28-Foot Cabin Cruiser "Mollyhawk". Part I.
Don't start to build Mollyhawk unless you have first tried your hand at some smaller craft. Not but' what you might succeed—that is a matter of individual ability — but what I mean is that Mollyhawk is not a primer, it's one step higher, is a second-grade reader so to speak, a little more difficult and much more of a boat. I have laid out all the work, and the plans herewith published show how the work is to be done, but it's up to you to open your tool chest, go see the lumber dealer, and prepare to use your muscles. You who want to keep your waistband girth down can leave off your dumb-bell exercises and your walks; the contortions you will go through in building a boat are the best kind of exercises to keep a man healthy and strong. Build her under cover, if you can, inside a barn or shed. If this is not available, and I never was so lucky myself, do as I did, set up some posts and from these run rafters up against the side of your house, and roof over and board in with novelty siding. The first step in the real work of construction consists in getting out the molds. These molds are wooden patterns, as it were, that show the boat's shape at the various stations marked in our plans, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8. No 8 could be dispensed with, but, on account of the boat being rounded up so quickly at the stern, I have shown it. and it will pay you to go to the trouble to make it, you being an amateur. These molds are thrown away when the boat is completed, and for that reason are generally made of some very cheap wood about one inch thick. Their shapes can be laid out from the measurements given at six-inch intervals in our plans on Plate 2. When these are all ready, lay them aside and start on the oak keel and the backbone of the boat. The various members which constitute the backbone are all shown and identified. Nearly all the members here shown are to be of oak. Sometimes the knees, such as the transom knee, stem knee, etc., are made of hackmatack. Either wood will do, but by all means make your keel, shaft log and fore foot of good, sound, clear white oak. The keel is the first and largest stick in the boat. It is, as shown in Plate 3, 22 feet 1 l/2 inches long, 4 inches thick and 6 inches deep. Don't make the mistake so often made by amateurs of ordering a 4x6 of your lumber dealer, and then, when he asks if you want it rough or dressed lumber, tell him you want the wood dressed, for, if you do, you will probably get about a 3 3/4-inch stick for your keel, and, while this at first thought might not seem to make any difference, you will find it, as well as the rabbet line, has ail been figured out for a 4-inch stick of wood, and this would all be changed with the thinner size. There is very little cutting to be done on the keel in this particular kind of a boat. The general run of boats that are built nowadays use a flat plank for a keel and bend it up aft, so that it comes right up to the transom, but this is no light runabout. We want weight, strength and rigidity in this boat, and for that reason have gone back to the regular old ship style of construction. The deadwood and shaft-log should next be cut to the various shapes shown in the plans, and, by being made in two pieces, the shaft-hole can be planed or gouged half out of each, instead of being bored with an auger, or, if you prefer, the dead-wood can be in one piece and bored, but ninety-nine out of a hundred amateurs would find great difficulty in getting an auger large enough to bore a two-inch hole. The stern timber has more shaping to it than any other piece of wood in the boat, and, if the amateur could make a wooden pattern of this and have it sawed out at the saw mill where he ordered his lumber, it would save him considerable cutting. If not, he will have to line it up and saw and chop.
View of 28-Foot Cabin Cruiser "Mollyhawk"
The forward end of the keel is built up with a four-inch fore foot, which takes a stick of timber 6 feet 3 inches long and 9 inches wide, a stem which is 6 feet 6 inches long, 4 inches thick and 9 inches wide. These are all shaped and held together by the four-inch hackmatack knee to which each is riveted. The bolting together of this deadwood is generally a sticker for the amateur, but if he will provide himself with two or three half-inch galvanized iron rods — they generally come in standard lengths of about 12 to 14 feet — about four pounds of half-inch rivet rings, and a long ship auger, also half-inch, he will find the problem to be greatly simplified. Carefully set the various pieces of wood one on top of the other, tacking them lightly with wire nails, and then bore the various holes where you want bolts; with a hack saw cut the iron rods into the proper lengths for bolts to go through these holes. Then clamp these bolts in a vise, and with a riveting hammer head up, as it is called; that is, burr over one end so it makes a head on the end of the iron. Slip one of the rivet rings over this, and drive it through the hole from underneath, where you, should previously have bored a hole in about one inch, large enough to take the riveting ring, and if you cannot get an auger large enough, cut it out with a gouge. This is to countersink the rings so that they will show flush with the wood or so a wooden plug can be put in to fill the hole: A bit of tallow rubbed on the iron bolt before you start to drive it will save a good many blows of your top maul, as the light sledge hammers are called, when you come to drive these bolts through the auger holes. They should be just long enough to stick up about a half inch above the inside edge of the wood. Then, with somebody holding a heavy sledge hammer or other heavy weight against the bolt on the underside, slip a rivet ring over