well, and taped them with wide masking tape.

On the back side of the dash, I cleaned and smoothed the holes for gauges and controls. Then, I taped them with green tape so there would not be much epoxy to clean up. The Mahogany veneer was left wider and thicker than the needed final dimensions to make clamping easier and to have less epoxy drip.

Many clamps were used, with wood blocks on the back side to spread the pressure more evenly over the whole surface. After epoxy bonding, I removed the green tape, cleaned up the excess, and routed the holes out to the original sizes.

Next, the veneer edge was trimmed to the original shape, final sanding was done. The dash was delivered to the marina for them to varnish, mount gauges, and install in the old Thompson speed boat..

If you having a problem with too much work to do or too many customers, you could probably fix it with a few sloppy jobs!

Otherwise, giving a “baker’s dozen” or “doing unto others how you would like it yourself,” will earn a stellar reputation.

Losing the computer program which detailed how high each of the frames should have been mounted, was a serious discouragement. I no longer had a visual reference for the transom, and the slope the keel toward the bow, etc. There was a few days when I seriously debated whether to quit or try to restart another way.

All through that time, the physical frames back from the CNC shop were stacked against the shop wall. It was hard to get motivated to use them, but they were way too big and too expensive to put in the trash.

I did know they were all in the same scale, symmetrical, and I knew their longitudinal positions in feet from the stern: 2.0, 4.5, 7.0, 10.0, 12.5, 15.0, 17.0 and 19.0 feet. In addition, the five near the stern all had the pre-cut interior floor line.

So, I pulled up another similar boat elevation (above) and made some vertical measurements of the top profile. On a table, I lined up Frames 5,6,7,8 and arranged them in a gradually increasing drop down using the height information.

Building a large side to side symmetric object like a boat, benefits from as much precision planning as possible. But sooner or later, when the time comes to create a fair line, precise measuring gives way to the feeling of running your hand over the curve, or inspecting it with your eye. It was far earlier than I planned, but now was the only option to proceed. In a way, it gave me a kindred spirit to the boat builders of previous centuries, who started and finished with little tech help.

The photo below tells a good story of the last few months. Those two desks are for the Butlers, just before going to the finish shop. They are beautiful white oak, with respect for the Craftsman Style, and show some satisfying proportions. Look at the 1 : 1.6 relationships of the drawer heights, the solid leg size, and the strong horizontal top line repeated at the shoulder and at the bottom of the drawers. I already miss having them in the shop!

But success at anything often requires saying no to lots of things. And there sat the cross frames, asking not for a little time in the sun, but for an immediate and long term commitment. It was time to begin winging it.

This go around, I did put down some cheap plywood and framed it with carpet remnants to absorb the dirt and epoxy that would eventually create a genuine mess. Then I cut some four foot 2 x 4s and spring clamped the first frame at a comfortable working height. The wood clamp on the floor is to keep the assembly standing up temporarily.

Frames 1-4 are now roughly hung in space, and life is getting crowded as the desks are still holding their own.

Now the process of precision alignment, and building a strong back, began. I used the straightest 2 x 6 pine lumber I could find, put some paint cans under it, and screwed it to the first frame leg, as perpendicular as possible. Then I made the short blocks with an eccentric adjustment hole, so I could turn it a bit up or down, to set the floor line to a consistent height and level side to side.

As I worked forward, mounting each frame, I used several reference points, like the height from the shop floor to the frame boat floor line. Then I used a long straight edges to see if the chine ledge was level as intended through the first three frames. The long curved stick was used to help visualize whether the chine point was developing a lump or fair curve. A large constructed object soon loses perfect accuracy to all of the 3D reference points, but the better related they are in the beginning, the easier at the end.

Finally, I added a post to the front of the frame, with a center string to line up all of the ones behind. Below the seventh frame is going through the same process, setting height and level with the eccentric blocks, and centering to the string.

Another helpful visual tool below was to put small nails at the angle of the chine step, and run a string the length of the frames. By moving your eye along, it is not so difficult to see alignment issues. Frame mounting was all of that, setting height, level, centered, correct spacing, and review of the places it should be straight, and where curved fairly. Then it was time to call it good enough.

Life builds in many tests of commitment. With a little persistence, creativity, hard work, and a lot more persistence, you can get back on track . . .