Coronet1885

Posted By Tom Daniels on July 13, 2010

During January,  Leo, Eric, and Claes focused on building the Stem.  Chris was in New Zealand for much of the month visiting friends and family back home.  It wasn’t all fun and games though, while he was there he worked with some local foundries to make some bronze castings for the boat.

The entire boat has been lofted on computer, and the lines from this lofting have been printed on mylar sheets.  The great thing about the mylar is that it doesn’t tear easily, or shrink and  swell with humidity.  You can also get very precise, multi-colored lines to work with.  This makes it much easier to lay out tapers and other  layers of information on the lofting.

The sheets are taped together using registration marks to line them up, and fastened to the lofting floor upstairs.

The shipwrights can then lay the parts right on top of the lofting to make sure that everything lines up exactly right when all the parts are assembled.

Here you can see the stem sections on top of the lofting, with clamps holding them together just as they would be when they are through-bolted on the boat.

Down on the shop floor, the long sections of the keel were tapered in preparation for being scarfed (sometimes spelled “scarphed,” by the way) together.

The keel had been turned on its side while the rabbet was being cut into it, but here it’s been set upright in order to fit and clamp the forefoot onto its forward end.   You can see how the rabbet has been carried through from the forward section of the keel (the lighter colored wood) into the forefoot (the darker wood above).

You can also see that the rabbet has not been finished in the forefoot.  Those 2 rectangular slots are the beginnings of the rabbet in this piece.

You can see the faint impressions of the same kind of slots on the other side of the forefoot where the rabbet has been cut.

Just in case it’s a little difficult to picture how this looks in the actual boat, how about we step back a bit and explain some terms.

Here’s the bow of the boat, partially stripped of planking.

The backbone runs down the center of the boat and primarily consists (from back to front) of the transom, sternpost, keel, forefoot, gripe, and stem.  There are more parts, but these are some of the biggies.  The hull and frames all connect to the backbone.  The planking intersects to the backbone  at that angled slot called the rabbet.

Here’s a detail of the previous picture with the rabbet marked in yellow

You can see how the planks end right at the rabbet.

The forefoot is outlined here in pink.

And here is the stem and gripe.  The copper cladding on the front of the stem assembly was still on at the time of this particular photo.

Behind the planking, and above the gripe is the deadwood.  Deadwood is essentially filler wood. By January, the planking has been pretty much removed from the forward section of the boat, and you can see how the rabbet comes up through the forefoot, and then continues on up into the deadwood.

Next up, some scarfing details.

Category: Construction & Methods, General
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