A drink on Teal

I headed down today to finish the plank I started the other day and was greeted
by a package addressed to Teal. To my surprise it was a bottle of whiskey and
a card from Andy Rankin who sailed Teal to the Baltic a few years back and
had just recently come across this blog and felt we deserved a drink for our efforts.
I would like to say a big thank you to him for a very kind gesture which is very
much appreciated.
We will certainly make good use of it, we have at least on one occasion over
indulged in a bottle or two of whiskey to the entertainment of our other halves.
I will spare a drop for Teal and there is an open invitation to come and teach us
how to sail her. Cheers

On another note, I steamed in that plank and removed another old short larch
plank and a piece of the adjoining pitch pine one, mainly to extent it a bit and
eliminate a large knot with a split running around it. The starboard side is starting
to look much better.
I also got a new camera for Christmas so I took a few random pics.

We're still here 'better continue'

So the mayans must have just got fed up making there calender then, Not
that I'd buy in to these things but I did have a glance around the boatyard
when I got there to find the best apocalypse shelter near by to Teal and
came to the conclusion Nicks steel yacht was my best bet if s**t hit the fan.
Then I got back to business.
I had fastened two planks in place a few days ago and held one in temporarily,
when I looked at it this morning and clamped it up tighter I realised there was
no need to take it out again so I fastened it in as well.
I then tacked on my batten and set out, cut, planed and backed out the longer
plank above it. I've left it in place now under strain so by the next day it will
have taken the shape a little before I make final adjustments and steam it.
So far so good, I'm beginning to enjoy the planking process although it does
take quite a bit of time.
I've been told a few times that planking a whole side is much easier that doing
repair planking and I can see why. Making a plank fit between two others
tightly is pretty tough.

Anyway thats that until after Christmas, I hope to get that plank in and maybe
one more before the year is out and start the new year fairly on target.

Merry Christmas everyone, have a good one.

Steaming/planking

Well I spent two days at the boat this week, Wednesday Ken came with me
and he made a start at removing the deck, so far the deck beams etc look
good but theres still a lot left to uncover.
I cut out two shutter planks, I just clamped them and copied them as the originals
were in one piece and spent a good while getting the plank I spiled backed out
and fitting nicely.
Today I continued with one of the shutter planks, I used the grinder with a flapdisk
to do the backing out as Iroko is pretty crap stuff to use a hand plane on. I
spent a good long while on that plank but I think it will do the trick.
I also made up the steam box and had a go a steaming the spiled plank, I steamed
it for an hour and a half and it seemed to twist in to place relatively easily. I'll
have to take it out again to make adjustments but I wanted to try out the steamer.
Apparently 212 degrees is the magic temperature for the steam box although I just
guessed, it was bloody hot inside it though.
I need to go down for a few hours to plug the old fastening holes in the frames and
prime them before I permanently fasten the planks on.

I could have done with holding on to the money for Christmas but I forked out for the gas to make life easier

This is the one I steamed, you can see how much it flexed compared to the pic  in the last post when it was dry

Smoker/steamer

I tried out the smoker today to see if it will work as a steamer and it went
quite well. I picked up two lengths of 9x1 and two lengths of 4x1 to make
a steam cabinet. They are around 14 ft long at the moment, I don't know if
that would be too long for the steam to work or not but it should hold any
plank I need to steam, if needs be I'll cut it shorter and let the planks hang out
the end. I'm going to place one end of the cabinet straight on top of the smoker
to eliminate the metal pipe. The pipe length cools the smoke when I'm using it
as a smoker but thats obviously not necessary for this. I don't know whether I'll
use the gas or a fire yet, I guess a fire until I can afford a tank of gas.

