Other frame pieces and transom cover

Ok today I worked on more pieces of the framing and the center board box. The ¾ plywood came in today at the local lumber yard but I still have to wait for the ¼ sheets. The ¼ sheets of plywood are not expected in until the middle of next week and I suspect that is going to slow me down some. My bronze screws and nails are due in tomorrow that I ordered direct from Glen-L.

Today I cut all the ¾ plywood braces for the center of the frames; they are what all the frames level out on while they are sitting on the jig that I still have to make. Speaking of the Jig I am thinking I will go ahead and make that this weekend while I am waiting on the plywood to come in. I also cut the rear cover for the transom out of the ¾ sheets. I had to purchase a 1 ¼ piece of wood today instead of what I wanted in 1 1/8. The lumber yard did not carry the 1 1/4 so I came back to the shop and ripped it down to the 1 1/8 then. It made me kind of nervous doing it and my employees took cover. I had to raise the blade up all the way to make the cut and flip the board over to twice to do it. I cut it from a 1 ¼ x 6x4 board in Douglas fir, that was the closest thing the lumber yard had. After some serious thinking about what I was doing I got it done. It wasn’t perfect but I sanded it flat with a belt sander and got it looking pretty good. I don’t have a planer and that would have been really nice in this situation. I plan on purchasing the planer in the future for other projects if this one goes well.
Everything is starting to look nice and I will have a lot of gluing, screwing and nailing to do. Tomorrow I plan on cutting out the stem and bow hook. I may do the center board also and the rudder. I haven’t looked at the plans today but I think they are all out of the ¾ sheets also. I attached more pictures of my progress today.

Several more frame pieces

Well I survived my weekend at the lake jet skiing and it was pretty nice just to get away for a while. Today I am still waiting on the plywood to come in, I went to the lumber yard to check status and they are telling me that the ¾ plywood will be here tomorrow and the I will have to wait a few more days for the ¼ in material to come in. So this evening I worked on a few more pieces that needed to be cut from 1 inch material. I think I have cut all that I can now without having plywood.

I got to try out my new table saw this evening also and it worked pretty well. There are not too many edges were I will not be able to use the table saw to cut them. I will be stuck using the Jig Saw and Skill saw to do the rest of the work.

I spent a couple more ours looking over the center board compartment and think I have it figured out. I have looked all over the internet for better pictures of this area and could not find any. I cut the top and bottom of the trunk tonight and that is all I could do without plywood.

I am attaching a couple more pictures of the other pieces that I have completed. I look forward to the plywood coming in tomorrow to work on others.

More frames

I worked on the frames some more today and started on the transom. The frames are coming to together pretty well although I am still waiting for the plywood to come in from the lumber yard so I can start the laminating process with the frames. The lumber yard is saying it will be the middle of next week some time for the plywood to come in; some of the pieces are coming as far away as Oklahoma. That tells you the plywood is pretty scarce in the Midwest. It’s ok that it’s taking a while its giving me some time to make all the pieces of the frames and to review what I am doing hopefully to not make any mistakes. I have to say I am still a little confused with the transom and how you are supposed to make it angle properly if it does not attach to the sub-frame I have to build for the frames to set on during the building process. I will keep making pieces and reading over the print and directions every time that I work on it hopefully to see something that will tip me off about making the transom.

Memorial Day weekend starts on Friday so we will be off away from the shop some taking a break for a while and will come home the first of the week to get a fresh start back on the boat. Everyone that walks by my frames in the shop thinks it looks like its coming along pretty fast and looks good. Of course the entire shop smells like a woodworking shop now instead of a bike shop but its ok, we needed a change in the smell around here.

I am attaching more pictures of what I made today and the progress of all the frames spread out on the ground.

Building Frames

Today I started cutting frames; I was pretty excited about getting started with actual wood cutting. My new Jig Saw and Belt sander came in yesterday and they worked pretty well. I still ended up using my skill saw more seeing that it would cut the straight edges better. I used the Jig Saw for cutting the curved areas and then smoothed it all up with my Belt Sander. I hand sanded some of it to fit better and used my belt sander for that as well.

After getting started I realized I was not going to have the right size boards in enough quantity. I needed more 1x8 boards because the “V” in the over all length of the bottom part of the frame spread out to about 7 inches. That meant another trip to the lumber yard, I went back to Lowe’s because my local yard was not able to get the 1x8 material I needed fast enough. The 1x8 at Lowe’s I can only get in Oak and it cost $45 for a 1x8x10 board and I needed about 4 more. I would rather get the Douglas fir since it’s about half of that price but they only have it in 1x6’s. I really wanted to get started so I purchased the oak and went back to the shop to start cutting more. My local lumber yard had to special order the Marine Plywood and it should be in tomorrow I need it to laminate the corners of my frames together per the instructions. Hopefully tomorrow I will be able to start on the gluing and laminating.

