(Slightly non-PC) Observation for the Day (but it was written BC)

Who wishes to give himself an abundance of expense let him equip these two things: a yacht and a woman. For nothing involves more expense, if you have begun to fit them out. Nor are these two things ever sufficiently adorned, nor is any excess of adornment enough for them.

                                                        Titus Maccius Plautus (c. 254 BC – 184 BC)


Now, where's the Gael Force catalogue...

PS And welcome Thomas Armstrong, 26th follower.

Building by Numbers

Brandon need not worry about mistakes in Iain's plans. Not for a boat that's built traditionally. I saw Mark Stockl the other day, and we discussed his Guillemot. Almost nothing is according to the plans. Mark hates building by numbers so, I imagine, he just took the sections, set them up as moulds on a backbone and got planking. Probably ignored the lining out too as that would have taken away the pleasure of using his own eye, rather than the designer's.

I am sure that a detailed set of plans is essential for building an exact plywood Guillemot, or Tammie Norrie for that matter, but who wants a clone of the last Guillemot or Tammie Norrie?

And it's much the same with me. Having been taught all I know by Mark it's not surprising that I agree entirely with his philosophy. Give me a shape, preferably taken from an old boat with a lovely hull form, and let me do the rest. Who cares if there's a missing dimension (or three). It's an organic thing, building in solid timber. Iain's plans are works of art, but provide only a starting point for the likes of Mark and, to a lesser extent, myself.

Of course I will be trying to stick as close as I can to Iain's plans, but already the temptation to go my own way in matters of detail is overwhelming. That way I can say, for good or ill, "that's my boat". It has something of my character in it. Which is why I hate building by numbers, or building in plywood a lovely boat like the Tammie Norrie that simply cries out to be built, how should I say? OK. Here goes... cries out to be built properly, larch, oak, copper nails, (you know the rest).

And for those following the build, here are some taken today. The centreboard case, you will note, is built like a cassette, which slots down into a widened slot. The sides are 5mm ply, which will then be faced in larch. I reckon it's a better way of building a centreboard case.

What a Fine Boat

What grace, what beauty. Yes, that's Ffly, my Flying Fifteen last weekend of the Tall Ships. And those other, bigger white things mating in the background. One's called Gloria, the other Christian Radich, not that you'd want to know...

Progress

By the end of the week a plank or two may well be sprouting from the backbone of the Tammie Norrie taking shape in the shed. This time around I will be taking photos of every stage, as it took a bare four months for me to forget almost everything I had painstakingly worked out for the Guillemot.

You see the plans for both boats have a datum that is based on a building frame, the plywood version being built upside down. Everything kind of self jigs, once you get the moulds set up.

 
But it's not done like that when you build traditionally. I needed a datum to help me set up the centreline, and that would have been the bottom of the keel, which is straight. Trying to work out the curve of the rocker and depth of the skeg, for example, was tricky, but a string through the point where the centrelines of the moulds met the waterlines was better than nothing. And in any case I was going to cut down the depth of the skeg to make the sailing version handier.

In the end I set the moulds up with legs on the floor, braced from the roof joists, the floor then becoming the datum. Once the garboards are on it'll be turned over, set up on the strongback and the moulds braced to the ceiling.

One day Iain Oughtred says he'll get round to drawing a centreline for a traditionally built Tammie Norrie. Until then, it's a case of winging it, which is why building by hand and eye, with a glance at the plans from time to time, is so much nicer than building by numbers. Albeit a bit of a head scratch from time to time.

Required Reading...

...apart from this load of old c***lers is Sam Llewellyn's very promising new Marine Quarterly. You probably know Sam for his nautical thrillers (and occasional contributions to the thinking gardeners' quarterly Hortus to which Sam's dinky little, impeccably produced Marine Quarterly bears a striking resemblance in terms both of size and excellence of content.) It's even got a proper colophon (Ha! That's got you thinking, eh?)

I was hoping Someone would buy me a subscription for my birthday and the catalyst came after reading an issue of Hortus, a subscription for which I had bought for Her Who gardens. Inside was a flyer. Within days she had reciprocated, and a packet arrived soon after with the first two issues of the Marine Quarterly, which I am now devouring.

