Power tool jigs

I've been distracted from the PDR for a couple of days because I have to make some desks and shelves for the kids rooms before the holidays finish.

The shelves are basically thin boxes made from 42 x 18 finger jointed pine glued both sides to 6mm ply. This is overkill for the short shelves but I have some that need to be 1900 long and the thickness should stop them from sagging. They'll be mounted into a recess in the room and fixed to the wall on three sides.

For cutting the ply I've made a fence for my circular saw which I clamp across the cut line. I use an 9 1/4 inch blade with 80 teeth set to cut just below the lower ply and it seems to cut without breakout.

For docking timber to a consistant size I've built another jig. I clamp the wood to the back fence and screw in a stop to make sure the size is consistent.

 

They're nifty jigs that do the job but I'm sure there are better ways of doing it.

The PD Goes 2D

Today I braved the 40 degree C heat and cut and smoothed the side panels and deck sides.

I used a bit of 11mm square finger jointed pine as a batten to lay out the lines and it seemed to give a fair curve.

The only tip I could give about this part of the process is to keep the jigsaw cut close to the line (especially the top of the side panel) as there isn't much room to fit things in when you flip the parts over to trace the copy for the other side.

For the fairing of the curves (convex and concave) I used a block plane. This is another magic tool. It's light and designed to be used one handed. It's blade is set at a lower angle than a regular plane making it good for working on plywood and end grain.

On the convex curves you may need to hold the plane on an angle to reduce the length of the sole and allow the blade to reach the timber. You may also need to set the blade out a little but careful not to set it too far as the gap will close up and tend to get blocked easier.

I needed to stop once during the process to sharpen the blade but all in all it went fairly quickly and I've now got myself a 2D PD. I'm a happy chappy.

Sharp as a Samurai Sword

While I was down south I managed to find some time to sharpen my planes and hand chisels. I took them with me because dad's really good at this sort of stuff (he makes his own knives from bits of expensive stainless steel).

Rather than using a stone dad uses wet and dry paper on top of a small sheet of float glass. Starting with 100 grit and moving on down to 1200 for a mirror finish making sure to keep it very wet the whole time with kerosene (or in this case we used gum turpentine because it was all we had on hand).

It worked a treat. We re-ground all the chisel bevels and flattened the plane soles by hand this way too and it's all looking better than new.

I'm going to get myself set up to do the same thing at my place. I'm hooked on ninja sharp tools now.

Milling

I spent a few days down south last week at dad's place helping him with a kitchen bench replacement. It took up almost all my time so sadly no work got done on the Roberts.

There was a little radiata pine scrap left over from the back of the kitchen bench and as I had my PDRacer plans there with the materials list I was able to use dad and his saw bench to cut up the scrap into perfectly sized bits of wood. I ended up with everything I needed except for the foil and spar timber. Rock on!

Ladder Frame

After looking through the illustrated building guide to the OZ PDRacer I noticed a nifty ladder frame on legs they used for all sorts of things. As I only has a couple of saw horses and 6mm ply is as floppy as a wet biscuit until it's framed up I decided I needed to make one for myself...

The mess I work in (my fault - I should get it organised but given the choice between building a boat and tidying the shed....)

First I needed to extend the saw horses with some 4x2s and screws.

Then build a ladder frame with a few screws, some 35x70 pine, and a scrap of 12mm ply to keep it all square.

And so it's done, note the nifty shelf for plans and tools. Works like a charm.

OZ Mk2 PDRacer

After reading Annie Hill's "Cruising on a Small Income" she mentions that the tender they used on Badger was a Bolger Brick. I went looking for info on this design and came across a class of dinghy called a PDRacer conceived by David Routh.

"The PDRacer is a one design racing sailboat that is basically a plywood box with a curved bottom, and is the easiest boat in the world to build. Free plans, free club, all boats must have have the lower 10" of their hulls be alike, but the rest is up to the builder. You can put any type of sail rig or underwater fins that you wish. Also the interior and deck above 10" is completely up to you."

Perfect! I needed a tender for the Bruce Roberts 24 I'm building with Dad. After a bit more reading I came upon  Michael Storer's refinement of the PDR design. Doubly Perfect! He'd managed to make it look pretty and sail fast. For the small sum of $20 you receive 3 very detailed PDF files of over 100 pages of plans and step by step illustrated building guides.

Anyway things got in the way for a couple of years and the plans sat on the computer unused but I now find myself living near the coast and longing for a boat. I recently had some time off work and finally got around to looking at the plans again. They were even better than I remembered and I've got even more enthusiasm than before. I emailed Michael (who must be the most accessible designer ever) and he got back to me with updated plans and some answers to some questions I had.

Which sail rig do you recommend for ocean sailing in 20 knot winds (typical coastal Perth)?

The lug reefs so is a good choice for a cruiser.  If you are a crazy dinghy racer the sprit will stand up find and feel somewhat similar to a Laser in dynamic terms ... but with somewhat less speed!  The PDR does go upwind against rough stuff quite well.

