Thinking of Buying a Smaller Yacht?

It is a truth universally acknowledged that… the smaller the [wooden] boat the greater the pleasure, and I would add, just as important, far less of a chore to fit out. It takes time enough to sand, fill, prime and paint Sally’s topsides, then I look to my right where stands, propped up in the yard, a yacht not many feet longer than my modest 25 footer, and I thank goodness for small boats. Z4s, Hillyards, Debens of various kinds, et al, the list is long.

Those hardy souls who camp in dinghies under ingenious tents, heating their rations on portable gas stoves, get even more of my admiration. It’s great to be invited aboard a big wooden classic, and I treasure my time racing the McGruer Kelana, or squatting on the aft deck of Moonbeam, but would not envy her owners the task of maintaining them every year to the highest standards. That’s like grooming an elephant, when all you really have the energy for is to stroke a kitten. One is exhausting, the other is relaxing. Up to a point.

I reckon 25ft is about as much as one person can maintain, allowing a day for each of the annual chores. A day to sand the topsides, another to strip the varnish, one to antifoul, and so on. Sally comes into that category, but even so, after a week which begins with despair at the task facing me, then satisfaction in seeing the work list slowly shrink, towards the final push to complete all by the time the yard want to launch her, I have lost much of the enthusiasm and just want to see her floating to her waterline again at her mooring in Loggie Bay, a spit opposite the yard where she has been for a couple of weeks.

That 34 footer alongside Sally is more like a three- or four-day per chore boat, and I would not want to be the one to have to tackle the towering wall of gleaming white enamel every few years. Besides, you’d need staging, not the wooden ladder up and down which I clambered these past weeks. And I can just about reach much of Sally’s topsides from the ground, and the higher bits by standing on a few keel blocks placed around her. 

Adding a few feet to a boat’s length increases the work at fitting out exponentially. I used to long for the day when, flushed with cash from a series of best selling nautical murder mysteries I could scribble a list of what needed doing and let the experts at the yard get on with it. I would write cheques, and appear at launching. In fact last year I tentatively asked if anyone might be free to lay on a perfect coat of Hempel’s Polar White, as I’ve seen the difference between my efforts and those of a professional. I was once given a badger haired – I think it was, or perhaps Madagascan squirrel – laying off brush, something I’d not come across before, by a painter of superyachts. Apparently you apply the paint, then quickly caress the surface with the fine. I tried it once, but never again. It’s hard enough to keep a wet edge without stopping to caress what you’ve just achieved with the neck fluff of an exotic creature. Nope, Sally’s topsides are again this year flawless… from a distance, and that’s the way they will stay, until a new owner familiar with the techniques of laying on brushes, and (the correct) thinners takes her on.

Don’t get me wrong; maintaining a small wooden yacht as best you can, given sunny days and plenty of time is a vital and mostly pleasurable component of ownership. Once a year you get the chance to pore over every inch of her, stroke her flanks intimately in a way that is more akin to the grooming rituals of the animal world. For fleas, read flaking paint and tangles, small divots. And this year, annus mirabilis, I may finally have managed to achieve what I am hoping will be the perfect waterline. Hoping, as she has yet to be launched as I write this. After nearly thirty years of ownership, perhaps this time…

Show Me More:

• Shamrock V Relaunch: Sole Wooden J Restoration Complete
• Classic Boats for Sale: Two Wooden Motorboats on the Market
• Boat Design & No Need for Ugly Boats: Tom Cunliffe’s Column

The post Advantages of Owning Smaller Yachts: Adrian Morgan’s Boat Scale appeared first on Classic Boat Magazine.

The plough plane is your hand tool passport to the cross-tongue joint, a key technique in the shipwright’s repertoire. The cross-tongue joins boards edge-to-edge, especially where the wood is thick and the tongue must be strong – in a transom, for example.

The tongue of an ordinary tongue-and-groove joint worked on the board itself has grain running the length of the board, but a cross-tongue has grain perpendicular to the boards and is stronger.

You could cut the grooves with a router or table saw, but the plough is easier, quicker and more enjoyable. Although an undamaged wooden plough is a rarity, there are many good alternatives in cast iron. Easiest to find is the delightfully ergonomic Record 043, which was made from the 1930s until the 1970s. This nickel-plated gem can be had for less than the cost of a biscuit jointer’s blade.