All this pompous preamble boils down to this: if you are a lover of all things nautical, and literary and want an alternative to the repetitive yachtie porn that masquerades as sailing journalism these days ("How to service your outboard"; "Building a plywood pram"; "Seven chart plotters on test"; "Whittling a thole pin"; "Fitting out the easy way"; "Fog in the Channel: a cautionary Tale..."; "We sail the new Suneteau 43" etc etc) then take out a subscription to Sam's Marine Quarterly.

One day I may pluck up courage to submit something of my own, but I am in no doubt about the high standards from the likes of Tom Cunliffe, Roger Taylor of MingMing fame, Alex Ramsay (who sailed with Tilman) and Sam himself.

Now, back to the comfy armchair...

www.marinequarterly.com

We're Off...

Progress since Tuesday on the Tammie Norrie has been patchy, but as of today the centreline is taking shape. The timber for the transom is on order, a composite of Super Elite 12mm faced with larch. On the inside or outside? Haven't yet decided. I have to admit that plywood has its place in a traditional boat: the transom, so long as one side is real. I think it might look rather good: larch on one side, mahogany on the other, and the top capped to hide the end grain. But I have asked Robbins, the supplier, to please, please select a piece with a grain that looks the part, rather than that strange squirrely pattern.

So that's it for the week. The rabbet's cut, barring the section meeting the transom, and centreboard slot marked out. The stem is one piece, the two sections tenoned together with an ancient piece of iroko, the inner face of the apron capped with a laminate of larch, and I'll probably cap the outer stem similarly, but with oak - a kind of larch sandwich, rather than a laminate which eats up timber, requires a jig, rapid working and masses of glue and pressure, two words with huge disaster potential.

And would you believe, as soon as I began work it all came flooding back. Maybe two plywood boats in a row had wiped my mental slate clean. However, this time I wll be taking photos at every stage, including the crucial centreline structure so next time I won't have to scratch my head too long or, as I usually do, soak in the bath with my eyes closed visualising every stage of the build. Nearly drowned last Sunday. Fell asleep counting rabbets...

Back to Work

Gun punt gone; Nutshell pram gone; loch boat gone, so a few days off were just what I needed before work began on the Tammie Norrie.

And do you know, it took me a day of head scratching to remember how it all goes together. Thing is every time I build a boat I look to ways of doing things a little differently, which is one of the joys of building from scratch. Iain Oughtred's plans are superb, but they don't really go into much detail about how to build in traditional clinker, and, believe me, there are differences, beginning with the centreline.

In a ply/epoxy boat it's all planked onto the keelson or hog, and the (outer) keel gets plonked on at the end. In a traditional boat the keelson/keel assembly forms a T shape, and the rabbet is worked into where the two join. And it all gets a little interesting where it joins the stem, which can be made solid or laminated in two parts, just like its ply counterpart.

And there are so many ways to make that vital join. I was taught to half joint the inner stem (apron) to the outer keel, and blend the keelson into the apron, with a knee to strengthen the join, but in Iain's plans the apron sits on top of the keelson, making a sandwich with the outer keel. Too complicated to explain, and my head was spinning by the time I figured out (or remembered) how it all went together. Best to draw it (which I did with the centreboard case (above).

In the end I went for a solid one piece stem, which will mean chiselling out a rabbet, rather than forming the rabbet by slapping the outer stem onto the apron (after planing the protruding planks flush). It's always been a problem lining up the hood end screws in a two-part laminated stem. I am sure there's a clever trick to scribe a screw line on the ouside of the plank by following the fore side of the apron, using some contraption that straddles the excess plank end, but I've not discovered it, and thus every so often a screw gets a touch too close to the edge, or too far away, resulting not in that elegant curve of screws but a bit of a detour.

Not so with a rabbet. You can get those screws in bang where you want them, although fitting the plank ends is not quite as easy as simply planing them flush.

All pretty esoteric boat building stuff, for which I apologise.

But you can see at least what a stem/keel joint looks like as drawn by Mr Oughtred. Mine will have the same profile but not the same construction. Which means next time I build a boat I'll spend another day trying to remember what I did the time before.

PS And those monetary calculations are before the carriage was added (stuff from Robbins, if you must know...)