Getting Back on Track...

Winter is generally a slow time for outdoor boatbuilding, and that's been particularly true for me. Shortly after I published my last post, I had to put my boatbuilding plans on hiatus while I prepared for a long work trip abroad. Upon my return, I discovered that cold temperatures had appeared in my absence, which further put a damper on my desire to go outside.

Also, I didn't have the right tools.

The backbone timbers sitting in my yard are too large to be cut by pretty much any of the power tools that a homeowner is likely to have. A standard circular saw, for example, has a maximum cut depth of around 2 1/2 inches. That's more than enough when you're building a playhouse for the kids out of dimensional lumber, but woefully inadequate for shaping a slab of tropical hardwood that's over twice that thickness and twenty-five feet long. Even a professional 16-inch beam saw like this seven hundred dollar model only has a cut depth of 6 1/4 inches, and many of my timbers, such as the stern knee and horntimber, are nine inches thick. About the only common tool that would stand a chance against something like that is a chainsaw, and those doesn't provide the user with enough control for delicate work like this.

Or so I thought.

Shortly after I got back to the states, I went up to my Dad's place to celebrate my birthday, and after dinner he and Brooke presented me with a long, thin box containing what looked like the chain and guide bar of a chainsaw, but with no motor attachment. Was it a chainsaw? In a manner of speaking. The product is called the Prazi Beamcutter, and it's about as badass a tool as one can imagine. A chainsaw that attaches to a standard circular saw in place of the blade, this tool allows its user to make long controlled cuts that are up to a foot deep:

With a tool like this in my repertoire, no amount of cold could keep me away from building; I had to try it out. And build I did, starting with the stern knee - the part of the boat that will eventually form the triangle (red) between the keel and the sternpost:

The timbers that made up these components showed no signs of the ringshake that afflicted the keel and deadwood pieces, and I eagerly went about shaping them. After nailing an aluminum angle to the timber to guide the saw, the Prazi made short work of that nine-inch-deep cut:

The roughness of the cut was somewhere between what you'd get from a sawmill's bandsaw and a handheld chainsaw. With the cutting done, the piece fit my plywood pattern from the loft floor beautifully; only a slight amount of planing was required to smooth out the surface and bring it right down to the lines:

To do that, I clamped framing squares to either side of the knee right on the pattern lines, and made guide cuts right down to the appropriate depth:

I then planed down, first with a power planer, then with a hand plane, until the cuts vanished:

And just like that, the first part of the boat is ready for assembly!

Oh, and remember the ringshaked keel timber that I couldn't use? Well the wonderful people at Gannon and Benjamin got me a new one; Dad and I drove to Massachusetts to pick it up at the beginning of December, along with that old hand-hewn beam I'd had my eye on for the forefoot. They even let me keep the old keel...I'm sure I'll use it for something!

So all in all, it's been a pretty productive winter, even with the polar vortex, trips to Africa, and all the other crazy stuff that's been going on in my life. This weekend, it feels as though we may have turned a corner with the temperatures, so I say bring on the spring! 2014 is going to be a very productive year!