Started planking

I had a good long day to myself today, so I started by calling into a local joinery
where the owner has a long running interest in boats and picked up three 4.500mtr
lengths of 12 x 1 iroko to use for planking. Pitch pine would just be too much time
and hassle to source and I just want to keep things moving along, Iroko is widely
used in modern wooden boat building anyway although it is an expensive material.
Anyway I then set up bit of a working area in the tent and went about chiseling
out around the heads of the fore and aft keel bolts so that the rectangle washers can
sit flat on top of the deadwood and bow knee, I had been meaning to do that with
weeks, I still need to find a socket and tighten them up, I could probably torque up
the others again as well, as she has settled onto the ballast more now. You can see
the felt being extruded from under the keel as she settles.
I finally pressed ahead with the first plank. Its my first time planking and I had spent
plenty of time reading and studying spiling but as per usual I was quickly shown a
simpler Hegarty's method.
I have the first plank cut out and it seems to be fitting in but it will require steaming
before it will twist into place, I also need to do the backing out to let it sit properly
on the frames but for now at least I have broken the ice and made a start.

It has a lot of twisting left to do

I was just thinking about how to steam my planking and had an idea. The picture below is a

cold smoker I made for smoking fish, bacon etc, It has the fire in the base and over it is, as near

as makes no difference a boiler, I usually fill the top with oak shavings but I guess it would be 

equally as good for making steam, Just need to stick a steam box/pipe on the outlet instead, I 

have also recently started putting the blowtorch in the door and turning it down low so I can run it

on gas instead of solid fuel which means I can leave it work for hours on end. 

Will have to try it out.                   

Teals indoors

My tarp arrived yesterday so I managed to get away today and get it all
covered over while the weather is calm. No excuses now, have to get planking !

Tent

Tent would be probably be an understatement but last thing we want is something
that blows away everytime theres a puff of wind, this should last, and I'm sure once
Teal is complete it will find another purpose pretty quickly.
We now need to get hold of something to cover it so I should get on that.

Also here are some of the pics Nick took when we were drilling for the last two keel
bolts, Cheers Nick

The next time we get an un-obscured view of Teal she should look like new and be ready for rigging

Not for the overly health and safety conscious 

A nice sheen on the hull from the freezing shower of hail

New arrival

Well last week turned out to be pretty hectic, Wednesday saw the arrival of
our little baby girl and Thursday morning Providence headed off round the
Mizen and up the South West Coast to her new home port.
Thankfully Liam helped with the latter and left me free for more important duties.
Anyway all is well and once everything settles back down and I get some free
time again I will press on with work on Teal.
I hope to finish the tent asap so at least she will be covered over and then do
a few bits and pieces at home, such as the rudder and skylight.
I also need to clean up the garboards and take them back to the boatyard and
start saving up to buy timber for planking.
All in good time I guess.

Re-antifouled and ready to launch

Rushing and waiting

Well with our new arrival expected any day now and a sale agreed on Providence
I was rushing about trying to get her ready for relaunching and all my bits and
pieces cleared out and brought home in case I'd have to rush off.
Well as it turns out I had plenty of time and now we are just waiting.
I did go to the boat yard today and made a start on the tent to cover Teal but the
weather is horrible so I didn't stay too long.
I picked up all the timber for the tent at the sawmill last Wednesday. I just got green
(unseasoned) white deal as it was half the price of seasoned timber and it was irrelevant
whether it was seasoned or not.
I still need to put up the rafters and batten it all ready for covering with something.
The cover is the next problem.

Planking out

I went down today and striped off all the planking that has to be changed. There
was a butt joint behind one of the shores that were holding her up that I didn't
know about so I will probably have to change that one as well as it is very short
and I want to stagger out the joints. The planks look to be fairly straight so
hopefully I won't have to buy really wide stock to get them out of.
I've just been drilling the heads off the rivets and punching them in to free up
the planks, most of the bronze nails have already been cut off when the frames
were replaced and any that remain just pull out without any hassle.
One thing to note is that it helps to have the right size drill bit for drilling the rivet
heads off, too small and its hard to get it dead center, too big and they run off and
damage the surrounding plank, not important when we're changing the plank but if
I was just replacing the rivet it wouldn't be ideal.

Providence has just been lifted out as well so I need to get it washed down and cleaned out for the Winter

Drilling for keelbolts

So as planned Liam lifted Teal for us this morning so we could drill for the
fore and aft most keel bolts. This was done in typical Hegarty's (terrifying)
fashion, but as ever it worked well.
Typically as soon as the boat came off the ground we had squalls of wind
and hail which made things that much more of an effort. In the end we had
the bolts in in around 30 minutes and then set the boat up close to her
waterline.
A quick cup of coffee and we went about making up the outrigger style legs
which will support the hull during planking and be a base on which to build
the tent over her for the Winter.
The tent is next on the to do list.
Nick got some pictures of the work in progress this morning which should be
better quality than mine so I will post some up whenever I get them off him.