Begin by planing the boards flat and square, so edges meet along their lengths, and mark the face sides. A centreline scored on each edge will help centre the plough’s iron, which is chosen to cut a groove about one third the width of the edge. The gauge is set to cut just deeper than the groove is wide. The fence is held tight against the face side and locked to its arms.

A plough is used differently to other planes – you begin at the far end of the piece, working back to the near end, lengthening and deepening the groove with each pass, always keeping firm lateral pressure on the fence. Soon the plane is being guided by the tidy groove it has made, ejecting springy coils of shavings like so many nests of tagliatelle.

If grooves are slightly off-centre it doesn’t matter – the surfaces will match up as long as the face side remains your datum for the fence. Sometimes, boatbuilders would cut grooves deliberately off-centre so that maximum wear could be had from a surface before the tongue showed through.

Using a tenon saw, rip another board lengthways for the tongue, following lines spaced equal to the width of the groove. Then cross-cut to make pieces of the required depth, which should be just shy of the combined depths of the two grooves. The tongue is made up of several pieces arranged end-to-end.
An advantage of this joint is that you can use a different material for the tongue – a stronger timber, for example, plywood, or even Tufnol. Some 19th-century shipbuilders were using wrought iron!

Glue, assemble, and clamp the parts, and the joint is done. With this technique at your disposal, small stock need never be an obstacle to a big idea. A hatch, table or cockpit seat: no problem.

The post How to make a cross-tongue joint appeared first on Classic Boat Magazine.

Mast bitts play a critical role for making off halyards and other lines. For strength, they should be attached to the deck beam at the after-end of the partners – the heavy deck timbers that support the mast.

This deck beam and its mate at the forward end of the mast partners are of greater scantling than the other beams, because they provide one of the three points of support for the mast (the mast step and rigging being the other two).

Any of the halyards coming down from aloft and made off at the mast pin rail will try to pull the bitts upwards. If they are simply bolted through the beam, they will move a little to begin with, a little more in years to come, and will be liable to leak. The question is, how does one chop the minimum amount out of the deck beam, and create a joint with more resistance than a bolt?

First, cut a tapering rebate in the beam alongside the mast partners. Leave the beam full at the top, but go in by a third of its thickness at the bottom. To create the joint, make repeated saw cuts in the beam, knock out the timber between the cuts with a chisel and clean up with a rebate plane.

Next, mark up one of the bitts, taking care to configure it correctly. When you draw the cut-out for the pin rail, make sure there is sufficient clearance under it, and that there is enough timber above the rail to make off a rope. Transfer the marks to the other mast bitt, and machine them both.

Fitting the bitts
Fit the mast bitts by cutting a corresponding joint where they will mate with the beam. Bear in mind that the deck beam is square to the bend of the camber, whereas the mast bitt will have to be upright. To get round this, clamp the bitt into position, then pass a saw kerf between the top face of the deck beam and the mast bitt so that it fits down snug with the deck. Drill and bolt through the beam.

The bolt is now acting in tension, holding the joint together. If the mast bitts were to move upwards under the force of the halyards, the joint would become wider across the fore and aft orientation. The bolt will not allow this, so the upward force of the halyard is transferred to the whole face of the joint and beam, rather than merely relying on the diameter of the bolt alone. The minimum has been cut from this important deck beam, yet a very strong joint has been created.

The post Making mast bitts appeared first on Classic Boat Magazine.

Visit our forum here.

>> Can anyone recommend a decent wood glue for repairs? Rubysue

>> Type of wood? Internal or external? Structural or cosmetic? Work conditions? There are four or five generic types of adhesive with different characteristics that you might consider. Tranona

>> Either epoxy or polyurethane. Epoxy fills gaps depending on what additives you, er, add. It’s also strong and easy to use if you follow the instructions but wood must be dry and you need to watch the temperature. Polyurethane does not fill gaps and must be close-clamped for a good bond because it foams when curing and will push the joint apart. Less fussy about damp and one-pot, so very easy to use. Dur

>> Epoxy can stick to most other glues if it is difficult to completely clean out the original joint. If the wood is iroko or teak, be sure to de-grease before joining, though I have not had any trouble. Oak is reputedly not fond of epoxy, so Resorcinol is better, but needs thin glue joints and tight clamping. It is temperature sensitive too – no less than 100C. DownWest

>> Balcotan is a good general-purpose marine glue but the ‘Rapid’ version foams up a lot, good in that it fills the spaces but bad as the overspill stains can be hard to remove. SHUG

>> While the foam from Balcotan fills the spaces, it is not ‘gap-filling’ and has no real strength so you need reasonable joints and close cramping for a strong joint. Then it really is quite strong. Dur

>> Built a boat using epoxy, never a joint failed. Built a washboard out of newly-cut oak strips, glued with foaming PU that fell apart in two days. Rest of tube in bin. Maxcampbell

>> I haven’t tried Balcotan on oak but have used it to good effect on iroko – eg a new stem for an old dinghy and curved seats for a day boat. The dinghy lived on a drying mooring for some years, then a couple of years in the garden. Never a problem. Dur

The post Wood glue for repairs appeared first on Classic Boat Magazine.

