32-Foot Cabin Cruiser "Sunfish". Part I.
Nobody builds a boat nowadays as they used to. Lumber can now be ordered at the lumber yard or saw mill in the sizes desired, and you don't have to hew and chop them out by hand, so the tools needed are mostly just a carpenter's outfit. I don't mean by that just a hammer and a saw, but such a kit as every carpenter is supposed to have. Such tools as the old time broad axe and whip saw are not required.
You can order a stick for the keel and get it already dressed — as they term planed lumber — to the size desired, but let me warn you right now, if you do order it dressed be sure to mark it down in big letters that' you want the keel to be 3 inches by 4 inches after it is dressed. Other- wise you will get a stick that was 3 by 4 in the rough, and, it will be 2 7/8 bу 3 7/8 when you get it. The stick for this boat's keel must be 28 feet long and good for every inch, not a 28-foot piece with a foot of the end bad.
For the stem you want either an oak or a hackmatack knee, square or a trifle out square in its crook, 3 inches thick, without any skewgee or twist to it, with one arm 5 feet long, the other 3 feet, and thick enough in the throat to allow your stem being cut from it. It is safer to wait until you have drawn out the shape of your stem and made a 1/2-inch wooden pattern of it. By trying this pattern on the knee as you are selecting it, you can see if it is large enough or not.
There is one thing particularly needed in building any boat and that is a clear head. Stop and think out your-work and don't believe the time spent in planning and laying out the work carefully is lost. It's all simple enough if you don't try to go too fast and get all confused. In laying out the stem, as an example, the outline of it is simple enough, but to tell how to bevel it off looks puzzling to the novice at first. Look at the plan showing the waterline's shape. As each waterline ends forward at the stem it comes in at a different angle. If you have laid the boat's lines down full size on the floor you can, with a bevel square, set that instrument or tool to that bevel and cut the stem until it fits. Each waterline from the deck down gets sharper and sharper. By spacing off these waterlines on your wood you can cut at each until you have it bevelled to just what the lines call for. Don't bring the edge of the stem to a feather edge, but have it about 3/4 of an inch wide to take a metal stem band.
The rabbet for the ends of the planking can be cut the same way by the use of the bevel or by taking a little piece of 1/2-inch pine board about a foot long and 3 inches wide and cutting a notch so half of one edge is 3/4 inch wider than the other half. This 3/4-inch projection represents the thickness of the planking. Chisel out the rabbet until this template fits on the face of the stern and the notched part fits snug in the rabbet. Another way is to wait until the molds are all set up and then bend a batten around them and cut the rabbet so the end of this batten fits true in the rabbet. The only objection to this is that it is more difficult to work in that position, standing upright, than it is where you can lay the stem flat on a floor or over a pair or wooden horses and sit on it and chisel out the rabbet.
The after deadwood can be made either in one piece or built up of smaller ones. If cut from one piece, which is more desirable, it takes a piece of 4-inch wood 18 inches wide and 6 feet 8 inches long. If built up of several pieces the upper part can be made from a 4 foot piece of 4-inch by 6-inch oak, and the shaft log from a 2-foot piece of 4-inch by 6-inch oak, and the deadwood below it from a 4-foot piece of 4-inch by 6-inch oak. The three must be jointed to a perfect seam where they meet and bolted together with rods of 1/2-inch diameter galvanized iron or copper. You can buy this rod iron in 12 to 14-foot lengths and also the clinch rings that go over the ends where you rivet them up, but be sure to get wrought-iron clinch rings and not the brittle cast-iron ones. In some localities it may be difficult to obtain a knee large enough to cut the stem from it. If so, it can be built up in two pieces just/as the after deadwood, using a straight piece of oak 5 feet long, a foot wide and 3 inches thick for the stem proper and back of it a small knee about 2 feet long on its arms, as shown in the accompanying sketches.
Appearance Plan of 32-Foot Cabin Cruiser "Sunfish"
It is to be supposed that a man who undertakes to build Sunfish has had some experience in the use of wood-working tools, and that Me will know enough to be able to bore a bolt hole without choking his auger and in jointing up the deadwoods will square up the edges always from the face side so that when the various pieces come to be bolted together they will set true and level one on top of the other and not be canted or staggered out of the vertical. Such A, B, C principles a man is presumed to know when he tackles the building of this boat. The short sternpost is fitted dovetail to the after end of the shaft log so that the lag screws that are to hold the stern bearing will have cross-grained wood to hold to instead of end grain.
The bore of the shaft hole is so short that there should be no difficulty experienced in getting, it through a solid log and so do away with the seam along the line of the shaft that would be there if the log were made up of two pieces with the shaft hole gouged half out of each. That is the way they are often built where there is a long deadwood to go through and in attempting to bore which the auger will often run off to one side or the other. Here the hole is only 22 inches long in the wood, a very easy job to bore.
As you work out each piece, scratch centre marks and be sure that you set these marks all, true when, after painting the two faces that come together, you rivet the stem and deadwood to the keel. Countersink the bolt-heads on the underside of the keel far enough to get a wooden plug dipped in white lead over them and so leave a flush, smooth job on the outside.
With the keel, stem and deadwood all together we have the backbone of the boat ready to set up and as the fairness of the boat depends on her being held rigidly to the desired shape while in the course of construction, be careful to get the shores, or short posts of wood that are to hold her keel, true to the measurements given above the floor — and don't trust to the floor's being true; stretch a chalk line very tight and measure up again to see that ill is right before you set the keel up on them.
Plan of 32-Foot Cabin Cruiser "Sunfish"
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