{"id":515,"date":"2019-07-13T14:17:39","date_gmt":"2019-07-13T14:17:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.talesfromtheboatshed.com\/?p=515"},"modified":"2019-07-13T14:17:39","modified_gmt":"2019-07-13T14:17:39","slug":"big-boat-boatbuilding-knees-and-floors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.talesfromtheboatshed.com\/?p=515","title":{"rendered":"Big Boat Boatbuilding – knees and floors"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Three weeks ago, we moved from lofting to Big Boat Boatbuilding, starting with making and fitting new quarter knees and refashioning some floors on Lilian.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Lilian is a 25ft. open motor launch built in 1932 by Hincks Boat builders of Appledore in North Devon.  She was commissioned by Mr. Plumber, the owner of the Anchor Hotel at Porlock Weir, to take guests on sightseeing tours of the Exmoor coastline, pick up passengers from the paddle steamers Waverley and Balmoral and bring them ashore for cream teas etc. Later, she was used for commercial fishing until 1984, and has been in private use since then.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She is of Carvel construction, and was built with Larch on Oak with a solid Elm stern and was powered by a three cylinder diesel engine. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Lilian in Porlock Weir harbour<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Lilian arriving at Boathouse 4, IBTC Portsmouth in December 2017.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

With a new keel, new planks, and new timbers (ribs), there is little left of the original boat, but she still has her frames and some deadwood structures. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Nearly fully-planked.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Our first job was to fit a pair of Quarter Knees. Think of the hind quarters of a horse or cow, and you can understand the nomenclature and siting of these knees (brackets).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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A view of the transom. The beam for’d of the transom will form the front support of the aft deck. The quarter knees will provide a strong buttress for the gunwale and the transom. It needs to abut the aft deck beam in order to support a Samson Post which will be positioned just the other side of the deck beam, and be used for towing etc.
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A sketch to show the proposed port quarter knee in place, made using 3mm thick two inch strips of oak, laminated to shape with a solid oak infil.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

After making a plywood template for the required shape, wooden blocks (cleats) are bolted to a worktop, and the laminates are coated with glue, and then clamped in place for 24 hours.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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With the laminates cleaned up, an infil pice is made, and glued in place.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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The transom slopes foreward, the inwale slopes outwards, and the aft deck beam slopes backwards – three bevels here – making fitting the fully formed knee something of a challenge!!. At last a good fit.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

To fix the knee in place, pilot holes were drilled, and thick copper nails driven through. We used three 6 inch nails from stock, but needed some longer ones as well, so I made three longer nails from 6mm copper rod. Domed copper washes are then driven down over the nail, and excess material is cut off the protruding nail, which is then ‘peined’ over the washer, creating a rivet-like fixing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The finished job: the port Quarter Knee, held in place with copper roved nails. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

If knees aren’t what you’d think them to be, then floors are still less so. You don’t stand on the floors of a boat, you stand on the deck. The floors are strong structural timbers that lie across the bottom part of the boat, to which the planks are screwed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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From front to back, the big timbers going across the bottom of the boat are : First futtock of one frame, ‘my’ floor, and the first futtock of the next frame. The thinner battens of wood are called timbers – much room for confusion and mis-naming here!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Due to the movement of the shape of the boat in its restoration from a very dilapidated state, the floors and frames are no longer fitting properly. The gaps under ‘my’ floor were up to 10mm in size. In addition, the Limber Holes, that allow big water to flow along the boat and not collect in pockets, were too wide. By scribing a line parallel to the inside of the hull, the floor was re-shaped, and Graving Pieces were fitted to reduce the size of the limber holes, so that there was sufficient wood to take a screw through the plank below.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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A ‘Graving Piece’<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Having got a good fit, I drilled a hole through the frame and keel, and made a bolt out of 1\/2 inch silicon-bronze rod (using a die to make a thread for the first time in over 40 yrs!).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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‘My’ Floor is now fitted, with no significant gaps; bedded down with butyl rubber sealant, through-bolted to the keel; and the planks screwed to the floor from below.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

These were two projects that were veery challenging at times, but equally satisfying to complete. I have gained lots of useful experience in various techniques: laminating, fitting to complex bevels, making copper nails, roving copper nails, scribing wood to fit curves, making bolts, drilling 8 inch holes accurately ….
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the last few days, I have started working on another boat: Tom Sherrin<\/a> – a Poole Pilot Launch. This is another long-term restoration project. I have been tasked to undertake a repair on her keel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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A large knot in the keel. The keel is 4′ thick, but I can see light coming through from the other side. This calls for another Graving Piece – and one a lot more substantial than on ‘my’ floor.
Don’t be thinking that this wood is rotten. The wood is solid, despite the large defect. In fact, the central part of the knot is as hard as bog oak. Just goes to show that salt water alone doesn’t rot wood – it’s being left in fresh water that rots wood.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

A new arrival<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The CMB from Duxford has arrived. I haven’t forgotten my promise to do a post on the CMB – watch this space.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Three weeks ago, we moved from lofting to Big Boat Boatbuilding, starting with making and fitting new quarter knees and refashioning some floors on Lilian. The Lilian is a 25ft. open motor launch built in 1932 by Hincks Boat builders of Appledore in North Devon.  She was commissioned by Mr. Plumber, the owner of the Anchor…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.talesfromtheboatshed.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/515"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.talesfromtheboatshed.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.talesfromtheboatshed.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.talesfromtheboatshed.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.talesfromtheboatshed.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=515"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.talesfromtheboatshed.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/515\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.talesfromtheboatshed.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=515"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.talesfromtheboatshed.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=515"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.talesfromtheboatshed.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=515"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}