I've bought 3 sheets of 6mm 5ply marine ply but I now notice the plans call for 2 sheets of 4mm. Is my boat going to be significantly heavier? Does most of the weight from the hull come from the ply?

It won't matter too much.  Maybe an extra 7 or 8 lbs.  Just be careful with the rest of the build to choose materials and methods that keep the weight down to a normal level and it will be fine.  Generally boats don't end up badly heavy unless lots of different things have been done to increase the weight.

Best wishes...

MIK

Awsome... I'm building another boat!

Dovetails

Today we set up my new Keller dovetail jig. It's a freaking magic tool, set it up once and you never need to adjust it again. So simple to use and does perfect through dovetails.

We needed to use it on something so we decided to make the fore-hatch combing out of some spare Batu reeded decking we had lying around. This Batu probably comes from some pillaged Indonesian rain forest but seeing as it was scrap, and it's more noble to use it on a boat than a house, I don't feel too bad about it. It's really nice looking wood - I'm going to pretend it's teak.

We milled the reeding off in the thicknesser and cut four planks to size. We made a box and numbered the joins and then got to work with the jig. Things were going well and we were working out little shortcuts and techniques. Two lessons we learned were

1. Make sure the chuck is far enough away from the jig because steel nuts can rout aluminium, and
2. Make sure you slide the router off the jig and don't pull it up because when you hit aluminium at 6000 r.p.m. lots of exciting things happen.

Dad's polar fleece jumper saved his gut from some serious routing. The bit got tangled up in it and stopped dead. And when I say dead I mean totally forked. It bent the shaft. After a trip to the hardware store and $25 later we were back in business. The new bit was much better than the one we totalled so perhaps it was meant to be.

With the joints cut we partially fitted it together and smeared the surfaces with some epoxy and fibre filler. We tapped it in tight, wiped off the squeeze-out, squared it up, and left it to set.

Another good day's work. :)

Boat Destruction

Finally got the first day of boat work done in the new shed.

Left at 5:00 am on my faithful GS500 from Perth and passed a fatal accident at Mandurah (some kids drag racing and lost control - the girl in the back seat wasn't wearing a seat belt and was thrown through the window and died - what a waste). When I finally got to Busselton just before 8:00 I came upon a motorbike accident. A lady came out of Fairway Drv straight into the path of the guy on the bike - he didn't have a chance to stop. I found out later from my mate at the hospital that he broke his neck and was flown out to Perth by the RFDS.

It really freaks you out seeing a bike accident - especially ehen you're riding one yourself!

I was on the scene before the ambulance and police and so stopped to direct traffic. When the police turned up they asked me to keep directing traffic so I was there for an hour - the Busselton bypass was closed to eastbound traffic.

Anyway after all of that drama I finally made it to the folk's place.

Dad and I got stuck into cleaning up the shed and decided to take this bench dad had made for this guy out to his farm to give us more room. We got back and after having lunch went out and cut two honking great holes in the deck for the forehatch and the companion way sliding hatch.

And that was it for the day. More a day of boat destruction than construction.

Oh well.

Crook

My most excellent Mum, who with Dad had been looking after the kids on the school holidays, was crook last week. I went down south to pick the kids up a day early to give her a break and perhaps get a bit of work done on the boat. Sadly when I got there Dad was crook too! So the weekend was a write off boat wise but I had a mint time with the kids.

Oh well. There's always next weekend.

The Story So Far

Years ago (I forget exactly how many but less than 10) dad picked up a part finnished hull of a Robert's 24 off a guy who used to build wooden boats professionally in Busselton. He got it pretty cheaply, about $2500, which was less than the materials cost, let alone the time spent building it.
To this point via spurts of building and long periods of other things (breaking his neck surfing, moving house, grandchildren, travel, retirement etc.) dad has managed to complete the interior, deck, cockpit, and cabin.
Retirement has left mum and dad without a lot of spare cash to complete the boat and I find myself getting down south a lot more often - so pooling our resources we should be able to get the thing in the water within a year.
Cool.

Boat Moving

Just back from an epic weekend of boat moving. We (Dad and I) moved the hull from the Busselton industrial area to Dad's back shed.

After picking up the car trailer we went to the shed in the industrial area with a couple of engine hoists and lots of rope and straps. The trailer couldn't be backed into the shed so we had to push the trailer in by hand, lift the boat onto it, and move the trailer and boat outside by hand and jack. Not in any way an easy job.
With the boat hitched up we made a careful and furtive trip through the back streets of Busselton (trying to avoid any imperial entanglements) to Dad's house. We parked outside and went in for lunch. Three hours gone already. Dude.
Before we let ourselves collapse we got stuck into the move into the back shed.
Careful reversing.

Careful lifting.
Careful placement.
All done. 7 hours of huge effort. No injuries to us and only slight damage to the shed (look closely at the top beam of the roof truss - bummer). Not a bad day's work.
Hopefully we'll get more done now that the boat is only a few steps away from Dad's back door (it's still 240km away from me in Perth but I can psych Dad up over the phone).

Technologically Useful Human

Here's a way cool 10 question quiz. Try it. Seems I can bring everyone back into the 20th century if civilisation gets borked. :)

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