1. Wooden boats will always look the part. Varnished plywood grain pattern looks weird; better to paint over it.

2. Wood is basically a kit of parts, thus infinitely repairable; damage any part and a new piece can be grafted in seamlessly.

3. Wood is more satisfying and easier to build – no mixing and spreading of epoxy mayonnaise – and requires no glue, apart from the stem laminates.

4. Wood is less wasteful of timber; most offcuts can be used elsewhere, if only to warm the workshop.

5. Wooden boats can be built in any length, not restricted to multiples of 8x4ft /2.4×1.2m (less scarphs) as with a plywood boat.

6. Similar cost to a GRP or ply boat; larch at £17/ft³ and oak at £25 compare to £100+ for a sheet of mahogany-faced plywood.

7   Wooden boats are safer to build; no toxic plywood dust or epoxy allergies.

8. Wood is as quick or quicker to build and teaches craftsmanship; joints must be precise; no epoxy bodging. Also, wooden boats, ulike epoxy which needs a minimum ambient temperature, can be built in an unheated shed.

9. Wooden boats have  ‘life’ and a weight that properly matches its material, whereas a plywood boat to the same design is often too light and skittish.

10. Wood is more sustainable; I know where every one of my larch and oak boards came from, within a radius of 200 miles. Good plywood is essentially a man-made laminate, inert like Formica, comes from who knows where and uses old-growth hardwoods

To read the Plywood side of the debate, click here

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The post 10 reasons to make your boat from wood: Wood vs Ply appeared first on Classic Boat Magazine.

In the late 1980s, when I was working on a yacht restoration at Mylor Yacht Harbour in Cornwall, I learned a trick from local boatbuilder Brian Crockford. He was working on his own boat, Kelpie, a St Mawes One-Design, in the evenings after work.

He had a method of bending a piece of timber that did not require any special equipment: he simply used a household kettle, some absorbent cloths and a selection of cramps. I stayed behind one evening to watch Brian use this method to fit a new keel to his boat. The keel shape was straight until forward of the centreplate case, where it started to curve upwards towards the stem.

The garboard strakes had been removed, so the straight section of the keel could be cramped to the hog. The remainder, which needed to take up the curve, was then wrapped in the absorbent cloths, and soaked with boiling water from the kettle. After a few boiled kettles, he placed a couple of cramps a few inches ahead of the straight section of the keel, and tightened them enough to pull an almost imperceptible bend into it.

The rest of Brian’s evening was spent repeating the process. After several kettles of boiling water, the cramps could be tightened a fraction. Then a couple more cramps could be placed slightly further along, and slowly but surely the stiff and unyielding piece of timber would start to curve to the required shape.

I have since used this technique on several occasions. The main things to remember are to use plenty of cramps to spread the load, and to be patient. The timber will not suddenly become noticeably flexible, but it will eventually bend if the cramps are tightened little by little.

The post Bending Wood without Steam appeared first on Classic Boat Magazine.

To avoid leaks around the deck edge on his smack yacht, Rhoda Gostelow,
Brian Taylor decided to deviate from traditional methods when he built the new bulwarks.

Knowing that simply bolting through the covering board and fitting a nut and washer underneath would be too weak, Brian placed each stanchion above a deck beam, locating the bolts in a sturdy part of the boat’s framework.

Rather than drill right the way through, he stopped the holes short and unusually for holes drilled in wood tapped them. It was then possible to wind a piece of threaded bar, dipped in wet epoxy, into each hole, securely fastening them to the hull.

The wooden stanchions, with holes drilled lengthways through their centres, could now be slipped over the stainless bars. The bottom of each stanchion was marked and trimmed to fit the deck closely, then bolted down with a nut and washer.

