Day 17, Skin-on-frame rower-sailer

Day 17) skin-on-frame row/sail canoe. 3 hrs.
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In the 3 days I’ve been varnishing Jared is almost halfway done with a new pair of pack canoes. This clearly shows just how much strings, foils, spars, and a gaggle of shiny bits add cost and time to a build. By the time I’m done I will have spent more on varnish alone than I did on the coating for the entire hull. The clear advantages of skin on frame get a lot murkier when sails enter the equation.
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Another coat of varnish on the sail-y bits today. I’m getting slightly better at it.
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Tied the shock cord onto the pad eyes for the removable mast partners. It will be interesting to see if this actually works in this application. It would be nice because then I could store other smaller boats inside this one helping to ease perpetual boat storage issues.
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Toward the end of the day I decided that the ash guideboat oars I built for this boat are too long and too heavy, (7’6” 4.5 lbs each) so I decided I’ll use them on my next dinghy instead and toward the end of the day I cut up my last piece of spruce (from logs I kayak salvaged in the 2007 floods) to make the shafts for a new pair, one half of the stick sprung badly but I’m confident I can correct it.
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Drew up a slightly modified version of the Grant oar pattern for my own reference. Not that anyone cares about this but I’m convinced there is a small error in the plans in the Durant book. The oar blade as shown is 3/16 narrower than a fair curve creates at the 12 inch station. I’m not sure if this plan was drawn from a pattern or an oar, but if it was off an oar my speculation is that the pattern was a touch wider here and sanding took off the width. It’s really easy to make an oar blade slightly too thin at that location, and sanding brings the edge thickness back up at the cost of width.
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A bird pooped in my boat.
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Day 17, Skin-on-frame rower-sailer. Build time 3 hrs.

In the 3 days I’ve been varnishing Jared is almost halfway done with a new pair of pack canoes. This clearly shows just how much strings, foils, spars, and a gaggle of shiny bits add cost and time to a build. By the time I’m done I will have spent more on varnish alone than I did on the coating for the entire hull. The clear advantages of skin on frame get a lot murkier when sails enter the equation.

Another coat of varnish on the sail-y bits today. I’m getting slightly better at it.

Tied the shock cord onto the pad eyes for the removable mast partners. It will be interesting to see if this actually works in this application. It would be nice because then I could store other smaller boats inside this one helping to ease perpetual boat storage issues.

Toward the end of the day I decided that the ash guideboat oars I built for this boat are too long and too heavy, (7’6” 4.5 lbs each) so I decided I’ll use them on my next dinghy instead and toward the end of the day I cut up my last piece of spruce (from logs I kayak salvaged in the 2007 floods) to make the shafts for a new pair, one half of the stick sprung badly but I’m confident I can correct it.

Drew up a slightly modified version of the Grant oar pattern for my own reference. Not that anyone cares about this but I’m convinced there is a small error in the plans in the Durant book. The oar blade as shown is 3/16 narrower than a fair curve creates at the 12 inch station. I’m not sure if this plan was drawn from a pattern or an oar, but if it was off an oar my speculation is that the pattern was a touch wider here and sanding took off the width. It’s really easy to make an oar blade slightly too thin at that location, and sanding brings the edge thickness back up at the cost of width.

A bird pooped in my boat.