the bolt and proceed to head up the inner end It is rather difficult to tell an amateur just when he has headed the bolt up tight enough. An experienced man could tell by the sound of the blow on the bolt. The only way I can explain to you to tell when it is sufficiently drawn up is to tell you to keep tapping the bolt and burring it over until the rivet ring begins to sink into the wood. The deadwood bolts need not necessarily go clear through. They can simply be driven through the keel and into this deadwood, a distance of about 6 inches, forming what are called blind bolts. If all these bolts were put in exactly parallel to each other, you can readily see that it would be an easy matter for the wood to draw away again, but, on the other hand, if the bolts are at different angles, staggered, as boat-builders call it, the wood is firmly locked and cannot get away. Before you put the various pieces of wood together, paint their surfaces with a good thick coat of white lead paint, any colour will do. Shipyards always have a great many screw clamps of various lengths, and it would be well for you to provide yourself with them, as you find you need them for this job, as, for instance, in pulling these deadwoods together you will find screw clamps a very great help Of course, an ingenious mechanic can overcome it by making a dog, that is, cut a notch in a piece of oak a little larger than the span of the wood to be bolted together, and wedging them together by inserting a wooden wedge between the upper part of this dog and the top of the deadwood and driving the wedge in solid, but dogs will have to be put on each side of the deadwood to prevent tipping to one side This will saueeze the wood together about as tight as it could be drawn with a screw clamp, and you are then ready to rivet.
Lines of 28-Foot Cabin Cruiser "Mollyhawk"
This backbone is generally laid on its side while being bolted together, and, while it is still in this position, it is a good time to cut your rabbet. Either lay it out flat on the floor, being careful not to strain any of the joints, or, better yet, lay it over wooden horses, which always come in handy around a boat shop, and which it will pay you to take the time to make before you start. This raises your work off the ground at a convenient height, and keeps you from almost breaking your back by trying to sit on the ground and hammer But if you're going to cut your rabbet at' this stage of the game you will have to be very particular about getting just the proper bevels at which to apply a little sample of your order all this from the lumber yard, cut up and dressed to 1 1/2 inches in 8 to 12-foot lengths, take a thin batten of pine, about a quarter of an inch thick and inch or inch and a half wide, space off ten-inch intervals along your keel, and from these bend the batten up around the inside of the ribbands, and mark with pencil this location. When you come to bend in the hot timbers, you can bend them right along these pencil marks. This will insure the frames being evenly spaced, and not all standing zigzag. Of course, you can straighten the timbers up after they are cold, but along in the ends it will save a whole lot of trouble, on account of the excessive bevels there if you don't have to shift them. To soften your timbers so as to make them pliable enough to bend in around the ribbands, you will have to build a steam box. Two can work to far better advantage than one at this job. A1 1/2-inch timber, even when saturated with steam, is a pretty stubborn piece of wood to bend, and, a day's work at this will tire any man. Let one man get inside the boat to work, the other handing him the hot timbers from the steam box, then, as he bears down with his feet to crimp the frame down into its place against the battens, pulling the head of the frame in board at the same time, his friend on the outside can follow along, starting at the keel and clamp the frames to each one of the ribbands in succession. These clamps should not be removed five or ten minutes. At the end of that time, after nailing them off with about two-inch wire nails, driven diagonally through the ribbands into the frames, these clamps may all be removed and used farther along on the hull. Very little difficulty will be experienced in bending the frames from the bow clear back to about section No. 5. From there back you have to be a little more careful on account of the reverse bend in the heels of the frames, and the bend at the bilge becoming more sudden. There is a way of easing this part of the operation, and that is to split the frame down as far as where the quick bend comes. This allows the inner half to slide on the outer half, and yet, when the plank fastenings arc put through, they rivet the two securely together again. Personally I would not recommend this kind of construction.
After the frames are all in, sawed oak floors of two-inch oak are fitted alongside the heels of each pair of frames, riveted to them, and securely bolted to the keel with about 1 1/2-inch iron. The shapes of these are very easily determined by laying a thin pine board across the top of the keel and against the frames where the floor is to fit, and marking the shape of the outer side of these frames with lead pencil on this board. With a few cuts of a draw knife you can cut this thin pine pattern and use that as a templet to mark out the shape of the desired floor. If you could only build a boat as easily as you can tell how to do it, we could build about one a day, but when the amateur tackles this job of fitting in two-inch oak floors, unless he has a band saw handy to help him, he will do very well if he fits in from four to six of these floors alone in a day.
Body Plan of 28-Foot Cabin Cruiser "Mollyhawk"
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