I took some pictures to show what I have completed today in about 6 hours between the actual work and going to Lowe’s. I am going to read through the instructions some more tonight and look at the blue print of the frames to be sure I don’t miss something.

Template building

Ok while I waited for the material to come it I went on to what section of the semi directions they give you calls out for. There was a sheet that says instead of cutting up my plans and using them for templates I should use carbon paper and trace over the plans onto poster board or heavy construction paper to make templates with. So I started on that today, I laid the construction paper under the drawing with the carbon paper in between and traced over the drawing with a red colored pencil. I used the colored pencil to see were I was going and what I had already done. Then I took each piece I had traced out and cut all the templates and marked them as I went. It worked about pretty well but it took me most of the afternoon to do just the 5 frames and all there parts, 6 hours or so to be exact. I laid out all the pieces on another sheet of plywood and did a 3D assembly like I was putting the wood pieces together and taped it all down to the sheet of plywood for now.

Tomorrow I am going back to the lumber yard to hopefully get some pieces of wood to start cutting on. I am waiting of the Jig Saw I purchased from EBay to come in also I suspect it will be here tomorrow. I am really looking forward to start cutting something, kind of excited about it actually. I am attaching some pictures of my template work. I plan on saving all the templates and storing them for later; I might get a wild hair someday and want to do another one.

Also just a note I started this blog so when I was too tired to work on the boat I could at least sit here at my desk do something productive. I am the kind of guy that likes to challenge his mind; I am not much of a TV watcher so I need to do something else to entertain myself.

Selecting Wood

Ok after getting my area ready to work, taking several days to do between work and just finding all the materials I needed. I scrounged up some 2 by 4’s and some old florescent fixtures. I had to take 4 of the old fixtures to make two good ones. Then I tested them all out before hanging them and wiring them up. That was a project in itself.

Now that all was setup I laid out my plans and read them from top to bottom and thought about the way they were made. That took me several ours one evening, there was a lot to think about trust me.

The next day I went to the lumber yard just to check on costs of the lumber. I live in a small town and want to spend my money local. So that means having them special order in the materials. I live in the Midwest and finding Marine grade plywood is impossible. The small town I live in has a population of 2500 so they don’t stock a lot of boat building supplies. I took my list of materials that were supplied by Glen L and handed them to there material buying guy at the lumber yard. Buying marine grade materials was something new to him and he has been there since the 70’s. I will say he was actually pretty excited to take on the challenge and to break up the monotony of buying home building materials. He made calls to at least 3 vendors in the state of Missouri while I sat that there and one had 4 sheets. Well at least that would get me started while I waited for the rest of it to come in. It will be several days just to get the 4 sheets in but that is ok I have other things I can start working on waiting for the materials to show up.

I also did some research that evening on Google about what types of wood I can use since some of it is hard to come by here. I found that Douglas fir was also used to build boats and that is a lot easier to come by here and not only that it’s about half the costs of Mahogany and Oak. I can get Oak local that is a tree that is very popular here and Douglas fir is also a very common building material here. I am going to the lumber yard tomorrow to see if that is something we can get a lot of, which I am sure it will be.

Area Prep

I also needed to prepare my area some, I have a large warehouse and space really isn’t much of a problem. So I began clearing an area and hanging up some florescent lights I had lying around. I looked for the flattest spot I had in the shop and it really was the most optimal place to work. I built some saw horses to hold my plans on and just a place to lay all the items it takes to do this. I rounded up all the small tools I would need and made a few purchases on EBay also. I haven’t done much wood working in a while so I was short some pretty vital items. I purchased a Jig Saw, Belt Sander, Router and a Table saw all at pretty good prices. You can get some good deals on EBay on reconditioned items or slightly used.

Glen L 15 Project Startup

This is my online journal and I am a first time boat builder. I have wanted to do this for a while and have read many articles on the internet. The reason I started this discussion group was so that others like my self would hopefully do it better than what I had to go through to figure it out. As I build the boat I am going to take pictures and post my daily quests. I have some minor wood working skills and hope that I can handle the project. My dad is going to help from time to time as it progresses.

I own a company that sells motorcycle parts all over the world so like unlike most guys that attempt this I may have more time now that my business has a manager and employees that hopefully can handle it on there own while I work on the boat. It’s kind of my way of separating me from the company so I can go on to do other things. I will be close by in case they need help.

I am very excited to take on this project and look forward the final product. I hope that by me doing this it will make it easier for others to build one. Looking on the internet mostly there are some postings about similar projects but they are very vague. I have many questions, and answers are really hard to come by. Anyone that comes across this site is more than welcome to add posts to the contents chapters so they might offer a better suggestion to what I have done. All you need to do is click on the chapter and add post. Thanks for looking, Shane