The success of this system depends on the alignment of the initial holes. To ensure this was correct, Brian temporarily screwed a piece of plywood to the sheerstrake. The plywood stood up above deck level, following the angle of the plank it was screwed to and, hence, the desired angle of the bulwark.

Three identical blocks of wood held the drill bit parallel to the plywood. The final adjustment before drilling the hole was to line up the guide for the drill bit in a fore and aft direction. This was achieved by fastening the plywood with just one screw. Using a sliding bevel he would measure the angle between the frame and the underneath of the deck, directly below its proposed hole.

By placing the bevel on deck, he could now tilt the plywood until the drill bit was held at the same angle as the frame below. Two more temporary screws were then used to hold the plywood securely in place before the hole was drilled.

The post Stronger Stanchions appeared first on Classic Boat Magazine.

It’s one thing to go to the builders’ merchant for some kiln-dried Baltic softwood for use at home, but quite another when it comes to boats…

Generally speaking, Baltic softwood (pine and spruce) can’t be used for boatbuilding due to its low resistance to decay; we must buy naturally durable hardwood or a softwood like larch.

Hardwood from suppliers like Robbins is likely to be seasoned, but if we’re buying direct from a sawmill  and this is most likely to be the case with indigenous woods like larch and oak  it’ll probably be ‘green’ (wet) and in need of air-drying. Time is the essential factor here. It’s like laying down a good wine  it improves with age. Its value increases too.

Wood used in boat construction needs to be at an equilibrium moisture content (EMC) suited to its end use. This means, in northern Europe, timbers above the waterline can be as high as around 20 per cent MC in winter and as low as around 12 per cent during a long, dry summer.

Once in use aboard boats Ð painted or varnished Ð this range is likely to narrow. Although fungal decay problems don’t kick in until about 22 per cent we must be wary. Bad design that traps water can put our wood squarely in the fungal range of 22Ð50 per cent MC.

The moisture content of green timber can vary from 40-200 per cent, the latter being a figure sometimes attributed to Sitka spruce and also an explanation as to why it’s so light when dry. Larch is at around 50 per cent when green.

Irrespective of that, drying wood doesn’t change shape (shrink) until it’s down to Fibre Saturation Point (FSP), around 27 per cent. Here on, as moisture content lowers, movement (shrinkage) occurs. So, for practical purposes, shrinkage occurs from 12 to 27 per cent MC.

Below FSP it’s imperative to have our stack of wood ‘in stick’. This will let the air circulate around the boards, keeping them flat. Shade is important: find a sheet of ply or corrugated iron if the stack is to season outside.

Don’t worry about rain. It’s the seasonal changes in relative humidity that make the difference, not showers.

The post Air-Seasoning Wood appeared first on Classic Boat Magazine.

There are numerous woodworking projects where planks are laid down edge to edge to form a flat surface.

One example of this on Edith was her new transom, which was made from three boards of oak, while on Sigfrid, a less structural example has been our new cabin sole.

If the planks in question are absolutely straight, with the edges perfectly square, they will clearly fit tightly together and create the desired flat surface. In practice, particularly when the job is being done by hand, this is a lot harder to achieve than it sounds and it can prove difficult to obtain a satisfactory,  close-fitting result.

While I was still at school I was shown a technique to make this job far easier. To begin with, the plank edges are planed as straight and square as possible. When they are laid down side by side, every discrepancy will become apparent, and you will generally be unhappy with the joint.

The trick now is to fold the two pieces of wood together as if they were the pages of a book, and put them in the vice with the joining edges uppermost. The two boards are now carefully planed as if they were one thicker piece of timber. When they are removed from the vice and ‘unfolded’ you will find that any slight deviation from square has been automatically mirrored in the two boards and therefore will cancel each other out.

The post How to fit a plank appeared first on Classic Boat Magazine.

In the past, deck beams would have been cut from solid timber, using, if necessary, wood where the grain followed the curve required.

Now, with reliable modern glues, it can be stronger and less wasteful of materials to laminate them.

Knowing that he intended to varnish the beams in the coachroof of his smack yacht Rhoda Gostelow, but wanting the interior to look as traditional as possible, Brian Taylor came up with a simple way to make them look as if cut from solid timber.

The first step was to glue thin cheek pieces on each side of the beams to cover the laminations; then he cut a small decorative moulding onto the bottom corners, neatly hiding the glue line between the cheek piece and the bottom laminate of the beam.

The post Disguising Laminates appeared first on Classic Boat Magazine.