Making holes

I spent the last few days at the boat but have just been picking at it
really and trying to get my head around the next big step which is the
planking.
I marked the planks that need changing and raked out the seams
and removed one of the stealers yesterday.
Today I cleared all the fastenings on those planks and started drilling out
rivets, I took out another stealer and a short section of planking but the
wind and rain got the better of me and I gave up for the day.
I've made a rough list of the planking thats needed and it appears to be
11 lengths. Only two of which are the full length, the planks above the garboards.
The rest are stealers and shorter pieces between 2 and 3 meters long.
The planking is 25mm, "1 inch" thick.
We're planning on lifting the boat on Saturday and fitting the last keelbolts.
I found a bit big enough to do the trick in the Ilen shed, so that will save us
having buying one.

Keelbolts

Collected the remaining keel bolts today, They cost a lot more than we
had hoped considering we had the material already. Anyway they should
do there jobs for a long time to come.
I finished scraping off the paint as well so I'll probably go down tomorrow
to mark and measure bad planks and start raking out the stopping and
caulking from some of them.
I also need to find a drill bit for the keel bolts, I should have ordered one
weeks ago by right.

Keel bolts, looking a couple of hundred bucks !

Deadlines

So with the pitter patter of another pair of tiny feet looming ever closer
I finally had to step away from Teal and knuckle down and finish of the
house. The good news is that I'm nearly free to get back to it and put
in another few weeks of work before the big arrival.
Hopefully when the time comes I will at least be able to escape to the shed
and do a few things like making the new rudder and restoring the sky light
as to not let it grind to a halt.
I took advantage of a break in the weather yesterday to move Providence
back to Oldcourt for the Winter where she remains for sale.
At least the two are now in the same place again and fishing as a hobby is
put to bed until next season so any spare time can be put to good use on
Teal.
Also I called about the keelbolts today and they are ready to be collected
so we should get them fitted quickly before the yard becomes even more
congested.
So much for R&R ay!

Week off

I'm not getting anything done for a week or two because other jobs need
attention. I was going to go and scrape the last of the paint off on Monday
but there isn't any rush with it.
The keel bolts should be ready very shortly so until they are in we can't build
our tent or set the boat up properly to go at planking.
Planking will be the next thing on the agenda though, I'm hoping to have her
ready for caulking in mid Winter and move on with the rest of the work early
in the new year.

More paint scraping

Ok so Ken headed away for the weekend and as he had said to me,
I couldn't wait for him to get back to strip the rest of the paint off so
I just did it myself. It seems that the planking really isn't too bad after alL.
We'll have to run some of the short planks further forward and a few of the
stealers need changing but there doesn't appear to be any full length to change.
Bit of a relief after all we've changed so far.
I also dropped in a 316 stainless driveshaft to be turned down into the 2 remaining
keelbolts so thats another job in progress.

Short larch planks, The larch blackens with the heat far quicker than the pitch pine which just boils with resin. We need to stagger these joints out a lot more.

Local boat building

I followed a link to another link on http://intheboatshed.net/ the other day

and came across this blog http://ilur.tumblr.com/  

I instantly recognised it as a local boat I had been admiring over the summer

in and out of Union Hall. The blog follows her full build and continuing work

by a guy who seems to be heading down a similar route to a life in dept to

boats as I am.

Enjoy

Thanks for posting a link to my blog by the way and hope you don't 

mind me copying this very pretty picture from yours. Keep up the

good work.

The naked truth

Well you can guess what I did this evening, It took 3 solid hours and my
shoulder won't work for a few days now but one side is almost completely
striped of paint. Better yet I found nothing unexpected for a change and it
seems the planking is in pretty good order. Ken can scrape the other side
though.

Planking looks good

3"x 4" galvanised angle iron pieces spread the weight over the width of the keel

Gap between ballast and keel, It is slowly closing

We caught this on the boat the other day, pretty cool