Week 1 - Initial Setup

Monday 25th of june was a long expected day for everyone at the academy. It was the startday to build the boats on the main floor of the workshop.



Since last winter we were training hard on our skills and now the moment has come. The moldes for the boats were allready build in may as a result of the lofting process. Lofting is a workflow in which the hulls lines are drawn in full scale (1:1) on huge hardboards to then be able to trace outlines on transparent paper and further either on templates or directly on parts of the construction.

Glóey's hull is a stripplanked construction in western red cedar which is a very light timber with long fibres. Therefore the hull will be build upsidedown.


So the first work to do is to setup the whole backbonestructure accurately on a basebox.


Beside the mouldes which allready are done we have to build the transom first as well as the innerstem (apron), the hog (innerkeel), the sternpost and some deadwoodparts.


Glóey is a relatively heavy boat for it's size, I would say a nice balance between traditional and modern construction.
So all the curved elements of the backbonestructure will be made out of laminated veneers of sapele and kaya mahogany. Epoxy resign is the glue to use in that case.

The transom is made out of 2 pieces of marine plywood with a thickness of 1/2 " each.
Instead of clamping the 2 elements together we put them on a flat surface and screwed a lot of screws on and pressed the whole package down with some heavy pieces of lead.
This core of the transom will later be covered with a thick veneer of sapele mahogany (1/8 ") as the finished outside material which will then be varnished and polished.


As shown on the focusing photo you can see that the edge of the transom has to be shaped with a changing bevel from the lower keelarea up to the sheerline. This is due to the fact that the strips used for planking will meet the transom in different angles.
To get this angles we did draw a couple of revolved sections on our lofting boards.

Parallel to these works, Don and Louis who are part of my team started setting up the mouldes on the basebox.
The main tools to work with are a spirit level, a plomb bob and for the fine adjustments of the heights a laser. These mouldes are only temporary jigs to do the planking and will later on be taken away after the hull will be turn to it's upright position.

Another element we started to produce was the hog which could be described as the inner part of the keel. Glóey has a 2" thick hog and it is about 4 meters long.
So we had to extend the sapele mahogany boards by planing scarfs (see detail on the photo). And finally the hog will be laminated out of 2 boards with 1" thickness each.
The photo also shows the wider part in the middle of the hog, this is the part where the centreboard will come through. For that reason we have to machine a slot in there.


And the last picture shows the situation on saturday morning after a very interesting and fascinating first week on Glóey...


Thank's for your interest


Cheers
Dominik